Fan letter from a Jawdess far away

I love this blog.

I have been depressed for a month since I realized I could not get away from my current assignment in Algiers and would miss camp, but I have almost felt like I'm among you all reading this today. If you could now just put up a few posts on weather, shopping bargains and gossip the experience will be almost complete.

I am in Algeria, away from the investigative center in Sarajevo, temporarily, helping out a sister program designed to bring better management to an Arabic newspaper in this North African capital. I was leery about the assignment here, in part because I didn't think I would have the gravitas as a woman expert to inspire any kind of change.

Indeed, it is maddening how women here are not mistreated so much as overlooked. Disregarded. We go into a restaurant and the waiters rush to get the order of Del, my project partner first, making sure he has drink and napkin in lap before turning to me. I ask a question and the newspaper editors -- men -- look at him when then answer. Whoa, it's so 70s and I really didn't need to relive that part of my youth.

But a funny thing has happened over the past few months. While I have been depressed contending anew with chauvinistic bosses, the veiled and complaint young women in the newsroom were watching. And what they saw was a new way of contending with chauvinistic bosses.

Actually Del noticed it first, how the women listened when I raised questions with bosses about procedures, suggested other ways to do things than their way. And then there was the time I went into a very small screaming fit that no one had been assigned to cover the opening night of the African Games in Algiers. That's hard to disregard.

These are women who already have advanced light years over their mothers -- who could never have gone to university and held jobs. We pushed it a little more, helping to install the first female section editor. She is so bright, so talented, she puts higher-ranking men to shame just by doing her work. The other women watched that too. One day the managing editor rewrote a headline on her page -- and not in a good way. What are you going to do about it, we asked her? Nothing, she told us, what could she do? Go talk to him, we suggested. That first time, she took Del in with her to open the ground-breaking conversation that he reconsider a decision. But the editor did reconsider and the next time it happened, she handled him alone.

Even the idea that Del, a man whom the bosses could not overlook, was working in cahoots with the women has shaken up things around here. We found that a young woman assigned to keeping the photo archives actually was the newsroom authority on the photo department. She knew every failing of the department and had ideas how to fix them. But this wasn't her job, she told us, she couldn't do what she wasn't told to do. Yeah, you can, we suggested. And today she is sitting in news meeting, working with photographers on better quality and dealing with editors as more of an equal.

Newswomen's lib isn't our company's mission in Algeria but it has become this highly satisfying rabble-rousing sideline, I must say. So, there you go. Many miles may separate us, but I'm still trying to live up to those JAWS goals of empowering, mentoring and supporting.

Have a great camp. See you next year. Rosemary Armao (That's me in the picture in Algerian garb, minus veil, with Nadir, our translator, near the bay in downtown Algiers.)