In a corner of a modest room at the post office of Musaid, an often overlooked village in eastern Libya straddling the border with Egypt, three young men take turns presenting programmes for the village radio station.

The FM radio station’s team started broadcasting last Ramadan after getting the green light from the local council. It manages to broadcast both live and pre-recorded shows, despite sparse equipment, amounting to two computers,  two transmitters and a server.

In a corner of a modest room at the post office of Musaid, an often overlooked village in eastern Libya straddling the border with Egypt, three young men take turns presenting programmes for the village radio station.

The FM radio station’s team started broadcasting last Ramadan after getting the green light from the local council. It manages to broadcast both live and pre-recorded shows, despite sparse equipment, amounting to two computers,  two transmitters and a server.

Audience comments are inserted into shows by holding a mobile phone onto the transmitter. But the listeners’ voices and daily shows travel far: The station reaches 80 kilometers from Qara town, 35 kilometers east of Tobruk, to beyond the Libyan-Egyptian borders to the west.

“We formed a radio station that express ourselves and address the village people, and to promote their culture and spread national spirit,” Nasrallah Hussein, one of the trio of employees, said.

“A local radio is urgently needed to communicate with people through news, information, guidance and raising awareness,” said his colleague Ghanem Ajwideh.

The station works from a room originally designed to transmit and re-broadcast Libyan official TV. Broadcasting these days, however, is a risky business with open electrical wires passing throughout the makeshift studio.

In a corner dedicated for radio, a shabby wooden table is surrounded by three plastic chairs. This is the hub for the station’s presenting, producing and broadcasting. Typically the broadcaster will sound engineer his own show.

Everyday the station broadcasts for four hours, from 5-9 p.m. In keeping with local tradition, it kicks off with the station jingle before playing the national anthem and a Koran recitation.

Most broadcasts are live, incorporating discussions, interviews with local officials or phone-ins with listeners.

At the end of every session, the young men archive materials on the computer.

On February 17, 2012, the radio went live, broadcasting from a ceremony held in the town to mark the second anniversary of the Libyan revolution. Technical glitches overshadowed its debut. The show went off air after 20 minutes because there was no land line and the available server could not connect via mobile phone.

Despite its limitations, Hussein said the station was seeking to recruit broadcasters and programmers from the town, who they would train for the job. In addition they needed news sources like news wires to be able to best serve their locality, he said.

“Our demands are simple; a small headquarters, equipments that help perform the work and concerted efforts of Musaid people,” Ayad Absis, a broadcaster at the station, said.

Musaid’s ten thousand residents are proud of their town and have grown fond of their home-grown station, which, in the words of one citizen, offer formats “no satellite channel can provide.”

“The radio opening in the town is an initiative worthy of support because it closely focuses on the concerns and worries of citizens,” resident Hussein Moumen said.

Director of Musaid Hospital, Farhat Abdurrazek, said the radio deserved funding “to achieve its desired goals and hopes of the town people.”

Eng. Idris Saad, a member of Musaid Local Council, underlined the council’s determination to support Musaid radio. “We just need a clear mechanism to support the young men and make their dream come true,” he said.  “We look forward to receiving a written plan outlining the radio’s vision and objectives and an action plan to prove the young men’s seriousness and ability to run the station so that we translate it into a real agenda.” he added.

And only by cornering political support will the hard-pressed radio station of an overlooked border town be able to stay on air.