My Journey to Bonesha

Most of you are wondering what “Bonesha” means.
Bonesha is the name of the first radio station I worked for a number of years ago. Even now as I am writing, I can't help but laugh at the thought of me working in a radio station.

Four friends playing basketball together, skipping school on Saturdays to hang out in a café. That was us. We were dreaming of having our own radio station one day. What should be our first step? We thought. Let's create a newspaper! That was a brilliant idea, except that four publications later, there was no more newspaper. We had good time though.

Fifteen years later, yes fifteen, all the four of us are journalists. Two have published books, one is doing his PHD in journalism and one is writing blogs. Just kidding. (I will talk about my radio shows in a later blog).

Do we own our radio station? Not yet. But I think we made it though. One of us is a great journalist, he has traveled all over the world doing reports and he is the Vice-President of a great and well known organization defending journalists' rights.

How about me? You may ask.

Outside of being a journalist, my other passion has been basketball. I played for more than ten years in a league (even though most of the time was spent on the bench, but that's another story). In 1995, I started coaching basketball, and in 7 years, my team won over 15 cups (a tap on my shoulder, please).

What that has to do with radio? Everything. As I was on the verge of winning my first championship as a coach, I was invited at Bonesha to talk about the season. The journalist was a friend of mine. The show was great. At the end, the journalist, out of nowhere asked me: Would you be interested to come back next week to do the radio show with me?..... Are you kidding me? You bet I would.

The week after, I showed up at the station, did the show with him and I was in heaven. The third week, guess what? The guy didn't show up. I did the show alone. Nine months later, I was still doing the show, I even added a second one, which ended up being one of the biggest hits at Bonesha (that's my opinion and I will stick to it).

Then, out of the blue, the President of the radio station came to me and said: You've done a great job with us, I think I am ready to give you a contract. It took me nine months, working without getting paid, but I made it. I worked there for three years before getting a job at Choq FM (that's another blog by itself).

The moral of the story? If you want to work in a radio station, just play basketball.

Stay tuned for the next story.
Always a pleasure.

Patrick
The Journeyman.
pbizindavyi6@gmail.com