The Foreign Service Journal, January 2004

30 F O R E I G N S E R V I C E J O U R N A L / J A N U A R Y 2 0 0 4 K. Unlike Brokaw, Jennings or Rather, I am a virtual unknown here in the United States. But I do have more listeners in my audience than all three of them combined. And I have had my name recognized at an airline ticket office in Ethiopia and at passport control in Uganda. I’m told African babies have been named after me. Like the network anchors, I, too, get fan mail. But I bet no network anchor has ever had an incident like this: I was sitting in the VOA News Bureau in an office building in central Nairobi one day in the mid-1990s when the phone rang. On the line was a man who told me his name was Alex Belida. I was naturally flabbergasted — so flabbergasted that I agreed to an appointment so the caller could drop by in person. The next day my mystery guest arrived and I again, this time for the record, asked him to state his name. “My name is Alex Belida,” he said. But after some prodding, he acknowledged that was not his real name. “My real name is Mesafint Beyene. My nickname is Alex Belida. I got it recently from friends.” Even I had to admit it was an unusual choice for a nickname, so I asked him to elaborate. The answer was one that was certain to thrill the hearts of all VOA executives. “I got that name because I listen to the radio day and night.” And not just any radio. He listened to VOA and he especially liked to hear my voice. “It’s a wonderful voice. ... The sound is great. ... That’s why many friends, when I tell them about Alex Belida ... they gave me that name.” Mesafint Beyene was an Ethiopian refugee who lived in Kenya. Before he left the VOA office, I got him to record a standard VOA news sign-off and added it to the bottom of a report I wrote about him. Listeners that day got to hear Mesafint saying at the end of one of my voice T HIS VOA CORRESPONDENT ’ S LIFE HAS BEEN FULL OF EXTRAORDINARY EXPERIENCES AND A DIFFERENT KIND OF NOTORIETY . B Y A LEX B ELIDA F O C U S O N U . S . B R O A D C A S T I N G O A V OICE FOR THE V OICELESS The author in Rwanda.