One of Africa's largest radio stations operating in one of the continent's most politically unstable countries sets the stage for a touching and thought-provoking story that illustrates how peace is a process, and how the spectrum between war and peace is more nuanced than people think.

In early 2004, Jennifer, a young journalist from Nova Scotia, Canada, arrives in the Congolese capital of Kinshasa with rose-colored prejudice abounding. After seven years of brutal warfare involving eight neighboring countries and several million deaths, hostile factions have just agreed to a ceasefire. A new transitional government is in place.

Jennifer travels 1,500 miles up the Congo River to the small city of Kindu to manage a regional station of Radio Okapi, a year-old station funded by the U.N. and a Swiss NGO. She joins a hard-working team of local reporters'six men and one woman who are determined to cover their country's rapid march towards elections. Armed only with facts, they set about to tirelessly, unceremoniously chip away at the rampant rumors, misinformation and conjecture that have long polarized the Congo.

When a public lynching is followed by an outbreak of violence, Jennifer realizes how little she understands Congolese politics—and how little she has at stake compared to her Congolese colleagues. Maintaining the rigor of Radio Okapi's editorial line suddenly seems like a matter of life or death. Can one small station known as the “frequency of peace” stand the strain?

Radio Okapi Kindu is an honest, unvarnished account of a young journalist's steep learning curve, and a love song to a poor but astonishingly beautiful country whose broadcasting record bears lessons for media consumers everywhere.

Jennifer Bakody's profile page

Jennifer Bakody is a journalist and aid worker who's spent the last twenty years working for BBC, CBC, CNN, France 24, Radio France Internationale and the UN in Canada, the Congo, France, Haiti, Hong Kong, the Philippines, Sierra Leone and the United Kingdom. She grew up in Dartmouth, Nova Scotia, and studied journalism at the University of King's College in Halifax. She currently lives in Singapore, with her husband and daughter.

“It is my hope that the humanity portrayed by Radio Okapi Kindu will help to rally the world around the many forces for positive change in the Democratic Republic of the Congo.” “Dr. Denis Mukwege, 2018 Nobel Peace Prize laureate, world-renowned gynecological surgeon & founder & medical director of Panzi Hospital in Bukavu, Democratic Republic of the Congo

?I have visited the Congo as a journalist, observing in action the largest United Nations mission on earth. But I always wondered: what would it be like to be one of those UN workers, in the country not for weeks, but years” This book answers that question in a way that is nitty-gritty, vivid, funny, up close and personal “and has compassion for what the Congolese have suffered for so many years.” “Adam Hochschild, author ofKing Leopold's Ghost: a Story of Greed, Terror and Heroism in Colonial Africa, andBury the Chains: Prophet's and Rebels in the Fight to Free an Empire's Slaves

"One dramatic highlight is the brilliantly understated account that one of Bakody's colleagues gives of how he was brutally beaten by soldiers in retaliation for a story he wrote about the army's poor performance in battle. Thanks to Bakody's talent for snappy dialogue, eye for detail, and humorous prose, the book never flags, even when its pace slows down to capture the everyday slog of running a radio station." “Nicolas van de Walle,Foreign Affairs

?Bakody manages right from the start to frame her story around the team of Congolese journalists, thereby avoiding the stereotypical pitfalls of a young Western woman going to “find herself” in a remote place in the deepest and darkest and most dangerous part of Africa that all too often provides the backdrop for these books. Radio Okapi Kindu is definitely among my favorite aid worker memoirs now.” “Tobias Denskus,Aidnography

?She [Bakody] spent nine months in this remote outpost, her sense of purposes fuelled by a determination to create a public record that would deliver accurate and even-handed information to a population exhausted by six years of civil war. This is her engaging account of that experience.” “Sarah Murdoch,Toronto Star

?She captures a sense of Kindu and of her likable, hard-working and often fearless staff as they adjust to a changing postwar world nonetheless fraught with danger.” “Chris Smith,Winnipeg Free Press

?Here, at last, is a book about the Congo that evokes not anger and pity, but admiration and hope. Radio Okapi Kindu is a heartfelt memoir of an Africa that few correspondents or visitors ever get to see.” “Michael Meyer, author ofIn Manchuria: A Village Called Wasteland and the Transformation of Rural China; andThe Last Days of Old Beijing: Life in the Vanishing Backstreets of a City Transformed