How does Alagiah present his views about being a reporter in Somalia?
George Alagiah presents his views about being a reporter in Somalia in quite an unusual manner. The purpose of this piece, ‘A Passage to Africa’, is to raise awareness to the public of all the poverty in Africa and the conditions the poor Africans are forced to live in. Also, Alagiah wrote it to discuss how touching an life-changing it was for him when the sick man mentioned in the piece smiled at him. The main reason he wrote it, however, is to inform, since he is a reporter for BBC.
Being a reporter, especially one for such a reputable news company, requires one to be desensitized. Alagiah is clearly completely unemotional and ruthless in his pursuit of a story. It does this by conveying to the reader Alagiah’s attitude towards getting his job done- completely determined. When he says ‘what might have appalled us when we started out trip a few days ago no longer impressed us much’, the reader gets the impression that Alagiah is a heartless, cruel man. However, as the extract goes on, the view of Alagiah’s character changes quite rapidly, as his emotions are more involved.
Alagiah also uses senses to describe what he was feeling and experiencing. A good example of this would be ‘it was a smell that drew me to her doorway’. This utilization of synaesthesia is effective as it creates a better relation with the reader by combining two senses- touch and smell- to create one realistic effect. He concentrates on details in senses quite a lot in this extract. It causes the reader to almost feel what Alagiah is feeling at the time, almost as if the smell was literally pulling him towards its source. This also creates a more personal outcome to the text, showing that, as the extract goes on, it gets more and more personal, until the sixth paragraph. George Alagiah makes his attitude to the crisis apparent, doing this by using phrases such as ‘...a thousand...scared and betrayed faces...”. These...
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