2025.12.06 – One Day, Many Screens: A Small Global Reading Experiment

Key Takeaways

What this article is about
This article presents a simple reading experiment. The aim is to read the same story, on the same day, in as many countries as possible, especially in countries that rarely appear in world news.

How the experiment works
Readers share four short facts about their day and their country. Then they send the article to someone in another country so that more people read it at almost the same time.

Why it matters
The story follows ordinary days in places such as Niger (Africa), Laos (Asia), Bolivia (South America), Tanzania (Africa), Moldova (Europe), Nepal (Asia), Zambia (Africa), Honduras (North America), Georgia (Asia), Cambodia (Asia), Uganda (Africa), Paraguay (South America), Mongolia (Asia), Rwanda (Africa), Kyrgyzstan (Asia), and Malawi (Africa). It shows that no country is just a grey dot on a map.

Story & Details

Morning in many places

In Niamey in Niger (Africa), the day starts while it is still dark. Heat arrives early. Many families think first about water, not about phones. Some people in the city walk with a plastic container to a public tap. Others in villages go to a well. Work, school, and the market all come later. Breakfast is often strong tea and bread. The real luxury is a quiet moment to sit and drink it.

In Vientiane in Laos (Asia), a worker wakes up to the soft sound of motorbikes far away and the smell of rice cooking. There may be a job in a small office, a hotel, or a street food stall. Before leaving home, this person checks messages from family in the countryside and watches a short video. Then comes a daily choice: ride a personal motorbike or climb into a small three-wheeled taxi.

In El Alto or La Paz in Bolivia (South America), cold air waits outside the door in the early hours. A student puts on several layers of clothes and checks a school bag. To reach a university or a job, there may be one, two, or three different minibuses to take. Breakfast can be a hot sweet corn drink and a small pastry from a street stand. The driver of the first bus has already worked for an hour and is thinking about money for fuel, food, and maybe a little saving.

In Dar es Salaam in Tanzania (Africa), the sun soon becomes very strong. Many people travel by shared minibus. These busy vehicles stop again and again to pick up and drop off passengers. A person from the outer districts walks to the roadside and waits in the heat. Inside the bus, some people listen to music on their phones. Others look out of the window. The ocean is close, but daily life often leaves no time to enjoy it.

Midday work and small worries

In a village in Moldova (Europe), midday can arrive after many hours of physical work. People feed animals, water gardens, or travel to a nearby town for small jobs. At home, someone prepares soup and a soft maize dish. At the table, the talk often turns to relatives living and working in countries like Italy, Germany, or Russia who send money home. Young people think about a hard question: stay in the village or leave as well.

In the hills of Nepal (Asia), a child walks along a rough dirt path to reach school. During the rainy season there is mud. In colder months there is wind and fog. The classroom may be simple, but it is full of voices, laughter, and dreams. In Kathmandu, the capital, an office worker or shop assistant eats a fast lunch and then returns to a small desk in a travel agency or a service company. The gap between mountain villages and the busy city is large, even inside one country.

In Lusaka in Zambia (Africa), offices, banks, shops, government buildings, and non-governmental organisations are active. At lunchtime, many people eat a plate of thick maize porridge with vegetables and sometimes a little meat. In nearby markets, sellers argue about prices, joke with one another, and feel stress when customers are few. Radios often play football commentary. The sport feels like a second language that almost everyone understands.

In Tegucigalpa or San Pedro Sula in Honduras (North America), the sun is strong in the middle of the day. Buses move slowly through traffic. Passengers look out of the windows and think about safety, rent, food prices, and the next bills. Someone eats a warm tortilla with beans and cheese at a small stall. Someone else writes quick messages to a relative who now lives in the United States or Spain and sends back photos and voice notes.

Afternoon traffic and quiet dreams

In Tbilisi in Georgia (Asia), old stone buildings stand next to new glass offices. A person leaves a shared workspace with a laptop. Another closes a small family shop. On the metro and buses, many eyes look at phone screens. People watch short comedy clips, check news headlines, or look for work abroad. The city holds both history and new change, and many minds are split between staying and leaving.

In Cambodia (Asia), large clothing factories stand near busy roads. When a shift ends, long lines of workers leave the gates. Many are tired after long hours of standing. They climb onto motorbikes, into small taxis, or head for food stalls by the roadside. In Siem Reap in Cambodia (Asia), which hosts visitors to famous nearby temples, a driver or guide greets tourists from many different countries. Sometimes there is a private question: do those visitors know where Cambodia is on their own map at home?

In Kampala in Uganda (Africa), the afternoon almost always brings traffic jams. Cars, minibuses, and many motorcycle taxis move close together. These bikes carry people and goods quickly through gaps in the traffic. A person going home thinks about rent, school fees, and the cost of fuel. Yet loud music plays from small speakers. Passengers and drivers share jokes and brief stories as they wait at junctions. Even when money is tight, hope stays in these small moments.

In Asunción in Paraguay (South America), many people end the workday together. Some sit outside with family or friends and share a cold herbal drink. Conversation moves from football to politics, from job plans to trips that may never happen but still feel good to imagine. In a poor district, someone checks if there is enough cash for gas, electricity, and food until the end of the month. In a middle-income area, another person wonders if there will be enough money for university fees or a second-hand car. The numbers are not the same, but the main worry is similar: is this constant effort building a better life, or only allowing basic survival?

Night lights and phone screens

In Ulaanbaatar in Mongolia (Asia), winter nights can be cold even indoors. Outside the city, on wide open land, a family in a round tent home cares for animals and looks up at a sky full of stars. In the city, many people turn on a laptop or phone after work. Some log in to online classes. Others work for international clients. Many simply watch videos to relax and forget the stress of the day.

In Kigali in Rwanda (Africa), more and more street lights appear every year. Motorbikes move between houses, shops, and evening schools. People study at night to improve their chances in the job market. Some run small businesses from home. The country still carries deep pain from its past, but cities are being built with a strong wish for safety, order, and future growth.

In Bishkek in Kyrgyzstan (Asia), distant mountains form a dark line against the night sky. Many phones light up with photos and voice messages from relatives working abroad, often in Russia. Young people sit at shared tables and learn programming, foreign languages, or design skills. They hope these skills will open doors to remote jobs that pay better than many local positions.

In a village in Malawi (Africa), night falls fast when there is little street lighting. Power cuts are common in some regions, so many homes rely on candles, torches, or simple solar lamps. People gather and tell stories. They share jokes, remember those who have died, and talk quietly about the next harvest, school fees, and family plans. Later in the evening, someone unlocks a shared phone, and several people lean over the small glowing screen.

Four short lines that link countries

The reading experiment asks each person to answer four short questions in a comment:

Country and city.
Time of day: morning, afternoon, or night.
What happened today.
One thing that is liked about the country.

The language does not need to be perfect. Simple sentences are fine. The goal is to fill the page with real days from many different places. Even one answer from a country that rarely appears in world news turns a cold number in a statistics chart into a human voice.

After writing this short message, the reader sends the article to someone in another country. It can be a relative who moved far away, a friend met on a trip, someone met online, or a teammate from an online game. The text can be short: “This is an article about daily life in countries that do not often appear in the news. It is a small experiment. Please read it now and tell me where you are.”

If that person opens the link, there are already two countries linked by the same words. If both pass the article to others, the number of connected places slowly grows.

Media that also looks at quiet corners

Some media projects already focus on stories from places that large newsrooms often ignore. One example is Global Voices, a community of writers, translators, and activists who publish local stories from many countries and languages and share them with a world audience. Another example is a British documentary series called “Unreported World”, which follows reporters as they cover people and problems in underreported places, including markets for second-hand clothes in Ghana (Africa).

Short films and articles like these help readers and viewers see how daily life in less-covered countries connects to wider global systems. A person buying a cheap new shirt in a rich country can, for example, learn how some of these garments later become waste that arrives in big bales at markets and landfills in West Africa.

A very small Dutch lesson

The Dutch language has a phrase, “samen lezen”. It means “reading together”. This phrase fits the experiment very well. People in Niger (Africa), Laos (Asia), Bolivia (South America), Tanzania (Africa), Moldova (Europe), Nepal (Asia), Zambia (Africa), Honduras (North America), Georgia (Asia), Cambodia (Asia), Uganda (Africa), Paraguay (South America), Mongolia (Asia), Rwanda (Africa), Kyrgyzstan (Asia), Malawi (Africa), and in many other countries may never meet. Yet when they look at the same story on their screens, they are, for a short time, reading together.

Conclusions

A small idea with human weight

The idea behind this reading experiment is very small. It does not promise to fix global injustice. It does not try to replace professional reporting. Instead, it gives value to simple moments: a bus ride to work, a shared drink at sunset, a walk to school, a late-night study session, a short rest after a long factory shift.

No country is only a dot

When readers in different countries see that other people are reading the same article on the same day, they may feel a little less alone. Countries that rarely appear in international headlines become more than distant names. They become places where real people wake up early, work hard, worry, laugh, love, and dream. On any map, no dot is truly grey when it holds so many colours of daily life.

Selected References

[1] “Dala dala.” Wikipedia. A description of shared minibuses used for public transport in Tanzania. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dala_dala

[2] “Boda boda.” Wikipedia. An article on bicycle and motorcycle taxis widely used in East Africa. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boda_boda

[3] “Practices and traditional knowledge of Terere in the culture of Poha Ñana, Guarani ancestral drink in Paraguay.” UNESCO Intangible Cultural Heritage listing. https://ich.unesco.org/en/RL/practices-and-traditional-knowledge-of-terere-in-the-culture-of-poha-nana-guarani-ancestral-drink-in-paraguay-01603

[4] “About Global Voices.” Global Voices. An overview of a community project that shares underreported stories from around the world. https://globalvoices.org/about/

[5] “Fast fashion: The dumping ground for unwanted clothes.” BBC News video on YouTube, about clothing waste in Ghana. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MHnDqelUh-4

Appendix

Boda boda
Boda boda is the common name for bicycle and motorcycle taxis in several countries in East Africa. These vehicles weave through city traffic and provide fast, flexible, and low-cost transport for people and goods.

Dala dala
Dala dala is a term for shared minibuses in Tanzania. These buses follow set routes in and between cities and towns, and they are one of the main ways many people travel to work, school, and markets.

Fast fashion
Fast fashion is a way of making and selling clothes very quickly and cheaply to follow changing trends. This system often leads to high levels of waste, and large amounts of used clothing can end up in landfills or open dumps in countries such as Ghana (Africa).

Samen lezen
Samen lezen is a Dutch phrase that means “reading together”. It describes the shared act of several people, often in different places, looking at the same text at almost the same time.

Terere
Terere is a cold herbal drink made with yerba mate and other plants. It is closely linked to social life in Paraguay (South America) and is recognised by UNESCO as part of the world’s intangible cultural heritage.

Underreported story
An underreported story is an event or situation that affects people’s lives but receives little attention in mainstream national or international news. Special media projects work to bring such stories to wider audiences.