Philip P Mshelbwala

“Make sure you don’t sleep,” one trafficker belted out. “If you sleep, you fall off. And if you fall off, you die!” Part 1 of my latest investigation for @fijnigeria. UNDERCOVER: Europe Through the Sahara Desert and the Mediterranean Sea (I) fij.ng/article/undercover-eu…

Five days into my next undercover investigation, set to be released by @fijnigeria later this week, I sent the picture in Frame 1 to my three-man backroom team. They all laughed at me, one of them remarking I looked “like a fisherman”. The pictures in frames 2 and 3 are from my 44th day on the field. Nobody was in ebullient mood this time. They all screamed instead. None of them could say it, but I knew I could pass for a mad man on the streets. Meanwhile, Frame 4 is who I was before I embarked on the project. It is the first time ever that I’ve given the public a glimpse into the making of an undercover investigation. I do it this time to contextualise public understanding of the physical, material and mental cost of investigative reporting. Behind every daring work of investigation you have read is several weeks, sometimes months, of self-sacrifice by the journalist. Of higher importance, I do it to remind younger journalists that investigative journalism isn’t the white-collar stardom propeller many seem to think it is; more often than not, it is about getting your hands dirty while still believing this is hands down the best job in the world! It feels good to be fully back on social media after nearly five months out…