Newsman Kellogg's beat is the African continent

June 08, 2000

SEARCH THE GAZETTE

HARVARD GAZETTE ARCHIVES

By Alvin Powell
Gazette Staff

When Harvard senior Alex Kellogg finished his semester abroad in the spring of 1998, he went to the Nairobi airport with the rest of his class. But while they were saying farewell to Kenya, he was saying farewell to them.

"I went to the airport and said goodbye. Then I flew to Sudan," said Kellogg, a social studies concentrator from Ann Arbor, Mich.

Foreign correspondent Alex Kellogg is flanked by a mask from Cameroon and a flag from Kenya. Staff photo by Kris Snibbe

Kellogg flew to Sudan as part of a television team for the Reuters wire service. The Reuters team, joined by reporters and photographers from other news organizations, flew into southern Sudan to investigate the Nuba people in advance of a United Nations assessment on the area.

In recent decades, that part of Sudan has been afflicted with civil war and drought. In 1993, Amnesty International accused Sudan of an ethnic cleansing campaign against the Nuba, black Africans whose Christian and animist beliefs set them apart from the country’s Arab-Muslim rulers.

"It was an amazing story. Nobody goes to these parts of the world. You could put a television in front of these people and they’d run away from it. But in many ways they have so much more than us because they work for all they have and take nothing for granted," Kellogg said. "The story was so amazing that it aired around the world."

Kellogg got to Sudan – and to most of the rest of Africa over the next two years – through a combination of luck, timing, and determination.

As part of the semester abroad program – taken cooperatively through St. Lawrence University’s Kenya Semester Abroad Program – Kellogg was required to do a month-long internship. Kellogg wasn’t sure what he wanted to do, but knew he enjoyed writing and was interested in film. Armed with his resumé and some writing samples, Kellogg walked into the Reuters Nairobi office and asked if they could use an intern.

His timing was right, Kellogg said, because the bureau at that moment was understaffed. They accepted his offer.

Kellogg started out logging tapes and sending faxes. After a few weeks, though, he got a chance to write a script for a segment on South Africa’s most celebrated boxer, Baby Jake Matlala, that had already been shot but which was waiting for someone to get enough free time to put together as a story.

He was handed film clips of interviews and associated footage and went to work. After watching tapes of dozens and dozens of Africa Journal stories, Kellogg wrote the story of Baby Jake, which aired about three weeks later.

After that start, Kellogg wrote another about South Africa’s first black winemaker – a specialist who tastes grapes to determine which will be made into that year’s wine.

Three weeks into his four-week internship, Kellogg approached the executive producer and asked if they could use him if he stayed. They said yes.

For the next year and a half, Kellogg traveled around six African countries working on more than 100 stories, including a piece on a Tanzanian snake charmer and another on members of the Black Panther Party living in Tanzania.

The experience has given him a taste for journalism. Kellogg said he wants to try magazine writing next. And he says the interest he had in film before heading to Kenya is still with him.

The unanticipated time away from school, while providing invaluable life lessons, put Kellogg behind in his schoolwork. Though he’ll participate in this spring’s commencement exercises, Kellogg has coursework to complete that will bring him back to Harvard for the fall term.

In the meantime, Kellogg plans to spend several weeks this summer in Botswana, Zimbabwe, and South Africa working on freelance articles about Botswana’s diamond industry and about AIDS in southern Africa.

Lowell House Senior Tutor Gene McAfee said Kellogg had the kind of life-changing experience that helps students gain perspective on their time at Harvard.

"When he got to Kenya, he discovered it was much more interesting than he ever could have imagined when he was here," McAfee said. "One of the good things I appreciate about his experience is he had a real job, he had deadlines. It opened up a whole world to him on a variety of levels."