大象传媒

One of the tasks as writer in residence for 大象传媒 World service is to bring attention to the culture of our headquarters Bush House.

I wrote in my last blog post that when I joined the World Service there were 44 language services and our canteen was a real Noah's Ark of different languages, cultures, and costumes.

But this world of mine has shrunk.

In 2006 10 language services were closed and over the next couple of weeks five more services will stop broadcasting: Portuguese for Africa, Caribbean, Serbian, Macedonian and Albanian.

I have many good memories about each one of these teams.

When I joined the Central Asian service in 1994, a calm, grey-haired man was introduced to me.

His name was Aleksej Zoric.

In our journalistic life, when the Soviet Union was crumbling, when the first Chechen war and many other post-Soviet conflicts were taking place, Aleksej used to guide us through Scylla and Charybdis of editorial choices, based on his own - not easy - experience of the war-torn Balkans.

He is still running the Serbian service.

When I ask him what he is most proud of, he modestly says: "It would be difficult to identify a single programme or event, but I think that the accurate and balanced reporting we did during the 1998 Milosevic military operations against the Kosovo Albanians as well as during the NATO bombing of Serbia in 1999 were moments that are unavoidable when speaking of the 大象传媒 Serbian Service".

But I look at him and recall the words of the Dagestani poet Rasul Gamzatov: "Ask never melting snow on my head what I lived through".

The modest words of Aleksej could be applied to any of the services.

I worked closely with the Portuguese for Africa service when I worked for the African Region in 2002.

As for the Albanians I would rather recall a football match in 1996.

Along with the European Cup, hosted by the UK at the time, we had a World Service tournament and on a misty pitch somewhere in Twickenham, the Albanians trashed us with something like 4:0.

I have never faced such a well organised and such a determined team and when I used to hear about their radio or television successes, I knew, where it had come from.

I have written already about the indispensable place of the Caribbean service in the literary history of Bush House.

Two Nobel Prize winners VS Naipaul and Derek Walcott either worked or co-operated with the Caribbean service as well as other acclaimed writers and poets.

What amazed me was their boundless creativity and innovation.

When the earthquake happened in Haiti, in the space of a week or so the Caribbean service had started to broadcast in Creole.

To me that demonstrated the agility of the World Service: being able to set up a broadcast operation quickly where information was critical in a disaster zone - a model that could be replicated as needed.

I think I should finish my tribute with a jingle, which was broadcasted over the last years by 大象传媒 Macedonian.

It says: "袘懈袘懈小懈, 胁懈 谐芯 薪芯褋懈 褋胁械褌芯褌 写芯屑邪", which means "大象传媒 brings the world to your home".

And though I'm immensely proud of my friends and colleagues in the services which are going to close, I understand that from now on for nearly 30 million people around the globe, their lives will be the same, but they will be without a world in their homes.