Reporters on the Job

BALKAN DIGITAL DIVIDE: Today's story from Mostar, Bosnia-Herzegovina, is about restoring a bridge between two worlds - literally and figuratively (page 7). But for reporter Arie Farnam, it was also a difficult lesson in bridging the telecommunications divide. "Before living out of my backpack for two weeks in Bosnia-Herzegovina, I never quite appreciated what it means to a postwar society to have a destroyed telecommunications infrastructure," she says.

"My first problem was getting a hold of interviewees. My European cellphone doesn't work in Bosnia, and ground lines are scarce. I spent the first few days of the trip hiking up and down the mountain from the pension where I stayed, working on one story, and trekking to the town of Neum to make calls to set up future interviews in Sarajevo and Mostar.

"In Mostar, I was finally able to get a prepaid Bosnian cellphone card, which worked most of the time - except for the four or five times per day when the network went down. Two days later, I crossed the 'line of control' into Republika Srpska - which is technically part of Bosnia, but really would rather not be. The cellphone networks in the two entities don't cooperate, so I was incommunicado yet again."

Even more difficult was finding a way to transmit her stories back to Boston. Usually, one can find an Internet cafe. In Bosnia, a network of Internet stations has been set up by some international donor. But they were all blocked to protect against viruses. "I wandered around several cities, asking every computer-equipped shop for help. Finally, I found a blessed little cafe in the back streets of Mostar, which let me file my story."

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