SUN SINGED my skin for a story once while chasing octopus hunters in Zanzibar. They used to hunt them too early, before the octopus had time to reproduce, so the hunters agreed to close the seas for a season, and then signal when the hunters could come from them again.
I traveled from the city to the coast for the grand sea opening after a three-month closure, watched as the octopus hunters and their wives gathered with their spears and stones to make their captures.
I’d pitched a story about a regional obsession with octopus as a culinary delight for a food-focused magazine, never mind I had to learn that octopus are some of the most conscious creatures on the planet and the ethics of eating them are, to say the least, complicated.
I did the story—took photos of the octopus hunters slamming the octopus against soapy stones to tenderize them—marveling at their skill but also at the horror of the act. The women weighed the catches using antique scales they'd hauled from their villages, by foot or by riding on the backs of packed pick-up trucks.
This would be a haul that would feed their families for months—so many buyers in town—they’d have no problem selling everything they caught.
I suffered a terrible sun burn that day, walking barefoot in the sand along the coast with a heavy bag full of my recording equipment, notebook, and water bottle, talking to people. I headed back to town with a recorder full of interviews in Swahili I’d have to transcribe and then translate with a bit of a fake-it-till-I-make-it kind of attitude, considering the tight deadline.
I’d listen for the main story in this situation—men and their relationship with the sea—women and their relationship to their men—humans and their relationship with sea creatures, bright, heavenly, vulnerable.
I traveled from the city to the coast for the grand sea opening after a three-month closure, watched as the octopus hunters and their wives gathered with their spears and stones to make their captures.
I’d pitched a story about a regional obsession with octopus as a culinary delight for a food-focused magazine, never mind I had to learn that octopus are some of the most conscious creatures on the planet and the ethics of eating them are, to say the least, complicated.
I did the story—took photos of the octopus hunters slamming the octopus against soapy stones to tenderize them—marveling at their skill but also at the horror of the act. The women weighed the catches using antique scales they'd hauled from their villages, by foot or by riding on the backs of packed pick-up trucks.
This would be a haul that would feed their families for months—so many buyers in town—they’d have no problem selling everything they caught.
I suffered a terrible sun burn that day, walking barefoot in the sand along the coast with a heavy bag full of my recording equipment, notebook, and water bottle, talking to people. I headed back to town with a recorder full of interviews in Swahili I’d have to transcribe and then translate with a bit of a fake-it-till-I-make-it kind of attitude, considering the tight deadline.
I’d listen for the main story in this situation—men and their relationship with the sea—women and their relationship to their men—humans and their relationship with sea creatures, bright, heavenly, vulnerable.
I could try to list now some of the fun facts I learned about octopus but I’d be lying if I had them memorized. The weird thing about a reported story is that you’re also casting a wide net and putting a story together based on your catch of the day. I could spend months or years reporting the same story, and I still might not be able to deliver a TED talk about it.
I hated having to repeat the same silly story about octopus myths for the food magazine—how they’re considered an aphrodisiac—how farmers and fishermen on all the islands all love to joke about nutmeg and octopus flesh with the same ridiculous smirk on their faces—as some sort of smarmy but safe flirtation with their captive audiences.
But I did it anyway, mentioning it early on in the piece so I could move on quickly to questions of sustainability.
I wrote about octopus hunting the same way I pursued every other story in my long, strange trip as a reporter and writer—with deep love and huge curiosity about lives so different from mine.
I often came to a story with a perceived sense of injustice and hoped to unwind it, pull back several layers, reveal something new or different to consider about the situation—but I never knew where the story was going before I told it.
The story emerged from the anguish of having to find one out of the voices and observations gathered in its name.
To even arrive at the exact location where the octopus hunters gathered in that coastal stretch of Mtende, I had to know who to talk to and who to trust to get me there, as a foreigner with enough Swahili to send a wink or two to the men in charge.
But that still didn’t guarantee I’d get the story behind the story or ever hear the actual laments lingering in the hearts and minds of local fishermen who’d agreed to the temporary octopus hunting ban in the first place. Some were quite angry about it—I’d heard about turf wars out on the sea—but it would be hard for anyone to discuss this with me that festive afternoon, with so many gathered under large cliff rocks to take their pick from the pile of dead octopus in blue buckets.
Why am I thinking about this now?
Because I haven’t reported a story in a while and I’m missing what it feels like to throw myself into an unfamiliar scene and start talking to strangers. Doing this work doesn’t come easy for everyone but I’ve always loved it, even if it makes me somewhat nauseous and nervous at first—I love moving through the beginning of a story and seeking out those whose eyes tell me they’re ready and willing to talk.
Those are the best stories for me—the kind where I’m not needing to convince anyone that it’s safe to talk—the kind where the conversation doesn’t expose anyone’s secrets.
I’ve also reported stories on subjects where sources have questioned whether talking to me was the right decision. Stories about refugee rights and domestic strife. And while I can say I did everything I could to manage those stories with as much care as I could muster, I often wonder too whether I would talk if I was on the other side.
When you’re the one asking the questions, it’s easy to lose sight of what’s at stake when you’re asking them. I’ve been thinking a lot about how I might pitch a few stories and what I’d do differently this time, knowing what I know now about how stories get bent into a specific shape, depending on who’s funding them.
“Listen for the story, not to the story,” professor Sara Lawrence-Lightfoot taught in an ethnography class at Harvard. She loved to talk about the difference between the two and I didn’t quite get the nuance until I was stranded in the middle of a story, wondering how to tell it without becoming a part of it, too.
It would take me much longer to realize that every story we tell is about ourselves—through the looking glass of an octopus perhaps, but still.
I hated having to repeat the same silly story about octopus myths for the food magazine—how they’re considered an aphrodisiac—how farmers and fishermen on all the islands all love to joke about nutmeg and octopus flesh with the same ridiculous smirk on their faces—as some sort of smarmy but safe flirtation with their captive audiences.
But I did it anyway, mentioning it early on in the piece so I could move on quickly to questions of sustainability.
I wrote about octopus hunting the same way I pursued every other story in my long, strange trip as a reporter and writer—with deep love and huge curiosity about lives so different from mine.
I often came to a story with a perceived sense of injustice and hoped to unwind it, pull back several layers, reveal something new or different to consider about the situation—but I never knew where the story was going before I told it.
The story emerged from the anguish of having to find one out of the voices and observations gathered in its name.
To even arrive at the exact location where the octopus hunters gathered in that coastal stretch of Mtende, I had to know who to talk to and who to trust to get me there, as a foreigner with enough Swahili to send a wink or two to the men in charge.
But that still didn’t guarantee I’d get the story behind the story or ever hear the actual laments lingering in the hearts and minds of local fishermen who’d agreed to the temporary octopus hunting ban in the first place. Some were quite angry about it—I’d heard about turf wars out on the sea—but it would be hard for anyone to discuss this with me that festive afternoon, with so many gathered under large cliff rocks to take their pick from the pile of dead octopus in blue buckets.
Why am I thinking about this now?
Because I haven’t reported a story in a while and I’m missing what it feels like to throw myself into an unfamiliar scene and start talking to strangers. Doing this work doesn’t come easy for everyone but I’ve always loved it, even if it makes me somewhat nauseous and nervous at first—I love moving through the beginning of a story and seeking out those whose eyes tell me they’re ready and willing to talk.
Those are the best stories for me—the kind where I’m not needing to convince anyone that it’s safe to talk—the kind where the conversation doesn’t expose anyone’s secrets.
I’ve also reported stories on subjects where sources have questioned whether talking to me was the right decision. Stories about refugee rights and domestic strife. And while I can say I did everything I could to manage those stories with as much care as I could muster, I often wonder too whether I would talk if I was on the other side.
When you’re the one asking the questions, it’s easy to lose sight of what’s at stake when you’re asking them. I’ve been thinking a lot about how I might pitch a few stories and what I’d do differently this time, knowing what I know now about how stories get bent into a specific shape, depending on who’s funding them.
“Listen for the story, not to the story,” professor Sara Lawrence-Lightfoot taught in an ethnography class at Harvard. She loved to talk about the difference between the two and I didn’t quite get the nuance until I was stranded in the middle of a story, wondering how to tell it without becoming a part of it, too.
It would take me much longer to realize that every story we tell is about ourselves—through the looking glass of an octopus perhaps, but still.
