IN THE SPOTLIGHT
HOW ASHLEY SHARED
AFRICA’S STORIES WITH
THE WORLD
Reporting on the devastating 2014 Ebola epidemic
in West Africa would test the most seasoned
journalist, but for Ashley Hamer (99-06) it was a
baptism of fire in an exhilarating freelance career.
Ashley had been learning the ropes at Channel
4 News when she grabbed her camera, bought a
one-way ticket and reported on the virus outbreak
which shocked the world.
She says: “I felt I was wasting my time in London when
the gravity of the Ebola outbreak in West Africa was
far greater than was being reported. It was early
2014 and fortunate timing for me, because I arrived
in Sierra Leone when there were almost no other
journalists around, and major news organisations
were starting to realise this was a catastrophe.
“I started with two assignments simultaneously – a
self-shot TV documentary and a photo/print story
for a website. I joined a small group of freelancers
and we winged it, rushing around in the bush on the
heels of the epidemic, absorbing the disaster it left as
it tore through communities. Those are among the
saddest scenes I have ever covered, and you do not
leave unaffected by what you have seen.”
Over the next four years, Ashley worked in East
and West Africa and Afghanistan, providing articles,
photography and radio and television interviews
for the likes of Al Jazeera, IRIN News and The
Independent, along with carrying out photographic
assignments for NGOs and building up an impressive
photographic portfolio. In 2016, she was part of a
team of four freelancers shortlisted for an Amnesty
International media award for a multimedia story
from Sudan’s Blue Nile state.
It was a world away from leafy Pocklington, where
Ashley arrived as a boarder at Orchard House in
8
1999 after growing up in Mali, West Africa. Two
years later her mother and younger brothers
Sam (01-08) and Ed (02-09) arrived, and Ashley
switched to being a day pupil. She received an art
scholarship and spent as much time as she could
in the Art and Design Centre, under the wings of
teachers Pete Edwards and Clare Swann. She also
loved her French lessons, taught by Patrick Dare.
She says: “Art and French were by far my best
subjects and these teachers knew that and pushed
me to work harder. I thought I knew better than
they did! We butted heads a little, but I’m grateful
for their encouragement now.”
Ashley was always determined hers was not going
to be a conventional career. “I grew up with parents
who have always been very interested in politics,
culture, history, geography, travel and people, so
I was fortunate to be born into the international
system and with an awareness of the world and its
wonder. I think this fuelled an innate curiosity and
eventually an urge to witness world events and visit
far-flung places,” she says.
“I became fascinated with journalists’ accounts
from the frontlines of conflict and political and
social upheavals throughout history. I wanted to
do what these wild foreign correspondents did, to
experience for myself the turbulence of our times
and communicate what I saw. There was no other
profession I could imagine that would enable me to
do this with such a valid purpose.”
She took Spanish and French at Bristol University,
to help her talk to people across the continents.
“Languages are the most useful subjects a person