Growing up in rural Sedze in Nyanga District of Zimbabwe, Ariela’s big dream was to serve an established bank as a bank teller. Limited financial support in her educational journey saw her dream slowly fade away, but she doesn’t regret her new career path. Ariela is hitting the airwaves on radio and has even bigger dreams.
In the next five years l could be analysing football at sky sports. l am working hard for my brand visibility and popularity nationwide now. I would like to grow myself as a brand as a philanthropist, ploughing back to my home area and running a television show that speaks about life in remote areas. I would want to be a station manager at Nyangani FM, and ooh yes l want to go back there in a new role.
Ariela’s journey in radio started on 18 April 2022 with Nyangani FM, one of the 14 community stations operating in Zimbabwe and supported by UNESCO Regional Office for Southern Africa. She served as one of the first pioneer volunteer presenters at the station, attracting a good listenership for herself and the radio station which broadcasts to over 173,000 listeners primarily in Manicaland and Mashonaland East provinces.
Two years after a historical period with Nyangani FM, Ariela is now a presenter with Diamond FM, one of the country’s top radio stations based in Mutare. A rising star in the making, she is happy with the move from a community to a commercial radio station.
Community radio stations are operated, owned, and influenced by the communities they serve. They are generally nonprofit and provide a mechanism for enabling individuals, groups, and communities to tell their own stories, to share experiences and, in a media-rich world, to become creators and contributors of media. In contract, commercial radio, also known as private or independent radio, refers to radio broadcasting that uses advertising for monetization.
As a community radio volunteer we were not paid but had to devote our time and skills to ensuring community members hear from us through the station. It was not easy financially but it’s an obligation we had to meet because we love our communities are part of society.
A sad moment in her career as a community radio volunteer was when she suffered depression and had no shoulder to lean on. With no income to support her with food, rentals and school fees for her five-year-old child, Ariela went through a hard spell.
As a community radio presenter, I fully depended on my family but there came a point when they couldn’t support me anymore and l didn’t have hairdressing clients, something I do when I am not in the studio to get income. The resulted in my failure to pay house rentals, and my child failed to go to school. I resorted to meal per day. l remember this year in May playing Jah Prayzah’s Zibundu song and l locked myself in studio and cried before wiping my tears to continue presenting my show.
As the old English adage goes ‘it's darkest before dawn’, Ariela’s problems were soon to be over with a phone call from Diamond FM, her new employer. Just two months after going through one of her worst and dejecting episodes in her career, hope was restored after sailing through an interview to be a presenter with Diamond FM.
When I received the call for an interview, l was broke and had to borrow money to cover my transport expenses. Signing a contract with Diamond FM came not only as a surprise, but a prayer answered. l bade farewell to Nyangani FM with mixed feelings. Spending two years with a great family was just memorable but now I have started a new journey in Mutare.
I cherish her accent, teachings and presentation style.
To Ariela, the future of community radio lies in the hands of communities.
It's a community thing, the community is responsible for the sustainability of their community radio, they have to participate in sustaining it through voluntary. It's a good initiative, l am a product of a community radio, here l am, nobody knows tomorrow but let's put our hands together in supporting our community radios for them to be sustainable.
