No light, no power, no car...

Interviewing Mohammed el Gharani  in Chad threw up some logistical challenges for Al Jazeera's film crew.

As Human Rights producer, I work closely with both Al Jazeera and Reprieve. So when our client Mohammed el Gharani was released to Chad earlier this month, I went along to help interview him about his experiences.  But in Chad even the simplest of tasks can turn into a mammoth undertaking, and things don’t always go according to plan.

Our bad luck began almost as soon as we assembled the crew. With the cameraman and correspondent prepared and the car loaded with kit, we were ready to drive Mohammed’s home to start filming. The fading light- while a welcome respite from the heat of day- meant we were working against the clock, and already running late.

We climbed into the four-wheel drive and the driver turned the key. It wouldn’t start. It didn’t even turn over. The engine was completely dead, and as the driver peered under the bonnet, the clock was ticking on our interview. By the time we had unloaded and reloaded the gear into an ancient taxi that we hailed from the dust-covered street, the sun was sinking low in the sky, taking with it the precious light.

As we arrived at Mohammed’s house, we were met with our next problem. Because it was now dark, we needed to light the interview manually which would require power. Electricity is patchy in Chad at the best of times and Mohammed’s part of town was off the grid - meaning we would need to produce our own power.

The cameraman thought he knew someone who had a generator and disappeared to investigate further, leaving us with little to do but wait with Mohammed and his family in the dark.

When the cameraman returned we set to work. But by the time we had finished it was almost 10pm, and the raw film still needed to be cut and edited into a news package. And when this was done, the BGAN, a device used to transmit TV pictures back to be broadcast, refused to work.

After hours of trying, it became clear that the pictures would have to delivered to the news desk the old fashioned way- by hand. That would mean a delay, as the broadcast would have to wait until the correspondent returned to Al Jazeera’s headquarters in Doha.

It was a stark lesson of the importance of technologies we use every day without thinking about them - transport, electricity and communications.

Still, our trip was a success and the interview was broadcast on al-Jazeera over the weekend. The logistical challenges of working in places like Chad can be frustrating. But they are a small price to pay to ensure that people like Mohammed el Gharani, who was abused in US custody from the age of 14, are able to tell their stories to a world that they thought had forgotten them.