The Hot Zone You Haven't Seen

Kevin Sites shares the stories behind the stories, halfway through a year of covering conflict.

From Africa to

In this, the first of a special two-part video report, Kevin recounts the difficulties, dangers and defining moments he's experienced so far in the Hot Zone.

You can watch the video or read the transcript below. 

In part two, later this week, Kevin will discuss some of the lighter moments of his journey. 

KEVIN SITES: We're six months into the Hot Zone right now. And, we've learned a lot of things. We've made some technical mistakes. We've had some successes we never thought we'd have.

The thing that we're seeing over and over again is despite all of the tragedy, despite all the conflict that we see in the world, there's also a thread that runs through all the stories we cover. And that's the indomitable human spirit; that people can survive — not just survive, that they can thrive — amidst some of the worst horrors that you can imagine.

When we decided to do Africa first, we thought we had better jump in with both feet.

Somalia: Land of the gun

Somalia was probably the most dangerous place that I've been to so far. I couldn't travel anywhere with less than eight bodyguards. I had people with AK-47s and RPK machine guns. And anywhere that I went, anyplace that I set foot outside the compound, I had to have these men with me. So it made it very difficult in some ways to interact with people, to actually get them to talk to me while you have eight bodyguards protecting you.

I had a particular incident where we went to the location of "Blackhawk Down," where there was a moment where people had gathered around me. I had 200 people completely surrounding me, all beginning to touch me in kind of aggressive ways. I've seen people get aggressive before but it doesn't necessarily turn violent.

But I looked at my fixer's face. And I saw the expression on his face. He had fear — not for himself, for me.

Working alone: tough, but worth it
I work by myself for a couple reasons. Number one, you have more mobility. Normally when you go into a place and you have a crew and you have a boom mic and a big camera, people tend to change. They're not as comfortable on camera.

Working alone

So, I like to mitigate that situation with just having me and the person there. And, I hold my camera just about chest level. I talk to them. I maintain eye contact. That's very important while I'm doing these interviews because I want them to feel comfortable. I don't want the dynamics of the interview to change.

When I was out in the field I was reporting from 8 in the morning to 7 or 8 at night. By the time you get back, you are very tired from just reporting. And then you have to write your story. You're doing about a 1,000 word-dispatch every night. You've got to input your pictures into the computer and the video. I would actually do a rough cut of the video I had.

So I'm working in three different mediums. And I have to transmit this all through the satellite modem. So, the first month that I was in Africa I thought, "This is crazy."

We started to develop a rhythm. We started to see that maybe, let's focus on the print story first. Let's make sure that we have the notes, and that that story is well told. Then we'll add the photographs and then we're going to add the video. Once we figured out that rhythm, I think things became a bit smoother.

Afghanistan
The thing that has always struck me about Afghanistan are the people there.

I was able to find a story there about a young girl, who had been married at the age of 4. Not a marriage in the traditional sense in that this is going to be a consummated marriage. But a marriage where she was promised to a man that was 30 years old.

She was four. She, by the age of six, became responsible for the entire household. She had to take care of not only her husband. She had to take care of his parents, but also their 12 children.

Gulsoma: Child bride

When she couldn't live up to all those expectations, she was beaten viciously. She was beaten by almost every member of the family except one boy that was her age.

This girl, when I met her, was so incredibly loving and so wonderful and outgoing. She immediately grabbed my hand in both of her hands and held onto it and looked at me.

I go, I can't believe, I said this to my fixer, "I can't believe this was the girl that was tortured so badly. This is the one that was beaten and abused." He said, "Yes, this is her."

We started talking to her and we just really learned a little bit more about her spirit and what she had inside her.

It was so moving, what she endured. It was one of those stories that I knew that when we were interviewing her that it was going to resonate way beyond any story that we had ever done. People were going to read about this and respond to this girl.

Sure enough, as soon as we posted it, people started writing in. There were hundreds of responses initially. I think by the third day from when the story had appeared almost 7,500 people had responded alone.

Ghosts of Fallujah
It was almost exactly a year from the battle of Fallujah to the point when I went back to Fallujah again. I walked those streets one night on patrol with another group of Marines.

Fallujah at night

This time the streets were deserted. The town was very quiet. There were no sounds of machine guns, no sounds of tanks. There were no sounds of grenades.

What there was was the barking of dogs. And in some ways when I was walking down that street, I thought, what are those dogs barking at? Are they barking at the ghosts of Fallujah? So many people died in that city. It was such a bloody fight.

Witnessing Death
The gore of death doesn't bother me the same way that it did the first time I saw it.

I was in a morgue in Gaza after two members of the Al Aqsa Martyr's Brigade had been killed by Israeli sniper. They were preparing to shoot rockets into

And I remember thinking at that moment I don't feel anything. I don't feel any pity for them. I don't feel any sadness. You play with guns, this is what happens to you regardless of what side of the political fence that you are on.

I remember coming back and being very angry. Somehow that seeps out in different ways. The anger or the sadness or the emotion is still there but it's buried somewhere in you. And it finds its way out. It finds an outlet.

For me, in a lot of ways I'm able to express that through the writing and the photography and through sharing these incidents with other people, meaning that I don't have to bear the burden all by myself.

An Afghan boy

Putting a human face on global conflict 
That's what we hope we achieve with this particular project. Those kind of stories, those kind of human faces that we bring to you. Connecting you to the places that you never might have traveled in your life. Maybe you'll never go but letting you know there are people like you on the other side of the world that are going through experiences that are so different from your experience, but at the same time very connected.

Because we're all human beings and we all have those common threads in our lives. And, if we can present that in a way that you understand, which you begin to take away lessons from their lives and apply them to your own, then we've succeeded.

And that's all we want to do. In this first six months, I think we've been able to do that. There are a lot of stories out there. There is a lot more we have to cover before this is all over.

-transcribed by Hot Zone associate producer Erin Green 

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