Keeping the Peace

The Final Trip, part one

This is for me to remember and for the record. These things are important not to forget:

11.21.04

We touch down at Roberts air field at around 9 p.m. and are promptly handed a piece of paper that allows us free passage because the curfew from the last two weeks of riots is still in place. Blamed on Muslim-Christian differences, the riots followed the end of disarmament (the UN, Opande, ultimately sent over 100,000 through a process that was originally budgeted for only 40,000) had more to do with various factions that are still fighting over the distribution of power after the peace accords than any religious issues. From the States, the riots looked pretty grim, with 16 left dead and a rumor that a UN APC had rolled over and killed at least one civilian. That rumor seems baseless, and the fact that at the height of the riots most people were armed with nothing more dangerous than machetes is a sort of testament to the effectiveness of the disarmament this time. Though, when pressed, neither Opande nor Klein could satisfyingly explain what exactly constitutes a successful disarmament, and how, with a rather large discrepancy between the number of actual weapons collected and the number of persons "disarmed," they can call the process a sucess. It seems that the best answers are anecdotal.

Like the fact that things are Moving in Monrovia. When we flew into Roberts last fall, the airport was desolate and we didn't even technically enter the country because nobody bothered, then. Today, the airport is thick with street hawkers and even has an outrageously overpriced Duty Free shop and a bar. The streets of Monrovia are packed with people flirting, buying, selling, pushing, pulling, angling. The flip side of that equation is that the city is crowded, polluted, still lacks basics like power and clean water, and is now stuffed with a bunch of young former fighters looking for justification for their decision to stop fighting. How these lives are going to begin, exactly, was part of my project, and part of the surprise.

I have to say again that I have effectively received a grant from the UN, this time primarily in the form of Mohamed and Fred, Opande's right and left hand men. They picked us up from the airport and either drove or arranged for us to be driven everywhere thereafter. Which was vital, given the state of the taxis in the country and the way they only drive certain routes and don't deviate from those. And our hostess, Jane, who has my favorite UN job to date, that of procuring property for UN use, lives in a UN compound called Riverview, an island of air-conditioned luxury way out of any taxi lines. This time, as last time and the time before, I was able to tell Opande what I wanted to do and he made it happen. Or he got his guys to help me make it happen. Even better. More on that to come.

11.22.04

This was a check-in day. I thought I'd take the precaution of getting a real press pass, as I didn't manage to get that done in the hustle of the last trip. Afterwards, Rob and I reacquainted ourselves with the PD150 at Waterside market, one of the most active places to people watch. We were amazed by the vast amount of currency in motion. Wads and wads of cash changed hands over flip-flops, tennis shoes, ladies underwear, deodorant, phone cards, you name it. We headed down to the river, where I wanted to shoot the bridge connecting Bushrod Island to downtown, a famous battle site of the war and its end. Today, the bridge is full of traffic and the pedestrians who push hand carts piled with plastic jerry cans full of water. We were shooting over mounds of garbage, however, and it only took a few minutes for the early drinking crew to start asking us for money for the right to shoot their garbage. We didn't spend too much time in that place.

For the record: damn, it's hot in Liberia.

11.23.04

Back on the helicopters. We were following Opande to the Northern corner that borders Sierra Leone and Guinea. Guinea is interesting these days because it is the seat of the now-disarmed LURD's financial and political power, and is rumored to be the place that has re-absorbed some of the guns that weren't collected in the disarmement process. The North, as a rebel stronghold with poor roads, was a tough nut for the UN to crack, and Opande has to make periodic checks up there to make sure that everybody is still peaceful.

We stopped first in Foya, where Opande did a symbollic disarmament-symbollic because the last guns were actually collected over a week ago-for the benefit of the BBC crew who were also on board. Let me state here that, much as I generally revere the BBC, they can be a royal pain in the ass to shoot with and cause much the same sort of pain for freelance journalists as CNN. They want the shot and the story and will do and say most anything to get them. What that meant for me in Sierra Leone was that I had to deal with a pissed-off public information chief who was bent because he had arranged a private helicopter gunship flight for a BBC crew who had demanded it and then decided that they didn't have time for it after all. Today, it meant trying to stay out of BBC shots so they'd stay out of ours and then dealing with a pissed-off Opande (who, as you will recall, waits for no one for any reason) after he'd allowed them to stay longer in Kolahun to interview a bunch of pissed-off ex-combatants who hadn't been paid when the UN promised them they would be--The BBC showed up over an hour late for our flight.

I was impressed that the General had allowed the BBC to stay in the town where he had planned to give a happy aren't-we-all-glad-we've-been-rewarded-with-money-for-our-guns speech and had instead had to give a you-will-get-your-money-soon-because-I'm-going-to-bust-the-balls-of-the-miserable-wretches-whose-fault-this-is speech to a hot and angry looking mass of young men and women who faced us from the other side of a roll of barbed wire. Opande talked to a couple of ex-combatants and handed out some soccer balls, bibles and korans. The message being, I guess, we're all on the same team here, and here is a little something to occupy your time while you're waiting for your money. While the BBC stayed behind to interview disgruntled former fighters we flew to a fabulous feast in the jungle courtesy of the Pakistanis who somehow manage to bring their white-gloved service and spices all the way from home. One of my favorite versions of surreal experiences has got to be stepping out of a helicopter in the sweat and dirt of a jungle airfield in literally the middle of nowhere and being served apple juice in a glass goblet by a Pakistani man.

I used the time we waited for our BBC crew to ask Opande some questions I had wanted to ask before about the dangers and difficulties of working with dicey characters like Aisha Conneh--and good thing I did, too, because I wound up with a shorter final interview than I would have liked. It went to reinforce my now fully solidified notion that, in situations like these, where you are getting things as they happen and you are dealing with important people with busy schedules, you've got to take what you can get as it comes.

The food was lovely.

Big Guns for Small People

Yesterday I learned that one of the reasons why the AK-47 is the weapon of choice for West African rebels is light enough for a child to carry. Oh. Duh. I had been checking out a clean version of the same guns that were being handed over by the fighters in Liberia, thinking how very archaic the mechanisms were, like the Ford of the gun world, it seemed. I was asking my British soldier/teacher why they haven't improved on the system since then. Though when I fired the gun, and even I hit the target, I began to think that maybe it wasn't such a bad system.

It was Colin's fault that I was on a firing range with two British soliders, part of IMATT, a British-led international group of soliders here for a ten-year training program of the RSLAF, the local army. Colin had a yen to fire guns, see, and I just happened to be around. So I got my first training in marksmanship-we'd done sort of gun identification and avoidance training with Centurion, but this was from the other side. And now, having fired the AK, as well as a handgun, I can see why boys find these things plain fun. Though that must surely be part of the danger, especially for the child soldiers. Because looking down the barrel of theAK, I just wanted to hit the target. It was easy for me to forget that the gun in my hands had been taken from an RUF rebel, most likely used to kill in some not-so-pleasant ways. I had thought that all of the guns taken from the soliders were destroyed, but apparently the late-comers were saved by the Brits for their target practice. The Brits are replacing the RSLAF AK's with a gun of British origin, one that doesn't fire automatically. Our hosts allowed Colin and I to fire the weapons automatically, and I can now see that what I've been told about the accuracy of automatic weapons, or at least this flavor of weapon, is true--you would be very unlucky to be hit by the spray of an automatic weapon in the hands of a drugged fighter.

In any case, it was an education. For those who want to know, I was slightly more accurate with the hand gun, though I did hit the target with both. I also learned to load, unload, lock and unlock the safety catch, which will hopefully never come in handy.

I did a final interview with Colin, a sort of wrapping up state-of-the-union, which was good but I was having sound issues that turned out to be the fault of a cable--a new technical glitch for me, one I happily managed to avoid in Liberia. We had a handful of kids as audience, but these, unlike those in Kailahun (I interviewed Richard and Seb near an old school, because it was a beautiful setting, but then wound up with 20-odd children right behind me, giggling, making comments and raising a general ruckus, just as Seb and Richard were getting to the heart of the matter. At one point I turned around and told the kids that if they would kindly shut the FUCK up I would give each a pen. The deal was only on if they didn't say another word. They couldn't help themselves, and when the leader tried to claim pens at the end of the interview, I reminded him of the terms of our deal and asked whether he had met them. -I talked, he said. That's right, said I. No pen for you.), these were an excellent, quiet audience. Colin promised Victor a copy book and pens, and he'll be back with those.

We went to Willie's house, to meet his wife and get more of how he lives. He lives in a tiny concrete box, with a large family, but his wife made the best cassava leaf chicken I've tasted here. I was the only eater, as Colin wanted the rest of the family to get the food. I shared a plate with Willie and his wife. It's kind of funny, kind of awkward, to be squeezed into a dark room with two British coppers and this police man and his silent wife, with the usual throng of kids watching from the wings as we eat, but so it goes. I wanted to honor Willie. Who then broke my heart by giving me a police beret I had offered to buy and a couple bolts of lovely fabric. I don't know what they cost, but Willie earns maybe $50-60 a month. I didn't want to insult him by giving him money, but I know that the price of a bag of rice, the staple here, has risen tremendously lately, so Colin is going to buy Willie a bag of rice for me. What else can you do?

Now, in the company of my IMATT soliders in Freetown, I'm off to spend the day at the country lodge--I joke not. It's apparently some new swank ex-pat frequented place in the hills around here. Tomorrow, I'll be checking in with Brigadier Simon Porter about a graceful exit strategy from this place.

Stay tuned-

leaving Liberia

Things have been moving fast. I can't remember where I left you but I was surely in the process of waiting for Opande. Waiting to talk, waiting to go, waiting for word of any action, just waiting. In the end, I think I've got something special. Of course not in the way I had originally envisioned, whereby the Force Commander would be staring down the soon-to-be ex-combatants, who would be waving their guns in his face. Well, just a little bit of gun-waving, enough to be interesting.

That didn't happen. Having had more time to prepare properly the UN managed to pull off a controlled disarmament kick-off. Unlike December's fiasco, which Opande describes as "anarchy," (the inside scoop on that debacle is that Opande told the powers-that-be in New York that he wasn't ready to disarm, but Klein, the head of the mission and its political leader, insisted that they go ahead with some sort of disarmament in December, because there was meant to be a big donor's conference in December and a successful start to disarmament was supposed to make the big givers happy.) the checks and balances and personnel on the ground and rows and rows of barbed wire lanes that the combatants navigated to reach the various disarmament stations seemed to keep everyone in line. There were the inevitable ambushes of combatants by other combatants as they were on their way to the disarmament sites, as well as glitches in things like food transportation, but overall I witnessed a functional taking of arms. All of the other questions that follow, the R's (reintegration, rehabilitation) of the DDRR process, remain to be answered.

This time around, unlike the first time, I got a lot more of Opande the man, but none of the drama of the day Rob and I followed him with the Special Forces men and were greeted by a group of wild gun-toting youth. How many of those scenes do you need though, really? My most arduous day involved running (I exaggerate not) around nine holes of golf. Opande advised me to quit after three. The scene was marvelously colonial, on the slopes of the Firestone tire complex, home to the only golf course in Liberia. That was our Saturday, which began with a 6 a.m. pickup to go to a disarmament site-in-the-making at what was once the Voice of America camp. There, Opande was briefed and briefed a slew of politicos on the readiness of the VOA site for disarmament (good, but shoddy buildings that won't weather the coming rainy season well). Following that we had golf and then my first long interview, on the beach at night.

Interviewing Opande was one of my biggest challenges. Not because he didn't want to talk to me (by the end of a couple days, as he was moving his entourage, he would look around and ask, "Where is Deeter?") but because he has less than zero patience, so I knew I had to be fast, but fast to find an empty place on a beach that was far enough away from people and music to be quiet yet close enough to some form of light to be feasible. I chose the beach because interviewing indoors was for me not an option. Too ugly, wrong sort of scene. I had no time during the day to scout these sites, so I would have to take Opande's word on the beach and then make the staff scramble to move lights, tables, chairs, etc. while keeping the FC entertained enough to allow me to do a proper sound check and try not to worry too much about the fact that the key and fill light on his face were backwards. In the end I think I got more than I had a right to expect under the circumstances, but you always want more. I wanted more time, primarily.

Opande opened the second disarmament site, Buchanan, on Tuesday. That was a press mob-fest. Not pretty but got good footage. I don't like that whole struggle for pole position. There was a moment of tension when the FC was called over by a group of angry men, former MODEL fighters, who claimed that their weapons had been taken by their commanders. The rules of disarmament are currently that you cannot go through the process (and, more importantly, collect your $75, training, medical attention and some food) without a weapon or a significant amount (I think it's 150 rounds) of ammunition. It will be interesting to see how the UN handles these guys-Opande said that it was up to MODEL leader Boi Boi, who also posesses my favorite rebel name, to figure out a solution. We'll see. Opande was very accommodating of me throughout, and got the helicopter to drop me off directly at Roberts Field airport so that I wouldn't miss my flight back to Freetown after our Buchanan visit. When I left, they were on target to get their 250/day men, women, and boys disarmed.

Seb (you'll remember, our British major, currently working in the country under the IMATT umbrella, i.e. he's armed again working to help train the RSLAF national soldiers) picked me up at the UN helipad in Freetown and we drove directly to Bo, a mining town on our way to Kailahun. Our traveling companion was Billy the Scotsman, who started in with how the hired help was lazy and went on from there. Needless to say, the conversation was hot and heavy for several hours. Good to be reminded that not everyone comes from the land of the politically correct.

Seb and I carried on to Kailahun, where he checked in with a few old colleagues and the Sierra Leoneans who worked for him as houseboys and security guards. The two best things that came out of that visit were a discussion between Seb and Richard, his former boss, and an interview I did with Momoh the houseboy while he ironed the UN military observers' uniforms. Momoh is the son of a village chief, a handsome man in his thirties who spent the ten years of war in neighboring Guinea. He cleans, shops, and generally does the bidding of the MILOBS as he tries to get enough money to continue his arrested studies. He earns 100,000 leones a month, which is less than U.S. $50. He works seven days a week, with three days off a month. Momoh gave me the most articulate reasons I have yet heard for Sierra Leoneans needing to help themselves as well as the best arguement for giving him a raise. When I told him that I had heard various UN discussions about the pay given their hired help, and the general consensus seemed to be that they couldn't pay them more than teachers, police and government workers, who all earn a similar wage to Momoh's, he said that the UN should pay its workers more because their jobs were temporary, unlike those of the teachers and the police, and, having no contracts, they had no fallback positions, health or any other form of insurance. He added that as a well-funded international body the UN could afford to pay more. I asked him if he knew what the UN military observers he serves earn and he said that he did not. I didn't tell him that they make $115 a day in addition to their salaries.

I spent the night on a sweat-soaked bit of foam that reached from my head to my knees because I had been frantically tracking the progress of my flight out of here and wound up locked out of the house that had offered to put me up for the night. So I snuck back into the MILOBS's "sitting room" and grabbed the foam. Seb dropped me off yesterday at the poda-poda station and I paid $2 extra for a seat in a station wagon rather than take a mini-van. At least I had a seat in a station wagon, though it's been a while since I was one of four across that bench. I didn't know whether I should be concerned or relieved that our driver took a moment of prayer before we began our journey. Next to me was a young woman with a plastic bag on her lap. Experiened traveler, I thought to myself, "Oh shit, there's the puker." It took me a while to realize that it was worse than that. Every few minutes she would rip off a deep chest cough and spit something into the bag. I kept my head turned to the window. It was either dust or tuberculosis, I figured.

We made it to Makeni in a mere three hours, and Colin gave me no end of grief about my appearance. I was covered head to tow in fine red dust. It was so bad that when I got out of the shower and looked at myself in the mirror I went back in. I followed Colin to a "cocktail party" held in the Makeni town hall (think high school gym) celebrating the first official hand-over of security by the UN to the people of Sierra Leone. The Vice President, a quiet man with a budha-like face, was even present, though the lights cut out during his speech. Those pesky generators.

Now, in the supreme glory of the African system, a fine example of what the Brits call "muppetry," ("muppetry," the practice of random institutional stupidities is distinguished from "buffonery," the stupidity of the people themselves) I am waiting to hear whether I shall be lucky enough to get on my flight back to the UK--a flight, mind you, that will leave a full day later than it should have. Not only is SNA not going to compensate me for missed flights and hotel expenses, but my name is apparently not on the sacred passenger list. So the fun begins. I'll try to switch my other tickets as my men in Freetown take my ticket to the office to recieve a chicken scratch mark that will, if I am very lucky, guarantee me a seat on the plane. So it goes.

More as I can.

Taking Guns

So, after all of yesterday's kick-off noise and excitement the dust settled and I realized that the one major gap in my recording of the first day of disarmament was the guns. I had made the decision to stick with Opande, who was advised to stay away from Gbarnga (pronounced "Banga") disarmament site until the afternoon, when the guns had already been collected. I was given shit for this decision by an African colleague, who apparently was at the site filming away from the beginning. But he didn't get to witness the Force Commander blowing up a bunch of surface-to-air and other missiles, a total of 150 flavors of munitions, apparently, that were found in Charles Taylor's mansion after his departure. All I know is that when the pile didn't blow the first time I had a moment of thinking, "hmmm...I wonder what happens when this shit backfires?" Like in a bad Saturday Night Live skit. Anyway, the ammo was dutifully blown up, and we were able to witness the blast cabled to us in the safety of our bunker--at least 100 meters (I'm not so good with distances) from the blast. It was large and satisfying destruction, and a good symbol of the blowing up of rebel arms that happens at the end of each day.

Have I mentioned what it's like to try to keep up with Opande? It's following a human dervish. Which is why when we visited the disarmament site yesterday it was all I could do to keep up with the General, forget about the rest of the b-roll--though let me say here and now that the site of these scarecrow kids getting searched again and again and standing in lines with their mats and their pail of toiletries really got me. For all of those kids you are skeptical about, who you think will just take the first disarmament payment and go you do see in the faces of others the fatigue that comes when you simply can't take any more. The site of Opande going up to those kids, shaking hands and telling them, "War is over," is impressive, and makes you believe. Makes you want to believe, anyway. It's good stuff. But catching it, catching Opande, his expressions, the rebels, the cutaways, the wides...it's enough to keep me doubting my skills all of the time. And then there is the missing b-roll...sorry friends, I have to geek out for a moment. I've found that a hair bobble can hold on the little rubber jobby that keeps mic attached to the camera. At least the batteries have held out on Opande's mic, thank god, because I sure as hell can't stop him once he's on a roll.

Today, I knew that Opande was office-bound and I asked him whether I could go back to Gbarnga and get some rebels disarmed. Opande generously allowed me to head with a convoy back overland--I was worried because I knew that the disarmament would be over by afternoon, and we got a late start, but my driver, "Tofee" (I'll get his spelling right), one of Opande's right-hand men (a man like Opande needs more than one right-hand man), understood my urgency and made it happen. I got some amazing footage. The thing is that some of the kids really do carry guns that are just about as long as they are tall. And then I watched and filmed as one of them, who I would have sworn was no more than 10 years old, told the UN workers that he was born in '85. He stuck to this story when he was teased and called a liar. Repeatedly. Kids like that one make me understand the whole aid worker impulse. Because I found myself wishing I had candy, a pen, a ball, money, something to give him. Maudlin, I know, but true. He was so thin. They all wear baggy, baggy jeans, which help mask how very thin they are. This guy had to have weighed less than 100 pounds.

There were 255 rebels disarmed yesterday-five more than were meant to be, versus a rumored 205 today. Apparently a couple of the LURD rebel leaders weren't playing ball today, and needed a little talking-to. The UN has so much in making it work this time. The politics also involve a love story between the Iron Lady (Aisha, the woman who loves to throw cash to her followers) and her husband. More on that to come as I can. Let's just say that the lady is not pleased.

Anyway, I'm back and off to diner at my new friend Jane's house. Jane, as in Jane Jacobs, friend of Colin's, as it turns out, and my most wonderful hostess. She lives in an oasis in the middle of chaos. Really. Those of you who felt me sweat in Makeni should be heartened that I've landed in the most incredible luxury that makes doing my job, or finishing my job, a real pleasure. Jane has AC, hot showers, a cell phone she insists on lending me and food she keeps cooking for me. Let's hear it for Jane. If I wasn't pretty sure we'll have the chance to return the favor in California one day I would feel a bit guilty, taking such complete advantage of her hospitality as I have. In the meantime I am simply grateful.

There are so many things I don't want to forget. Today's is the sign at the side of the road declaring: The Jaben Lewis Flow Family Estate. Which apparently consisted of two tiny broken brick buildings on the edge of the jungle. My other favorite was the sign for the Cryogenic Institute of Sierra Leone, found on the road to Freetown. The entire concept is wonderful.

A Quickie Before I Go

Here I sit outside the Force Commander's office (that's how everyone refers to Opande out here, though for my purposes it's ususally just faster to use Opande), waiting for a sign that things are going to begin. Aside from shooting back pains, sweat that removes my sunscreen and the fact that my pants don't stay up as well as they should (those low angle shots are a bitch), the most difficult part of my job here is accepting the fact that I can control exactly nothing.

As in nada. Not where we go, who we see, who will be speaking, acting, doing. I'm trying to get cutaways when Aisha is throwing dollars into the air--the good and the bad news is that there is no telling how the action will happen and from which direction it will come.

Last night's meeting was worth doing, and Conneh was very expansive in his enthusiasm for the disarmament process. Then he started to get into the infighting between he and his wife Aisha, and Opande tried to convince him that he had the woman under control. Which remains to be seen, really. She wants to oust a govt. man that her husband wants to keep in, and was going to make that part of the disarmament deal. All inside baseball stuff, none of which belongs to the film. But it does affect the drama. I was invited to take my leave of the boys when they wanted to get down to boy business. I was lucky to have been allowed to film anything, but as a journalist I wanted to be there for it all. I shut up and walked out.

This morning we were meant to go immediately to the disarmament site--oh, we're off out. More as I can.

This is What I Came For

This will be quick, but just to update friends, family and fellow wanderers.

It's about 8 my time and I'm about to go film General Opande in a meeting with Sekoh Conneh, LURD chairman, or maybe not--as we spent the day with wife Aisha Conneh, who is currently treated as the LURD chairman in many ways. This is important because both parties have to bless the disarmament process, still scheduled to kick off early tomorrow morning. I think that it could be exciting in more ways than one, especially as the first site is only designed to process 250 LURD fighters at a time, and the UN was swamped with far too many would-be participants in December.

But I'll fill you in on more politics later. Yesterday was a whirlwind tour helicopter tour of the country with Opande and crew--doing everything from breaking the record for the fastest bridge-opening ribbon-cutting ceremony ever to visiting a disarmament site that's a bit behind schedule but not, the Force Commander tells me, as behind as it was several days ago. I think that the reason I like Opande so much thus far is that he is extremely hands-on. He is the king of the-man-who-makes-it happen. Though the way it works is that he has a lovely aide who scribbles as fast as his doubtless cramping hands can write to take down the holy commands--to build new bridges, get hospitals missing supplies, dig wells, look into missing transport, persons, food...the list is never-ending, and if I didn't know the type of cash the UN has to back up the General's writ I would be inclined to believe that this was all part of the show. But I'm tending to think that the intent is real, though I think that the implementation of these grand plans can sometimes get lost in translation.

I have to go or miss the meeting, but today was even better. The picture I have of today is of Queen Aisha, called the Iron Lady, for the magic she is meant to wield as much as for her strength, methinks. A bit of research on her and her influence and power in this region is good stuff--black African magic. Anyway, she descended upon her subjects from our UN helicopter in the middle of one village and you should have seen the chanting, dances, great shows of tears and affection. Which nearly caused a riot when she distributed about $700 in cash. She then couldn't resist throwing a wad of cash into the air as she boarded our helicopter. It was actually a decent get-away diversion as the crowd went nuts.

But I'm safe and sound and getting stuff I hope that you will want to watch. Over and over again.

back for round two

So, I'm back in Monrovia, after only a day and a half in Sierra Leone. Colin, who the faithful will remember as my British copper from before, drove down to pick me up in Freetown Saturday morning. We did, of course, a new seafood extravaganza on a terrace overlooking the beach before heading back to Makeni.

Have I mentioned the heat? It was hot last time. This is a new heat. I'm too tired to think up an appropriate metaphor but the only time I can remember being hotter was in New Delhi in June. And then I wasn't working. Colin's had to leave his air-conditioned palace and the current accomodation is a cute little hotbox house w/neither AC or fans. Your body leaves a trough in the mattress--not so nice when you wake up in the sweaty trough. The sort of sleep you want to hit fast and hard.

Inevitably, I woke up on Easter Sunday to a vintage Jessie where-am-I-who-am-I-and-what-am-I-doing-here sort of angst that reminded me that I've come to do get some work done. That wasn't helped by word from Kemal (you'll remember him, too, my UN connector) that I wouldn't be able to get the flight out to Monrovia until the day disarmament was to begin, which wouldn't have helped the cause at all, given that that's what I've come to do, disarmament. After a few frantic phone calls Colin managed to rustle up a non-UN flight, and now here I sit with Jane Jacobs, my Monrovian UN connection.

Between then and now Colin and I managed to get a bit done--the best bit being meeting Willie, Colin's police counterpart, also from before. If Colin's shrunk some since I saw him last Willie appears much as I remembered him, full of big hand and facial gestures that can't help but make you laugh. Colin and I woke up early to catch Willie's morning ritual, which included a fastidious boot shine. We got Willie taking a broken motorcylce to be fixed and Willie taking a man to task for a load of jerry cans and other sundry items hanging off the "canopy" of his car. It wasn't the crap that bothered Willie as much as the fact that the man had failed to produce his driving license "upon demand." That, Willie told the man and I, was the cardinal sin. If he couldn't produce someone in Makeni who would effectively post bail for him the man was going to spend a bit of time in jail, waiting for the court to decide his fate. This while the driver of a vehicle involved in a fatal car accident had been free for four months while the police and the coroner and several other interested parties complied the correct report that would take the matter to court.

I bought Willie and myself a lunch of ground nut stew and some form of meat he swore was "cow." I made the mistake of taking a hearty bite of the stew and wounding up nearly taking out a tooth on the stone or bone hidden in the rice. After that I sucked up the rice and spit out the bits. I didn't notice Willie spitting out any bits. When I couldn't chew the meat I didn't take a second bite. I'll catch up with Willie's family upon my return. I love Willie, and I love the way he interacts with Colin.

I showed my demo reel to Colin, whose reaction was interesting. He got what I saw in Willie, for example, but thought that Opande rang false, and he didn't think that he helicopter scene worked at all. Interesting, especially since when we went back to the helicopter school, where I had envisioned meeting a lovely, articulate mother and son, who could explain to me and to my audience exactly what the destroyed school meant to them. You know, the hardship, the lessons missed, etc. I wound up with two extremely shy women who spoke softly in Krio and would hardly look at me. Not exactly thrilling material. It was humbling to be reminded of how very little I can control in this game if I want to be a journalist, or at least fairly "journalistic," or, at the very least, at least not a blatant faker. I interviewed the headmaster again, as well as another young teacher, a man who was quite eloquent. It was too bad that I hadn't found him on the first go-around, because he explained well both the school's hardship and the good that the UN has done in general for Sierra Leone. Ah, well.

Too bad as well is the fact that Father Brioni, an Italian priest who's the Father for Kabonka village for some 20-odd years off and on, can't be in this film. He's funny, feisty, and has a lot to say about the UN--particularly about the "lack of compassion" with which this whole helicopter debacle has been treated. Father Brioni has just had himself built a lovely new house in the middle of a nearby village. It is remarkable for its lack of security--i.e. none of the gates/guards/barbed wire that characterize the rest of the expat living quarters in this country. It's an oasis of calm and quiet, with Italian tiles and a Moroccan-style garden carved out in the center. When I complimented him on the comfort of his home, he laughed and told me that he justified it to himself by saying that everyone in Sierra Leone deserved to live like him.

Got Colin cooking dinner by candlelight for himself. He cooks pasta most nights-pasta bought in Freetown, imported from afar. Have to remember to ask him about that on camera, though I've given him lots of grief in person for not frequenting the local market, where you can find all sorts of amazing fruits and vegetables--Chinese eggplant was the most exotic sighting in my last visit.

Now I must go, as I think I'm stretching my hostess's good will. I don't know when I will write again, so here's to disarmament, to finding Opande, to his willingness to remember that it was he who invited me here.

Things in Monrovia are alive in a way that they weren't when we first came. Let's hope that they stay that way.

published work

http://slate.msn.com/id/2093103/

For those of you who wander into this site wondering where the journalism is, here's the first taste, a photo essay up today on www.slate.com.

This is fair game for comments. We didn't actually shoot square photos, btw, a slate format.

That's the first. The second ran in the San Francisco Chronicle on New Year's Day, which must be auspicious.
For that, go to: www.sfgate.com, and do a search on their site for "Jessie Deeter."

Enjoy.

P.S. For those of you who are still confused on this matter, these are ARTICLES, meant to be published for the world at large--so you may feel free to critique their journalistic integrity. Whereas, as stated before, the blog is a blog is a blog, meant as my personal journey. Views are meant to express whatever the hell I was feeling at the time.

Over and Out

Young man, how are you?
Who promoted you to one-star General? Who gave you one-star General? Charles Taylor or who?
-Yes Sir.
Really? Because you fought well?
-Yes Sir.
Well, where did you fight, to be given one-star General? You know, you?re not even WORTH being corporal?because I was with you here two weeks ago-right? And I told you that I don?t want misbehavior of these roads?and then two or three days ago you misbehaved again, you know, your people misbehaved again.
Today you lost your rank (whips beret off Small General?s head), you understand, you lost your rank. Right?
-Yes Sir (nods).
You are no longer a General and you are going to hand in your weapons NOW (said while bouncing with a hand up to (formerly) Small General?s face). You understand?
-Yes Sir.
Because I came here and I spent one and a half hours with you, I talked to the whole lot of you. And I told you don?t harass people on this road. You didn?t listen. I am not here to fool around with you. I am not here to fool around with REBELS. This is a PUBLIC road, you understand?! And people who are passing here are CIVILIANS-and even if they are, you know, MODEL, you must treat them like human beings. Treat them in the way you would treat other people, you understand?
(formerly) Small General stands there, still nodding as General Opande walks away in disgust.

That's the whole of Small General's demotion. I wanted to have it down in full. I'm currently screening our Liberia footage from the comfort and security of my well-heated Pew office in Washington, DC. Very bizarre it is, too. It's been great to see everyone back from there adventures-though half of us are already scheming on how to get back to our respective countries. I needed another week, really. And I need to know how the story ends with these guys. You will need to know, too, I think.

I've returned to the harsh reality of Iraq and Afganistan ruling the American air waves, so I intend to settle in with my footage and try to write a print story while I work up a clip reel. That's the plan for the next three weeks here. That and sleep. Which is sounding really good right about now.

One final thing I never did manage to capture on film: large trucks that stop dead in the middle of the road to allow ducks to cross. That's right, ducks. It's considered bad luck to kill them in Sierra Leone, so they're plentiful and fearless. Maybe that's why I want to go back. Ducks.

Photos of Sierra Leone

Yes, fans, they're here. Finally (thank you Josh!). Color photos courtesy of Rob, black and whites are mine, we think :-). We'll right the upside down ones soon. Just thought we'd test ya. Click on the pictures and they'll get larger.

A Lasting Mark

I itch. That?s what I?m taking from Sierra Leone, one giant itch. Interestingly, I?ve apparently been bitten by several different sorts of insects, each with its own distinct shape size and color of bite. I have bruise marks down my neck, a series of odd decidedly ringworm-like circular numbers on my stomach, some boring little lumps further down my legs and the mark of the Champion Fly on my face.

The Champion Fly merits a word here because, though it may be nearly Thanksgiving in the Western World it?s Champion Fly season in Eastern Sierra Leone. And what a bummer. These little bastards look nothing like flies, by the way. They are little orange and black worm-like creatures that I think can still fly but seem to be most effective sticking to the ceiling and dropping down onto their prey. Apparently it?s when you squish them that their nasty body fluids leave their mark, creating a nasty blister/burn on your skin within hours. If you happen to touch any other part of your body with the hand that squashed them, the juice will burn that part, too. For some odd reason most of the Champion Fly casualties I witnessed were to the face, swollen eyes and the like. Seb, you will remember, our British military man in Kailahun, was suffering Champion after-effects during my visit, though he gamely allowed me to keep filming.

Champion Flies or no, Kailahun is my favorite place in Sierra Leone, seconded by Makeni.

Kenema, a small diamond mining hub, I didn?t like at all. It was sleazy, though more ?modern? than the other towns I?d seen, it was modern in a sold-out and cheap sort of way. It?s one of those places where people hope that luck will happen to them and if it doesn?t they aggressively ask for money. They were shameless. Colin had set me up with a seasoned Brit ?copper,? Mick Quimby, who, bless him, ran me around his town in the day I?d allotted it in our desperate search for diamond mining and actual diamonds. We hit pay dirt with the mines, though poor Mick suffered repeated requests for his wallet, watch, my camera, and just plain cash for the duration of my shoots. The other thing about diamond mining in Sierra Leone is that it remains a game regulated basically in name only, although in the Lome Peace Accords there was a clause specifically designed to set the government up to regulate and give money back to the people. Of course.

Diamond mining, at least the mining I saw in Kenema, is an extremely low-tech proposition. It begins around seven in the morning, when workers go to a sort of quarry, where they pound rocks into fine gravel, load it into burlap sacks (I?m guessing of about 100-150 pounds each, but that?s just a guess) which they then throw onto their heads and carry to the place where the ?mining,? or panning is done, a series of pools of brackish water that they stand in while meticulously rinse the gravel from the pits. It?s the gravel, not the water that contains the diamonds. Though we didn?t witness the find of a single one. I had been filming the breaking of rocks for about 15 minutes before I realized that although I had seen pick axes in the market the day before and assumed that?s what they were breaking the rock with, they were simply bashing the shit out of it with lead pipes. Not for the faint-hearted, my friends. Nor is the actual mining.

Miners work in teams of four or so, for a very small amount of money (the going rate for all nominal jobs in Sierra Leone is around $1-2/day), and they get to split a sort of finder?s fee if any of them finds a diamond. It?s a surreal sight, to come across a series of brown pit-pools in the middle of the jungle, with a bunch of guys in tattered clothes swishing their pans while other guys feed their piles of gravel?overseeing the workers are some ?boss men? who sit under umbrellas on tree branch benches while the rest do the hard work. I didn?t find out what it takes to become a boss man. I just wanted to get a feel for what fueled the conflict. When they finished, I watched the workers strip down and bathe in the same rusty pools they?d been rinsing gravel in.

Mick aside, I was happy enough to leave Kenema.

Back to Kailahun, my final destination. I did a lot of the things I hadn?t had time to do before: Seb and Ross getting haircuts from the Pakistani professional (who gave a single haircut-short!), shaving, on another patrol (yes, we got another flat, though not a dramatic flat), Seb shopping in the market, and Team Leader Richard.

Richard is a cool guy from Zambia (nod to Josh) and I wanted to talk to Richard for a much-needed African (UN military observer-I?ve interviewed Sierra Leonean civilians) perspective. I had been hearing the Western Europeans complain about the work ethics and motivation of their African counterparts and I wanted Richard?s take on that, among other things (I?d also heard that he was quite a good leader). Richard said that he had felt some tension when he took over as Team Leader from a Brit who?d apparently set quite a precedent. Although Richard didn?t call it discrimination, he said that a couple of men had tested him?one had even gone so far as to have written the daily report, meant to come from Richard, in extremely poor English, as if written by a dunce. Richard caught the guy out and told him that wasn?t kosher. After a while, said Richard, the team got the picture and the issue resolved itself. Richard tells me all of this with a smile, as we discuss leadership and the difficulties of leading so many different nationalities (he oversaw a Jordanian, Canadian, Brit, Tanzanian, Malian, Malaysian, Croatian, and Russian, among others, while I was there)-Richard?s strategy is to have a sort of sliding scale of tasks?assigning the most critical to those who take the most responsibility on down. Seb told me that his biggest frustration was the gap between his British military get-it-done-and-get-it-done-now-hop-to-it-ness and the way a lot of these guys are used to working. Richard just works with what he?s got. Which, as both pointed out, is probably more effective in Africa. Especially when you combine Africa with the UN?s mandate to mix so many nationalities together?

In order to be a military observer (MILOB), you must meet three criteria:
-speak English
-know how to drive
-be an officer in your country.

The Kailahun MILOB from Mali didn?t speak English and failed several driving tests so I witnessed his going-away dinner ?this after seven months of apparently service-less duty served in Kailahun. At least this guy was sent back. I?ve heard stories of people who heartily deserved to be sent back but weren?t because the countries they come from said that they would remove all nationals from a mission if that happened. Which would be a political debacle. Jacques Klein, leading the charge over in Liberia, told me that one of the clauses he built into his relationships with contributing countries was the ability to send back nonviable candidates.

Another complicating factor is money. Countries get from $600-$1000 for each soldier sent on a mission, which is why the Bangladeshis and Pakistanis comprise so many of the UN ground troops in these places. Fortunately, they seem by and large to be well-liked and respected by the people in Sierra Leone, unlike the Nigerians, who have a reputation for being trigger-happy and, more than other countries, having legions of prostitutes spring up around their battalions. The UN pays a lot better than I had thought it would. Money and mercenaries. Yep, another topic in this film, though I?m not sure how big it will be.

In Kailahun I interviewed ?General? Koker, a former government soldier-cum-UN-security-guard of the MILOBS housing compound still suffering psychological effects from the war. Koker claims to be a descendent of a grand line of Kokers in Sierra Leone, those who befriended the first whites in the country. He took Seb and I to a place called the ?slaughterhouse,? a dank building splattered with marks that the General claimed were blood stains. Seb thought that they could indeed be blood stains and said that he?d seen nothing else like it in the buildings he?d been in here. The marks, whatever they were, reached above my head. Seb said that would make sense if the RUF had been hacking at people rather than shooting them to death.

I also interviewed my only woman, a certain ?Madame? who rents the building to the 20 or so MILOBS I?d been staying with. She?s pretty certifiable and you can?t tell which of her war stories are true, but her strong desire for the UN to stay in Sierra Leone was believable. She said that without their help she would be a prostitute. Which is, I think, and exaggeration, as she currently runs what she claims is the only day care in Sierra Leone and has several properties to boot. She would like the UN to give her $50,000 to help her school, and, when I pointed out that might not be too likely, especially given that the UN?s mandate in Sierra Leone was technically pretty much limited to security, she said, ?OK, $30,000.?

(Parenthetically:
I had to work harder than I?d thought to catch that magic light of my first couple of days.
I found myself caught in an interview dilemma: though I tried to take interviews as people could give them to me, they would inevitably get better and better and more comfortable with me the longer I hung out with them. Thus Colin and Seb?s final interviews wound up being important, though stylistically I?m not sure how they?ll be worked in?i.e. it would have been ideal to do the one big long interview at once and get it all but the more we went along the more they would tell me stuff off camera that I would want to get on camera?and I?d try to get it on the go but it didn?t always work out that way.
And, correction: the kids are really yelling, ?Pakistani,? rather than ?Paki,? as we pass, I believe. And they do it more often than not because the Pakistanis connote gifts. Only the really sophisticated kids know that some of us are ?Bleetish.?)

Stories Untold:
I meant to do a radio story on rehabilitated chimpanzees?chimps who were supposedly kept by the RUF rebel forces and in need of being rehabilitated from their evil ways?which Would have been a story, but the chimps were actually formerly pets of upper class people with money, not rebel soldiers, and the rock throwing that I?d been told was a symptom of their distress was simply alpha male chimp behavior, and my radio equipment was all stolen from me, methinks during the ?Alfred incident,? anyway, so I was recording with my camera mic?it was a bit of a story-that-wasn?t. Though it was a good way for Rob and I to spend his final afternoon in Sierra Leone. The closest I got to a chimp needing rehabilitation was an alcoholic chimp. Not really my story.

Then there was the Special Court?which I still think is a fabulously important story, but I didn?t have the time to give it it?s due, as there are too many important aspects to it, from the local infighting between it and the Truth and Reconciliation Committee to the larger international issues of American will and Charles Taylor.

?ChrisMus?-a tolerant Muslim story I meant to do for Ramadan, because it?s true that the flavor of Islam in Sierra Leone is mild, and Sierra Leoneans open their important meetings with both Christian and Muslim prayers. The Muslims often drink, too, and I had thought of opening the story with the bars who were stocking up extra beer for the weekend before Ramadan, knowing the Muslims would be drinking heavily before their holy holiday began. But no, didn?t get that one either. Also because I had been told that one of the reasons that people were optimistic for Sierra Leone?s future peace was that the war was not religious, but it wasn?t quite the story I?d thought it would be.

Ditto the psychiatric story. I had heard, with shock and horror, that there had been no addressing of psychological wounds from the war, and I thought this was a good story. Especially given that there was only one psychologist in the country, and he had been forbidden from practicing his trade ?but then I met someone from an NGO who was trying to do just that, provide counseling, and that story was already what I thought it wasn?t. Though the truth is that there are huge psychological wounds that haven?t been healed but I ran out of time.

So, sayeth our British friends, at the end of the day I made the film rather than the print or radio stories my focus and can still name a dozen or so scenes I would like to get and who knows? But I think and hope that with the 70 hours of tape we shot in the country we have a story. The story goes on, however, and I want to know how it ends.

I?ve just got confidential information that we may see some big bad shit go down in Liberia Tomorrow, so the UN?s Chapter 7 mandate to shoot if necessary may be tested this week. Part of me would love to be there in Liberia as it all happens. The other part of me is watching in astonishment as new bug bites keep showing up on my body. Not pretty. Yet colorful.

Although there is so much more to say, note and observe I?ve got to go now. Will do more and hopefully get photos posted too as time goes by. I?ve tried to share all that I can but there is so much more.

Here?s to my brothers still in Africa: a drink and a hot shower and cool Cadbury chocolate bar in your honor.

Rock N MonRovia

All right, I'm settling into the absence of my boy and had a productive morning and can, therefore, legitimately check in for real.

But before I get to Monrovia I have to tell you about a little non-event that happened as I was passenger in a British owned and operated Defender (yes! for you afficianados-hunter green) this afternoon. Well, I'll start with my morning, which began with a little quiet shooting across the lagoon from my hotel at early morning fishermen, then I wound up stopping to shoot a man giving shave haircuts with a comb and a razor blade on the side of the street-which led to a series of impromptu interviews with four of the men who'd been watching because, they told me, they had something to say. And they did.

Three out of four were of the opinion that the UN should give them more money-as in them, personally, because they were out of work and hungry (they didn't look as if they were living lives of luxury, but I will say that they looked clean and fed). When asked what they thought of the notion that (a) the job of the UN was creating and maintaining security so that Sierra Leoneans could then create their own opportunities and (b) the UN and the international/NGO community has already and continues to pour millions and millions of dollars into Sierra Leone and would like to soon see some return on their investment and (c) the UN will be leaving, or at least mostly gone, by December 2004, they said that the money that was being given didn't make it to the little man (there's that "Corruption!" again). But they didn't seem to worried for the security of Sierra Leone when the UN was gone-they were more concerned about jobs and food. Which is ultimately good for the future of this country, I imagine.

The fourth man, a student at university (I would put him at around 30-33), wanted to thank the UN and the international community for their help and said that he wanted his Sierra Leonean brothers to start doing things for themselves. At first I thought he was putting me on, but he clearly disagreed with his three friends, who had clearly believed their respective messages, so I thought that was interesting. Of course, my new friends would like to see me again, so I had to tell them that it would be a busy week for me.

After this brief insight into the Sierra Leonean psyche and hair style (uniformly shaved for men, lovely braid patterns and odd reddish wigs for women-learned on earlier forays) I hit River Number Two with said British Defender owner. River Number Two, for those of you who aren't in the know, is considered "Paradise Beach" by all. It is also a big $$ earning locally-run cooperative that takes us whiteys (at least half of whom are Lebanese, by the way) for all we deserve. It's a lovely, garbage-free white sand beach complete with the requisite thatched roof huts. I had hit my British colleague up because I'd yet to see this icon of luxury and thought that I could justify a short trip if I took my camera to document the "new face of Sierra Leone." Within hours, we were back on the road, with the Defender's first flat tire.

A small crowd gathered as was of course going to happen, and a man in a white shirt stepped out, took charge, undid the nuts (or are they bolts?) in a jiffy and basically did a full half of the tire change-and then walked away. If you've never been to Africa you will say, "Yeah, and??" But if you have been to most places in Africa, or to many other places, you will understand that a flat tire can be the beginning of many bad things, the very least of which 10 "helpful" hands who then later ask you for money. This man just walked away before we had time to thank him. It was a simple gesture that will have me thinking for a while.

------

But what about LIBERIA?? You all want to know. I've rambled on so long now that I really must get back to logging footage, but I'll give you some tidbits:

Monday:
Land. Hit UN office around 4 p.m. Jacques Klein, the Big Cheese in charge of the UN mission in Liberia (UNMIL to you) happens to have a free moment at 5, so I wonder-woman in the bathroom while Rob runs around like a mad dog for several hours in a desperate attempt to procure us a room for less than $180/night. Rob succeeds, in the form of a convent we get for $25/night. Baaaaasic. No AC, fan, shared bathroom, but safe. I interview Klein, who is quite the character. Klein explained how this mission has a Chapter Seven mandate, which allows UN peacekeepers/makers to kill. Though they haven't had to yet, Klein says they will if they have to. Which remains to be seen. Klein is of the opinion that a few good men who can strike "surgically" will do the trick.

We collapse.

Tuesday:
We visit Internally Displaced Persons-IDPs (from the war) at a staduim far out of town. This is sad but not as sad as the IDPs we then visit in a former Masonic temple. The sleeping quarters we saw in the staduim were at least separated by walls, or at least some of them were. The temple was layers of wide rooms without walls, where people lived, ate, changed, slept, were sick and did what they had to do in full view of all. We saw many who were just curled up sleeping on mats. I had imagined that the place might stink, but Rob said that it didn't (though for those who want to know, many times during his trip Rob said I was very happy to have no sense of smell--I never heard him say, "Wow, it's too bad you can't smell This!"). They had outhouses outside and even a crude playground, but it was the inside that got to me.

We also shot as much Monrovia visuals as we could get, including some good UN checkpoints. UN personnel here are armed and wear helmets and body armour. Because although things are secure in Monrovia, you never know. The air is still tense and we watched a MODEL (splinter group of the LURD rebels who were fighting Charles Taylor) truck get pulled over at the checkpoint right in front of us. It's funny how a bunch of guys standing up in the back of a pickup can seem threatening.

I'd been harrassing people all day long in an effort to get out of Monrovia, preferably on patrol with a Bangladeshi or Nigerian batallion, and I had been given the number of the UNMIL Force Commander, Lt. General Opande, who had forgotten about me after the first time I called. I think on a whim, because he'd forgotten, he invited me to go out with him the next day. Score!

Wednesday:
It wasn't until we boarded the helicopter, half an hour late, that I believed that we were going to go on patrol with Opande. Our flight was full with random military characters from places like the Philippines and France, but my favorite were the two BAD ASS-looking (and that's what counts, no?) Canadian Special Force dudes. I've never seen so much gear attatched to human beings as these guys were sporting--guns, radio collars, canteens, pouches of shit that just looked cool, dangerous, and ripped forearms that let you know they knew how to use it all. My pacifist civilian self didn't want to be impressed, but I was. It's especially impressive how these guys dangle out of the open helicopter door as you're about to land, then jump out as it's hitting the ground, putting themselves first in the line of fire and defense.

Our first stop really had us wondering whether we would need a little defense. Though the Special Force guys later told us that the scene was relatively tame, imagine a group of gun-weilding teenaged boys running full-speed in your direction, holding their guns high above their heads, cheering wildly. Literally, wildly. There was much hooting and shouting and dancing as the General stepped out of the helicopter. They were saying, "We want peace," as we got closer. I have to say that it was a sight that made me wonder how fast the adreneline could change. Hence the bodyguards.

Opande carries a walking stick, like most (all?) generals, I suppose. A British-trained Kenyan, he has a certain flair and style that works well for the camera, as he is well aware. He proceeded to cruise into the crowd smacking his stick against several legs and bottoms, clearing a path, establishing who was in charge. And he was. We proceeded in the caravan to the village center, where some rickety wooden chairs and a table sat in the middle of mud huts with thatched roofs. Completely at ease, Opande sat down and listened to the leader, a lanky rastafarian with a crazy look in his eye and diction that was even crazier tell his story. There was apparently some in-fighting between rebels, who should, after the peace treaty signed in August, now be former rebels. Opande listened, and then basically told the leader that he would take no more shit and neither would the UN-and that he could either return with food or --else! When food was mentioned, the surrounding group of rebels (who you did have to feel a bit sorry for-in their tattered tee shirts and flip-flops) brought their fists to their chests. They all want food.

Then the show was over and the boys ran around celebrating with their rocket launchers and guns in the air.

We flew to a village where we were to find another rebel leader who wasn't there. So we left, and flew on to Camp Number One, the home of Small General.

There are certain scenes you know will be in your movie. This is one of them:

Small General had a very bad day. Opande walked right up to him--and Opande is not short while Small General, as you might guess, is. Small General had made the mistake of leaving his maroon beret with a star on his head. Opande wanted to know who had made Small General a General. Small General had to confirm that, indeed, it had been Taylor. "There is only ONE General here!" declared Opande, who went on to say that he was hereby Demoting Small General. A sweep of the hand and the beret is gone, tossed aside, in front of all of Small General's troops. Small General had been a very bad boy, it seemed, allowing or encouraging rapes, summary road blocks and general terrorization of the local civilians in the time since the last time Opande had been to visit him about such matters.

Oooops. Small General had also apparently been neglecting his troops' training, as they weren't nearly clean in their formation-forming as the previous group we'd visited were. Opande stepped aside and let the current Minister of Defense (himself quite a controversial character, a man who was the Minister of Defense under Taylor) rip the troops up one side and down the other. Which was kind of interesting, given that he knew many of them personally. He used the word "bullshit" a lot. They were given two days to gather their guns and then the UN was going to return to collect them--a sort of pre-disarmament because they had lost the right to keep guns on their person before the official disarmament began.

The whole time, we were surrounded by a convoy of several UN vehicles that had traveled overland to meet and, presumably, defend us. It's the guys who travel in these overland convoys who take real risks. We just hopped back on the helicopter.

That was a great day.

Thursday:

More quick visuals caught on the run before we got a ride to the airport. All in all, we were happy with what we were able to get done there.

Monrovia is edgy, expensive and not travel friendly (much like, we were told, Sierra Leone a couple of years back). They have no electricity outside of generators and haven't for the whole FOURTEEN YEARS of war!!! But their roads have Sierra Leone beat hands down, and electricity is a fresh commodity here as well. Makeni and Kailahun don't have any power that doesn't come from a generator--which is something that just IS a part of my film, the hum of generators. Bummer. We took many taxis (crammed four to the back, two in front--with all of our gear) and weren't mugged or killed, much to our UN colleagues' astoundment.

Nope, the big moment happened to Rob, during his eight-hour stay at Lungi airport, on the way to London. When he got to London he noticed that our big bag had been ripped open, lock be damned. He's not yet counted the damage. I guess I'm grateful that it happened on his way out.

Now I really do need to log. Just wanted to give my fans something to chew on while I'm in Kenema (diamond country!) and back to Kailahun. I'll be out till Friday because I have much to do before I leave.

I dedicate my sunburned bottom to all of you in snowy, rainy and otherwise chilly climates. Sounds romantic but I just have to walk out the door to have my shirt soaked through with sweat. The days grow progressively hotter as we move into the dry season. Hamdullah.

Less than a week to go-yikes!

In Bed With the UN

"Without him, we wouldn't have gotten anywhere... When we told him of
the MOP debacle, there was a hard-flint twinkle in his eyes, his jaw jutted
in barely contained frustration and he said, in an ominous tone, "?'ll take
care of it. You shall not be left stranded on the gravel of the Mammy
Yoko helipad, not on my watch". Kemal Saiki, fixer extraordinaire,
he-who-make-things-happen-fast as the the local paramount chiefs and
natives call him, whipped his cell phone out of his safari vest pocket
and barked a few orders. Moments later we could hear the whoop-whoop-whoop of an approaching big, WHITE, helicopter which soon swooped us on the
shores of Liberia and the halls of Monrovia... " (sic)

This is the beginning of a suggested entry of "Keeping the Peace," friends and relatives. And, truth be told, it's a smart move on Kemal's part to give us the helicopter rides and the access to all, big and small, to, in short, make it happen. We're heading into an interview with the head of the mission, Alan Doss, having just come back from Monrovia.

Now THERE is a difficult place to be a UN peacekeeper in the early stages of the game, with a third of your force on the ground and no solid infrastructure in place. More on that craziness later but I will just say that the highlight was touching down in a helicopter with the UN force commander and his Special Force dudes-with-more-defined-forearms-than-a-normal-athlete's-thighs in the middle of the jungle nowhere land so that the General could kick some proverbial rebel ass.

My point being, I've been set up to fall in love with these guys, with all of their flaws, with the 3 A's of mission life: alcoholism, adultry and apathy, the incredible amount of cash that can be involved in signing up for the peacekeeping cause, the accusation that peacekeeping forces help the spread of AIDs...The fact is that I've come to see what it means to be a peacekeeper primarily from Their perspective. I'm not doing a hard-core investigative story because I believe that I'm getting more and better material this way (plus, the helicopter rides, though quite uncomfortable, are cool).

And so, we've fallen in love. I think we're getting the story I came here to tell, and I think that it will show the good, the bad, and the ugly, but I also think that an intelligent, balanced consideration of the ugly will be one of my greatest challenges. At the end of the day I have to face the fact that I've been "in-bedded" without even realizing it. Hmmmm...but, as Rob pointed out, especially after being in Liberia, life can be hard for the guys with the blue hats, too.

In the meantime, Rob and are I wearily content with our Liberia mission. Very.

More on that to come.

Yin and Yang

We're back in Freetown, after a fabulous week in Makeni that began with the classic Bad Africa Day.

We were moving out of the guest house I'd been staying in, which meant that I needed to remove all of my things, including the money belt I had deposited with the house office manager and report researcher and guy who'd generally been taking care of my personal needs since my arrival on the scene, Alfred. 'Fred and I had developed what seemed to be a healthy relationship and I was even considering making him a character in the film because he was funny in an understated way, smart.

Alfred and I hadn't managed to meet up for the money belt handover over the weekend, but I wasn't too concerned. The International Crisis Group is a prestigious publisher of reports on hot spots around the world, and Alfred was its representative. As such, when he suggested that I put my money belt into the ICG safe for safekeeping I thought that would probably be the best thing to do, after all. I deposited $3,000 plus credit card, passport and plane tickets with Alfred. I felt safe.

Monday morning rolls around and Rob and I had to figure out how to get to Makeni, as the helicopter for Makeni doesn't leave on Monday, and our MOP hadn't been filed, we were looking at public transportation, i.e. "poda-poda," mini bus usually full till people hang out the sides and the roof lugs under the weight of piles of bags of all descriptions. Alfred said that he could possibly take us to Makeni, as he might be making his own trip there, so we waited until after one for a sad Alfred to come us with my final wet laundry from the guest house and my money belt.

Well, my friend 'Fred wasn't too forthcoming with ye olde money belt. When I got into his little red car and asked him about the money belt he pointed to the glove compartment and said, "You had $3,000 in it, right?" I replied affirmatively and he told me that he had "borrowed" $1,100 from me. Uh, WHAT??!! I thought about that for a couple of minutes and then told Alfred that I wasn't really cool with that thought. He started to go into a long story about how he had needed to temporarily borrow the cash because his two bosses needed him to clear up some outstanding bills before they left the country for a month-long tour of West Africa. At this point Rob finally piped up from the back seat, asking Alfred why he hadn't Called me, since he had my cell phone number, to request a loan. For this there was no adequate answer, and we had a quiet ride to the poda-poda station. We were taking the poda-poda because Alfred's four wheel drive had a flat tire, and we were tired. Alfred arranged for us to purchase all of the seats of the poda-poda and for $44 U.S. we were on our way, having wasted a day, to Makeni. It was not happy-making. But Alfred promised to drive himself up to Makeni on Wednesday with my money. I told Alfred that I had faith in him but that my husband, a very Western male, viewed things slightly differently and I didn't know what would happen if we Didn't see Alfred in Makeni on Wednesday but it wouldn't be good. Rob and I later had to laugh about Alfred's choice of $1,100, baffled that it wasn't either all of the money, or less. I guessed that it was kind of him to leave me more money than he had taken. I still wanted to believe that it had been borrowed.

When we got to Makeni Colin laughed and told me that he thought that the money was gone. Seriously, however, he offered to head down to Freetown with me and "take Alfred for a drive," an old-school practice that Colin felt was worth a try in this case. I felt somehow reassured. If I were ever in danger, Colin would be one of my top rescuer candidates.

Colin had in any case managed to safely ensconce us at a British NGO guest house in Makeni. We had a fine room alone to ourselves with a double bed, functional mosquito net, private cold water shower, and, most importantly, an air-conditioner that piped out really cold air. It was probably the best five nights of sleep we'll have while we're here--for $15/night.

We spent most of our days following Colin and his CIVPOL sidekick, Uwe, a Canadian, through their meetings with local police. We did get out to the best-named village on our trip-the sleepy hamlet of BatKanu, where we found local police who hadn't had an arrest in a couple of weeks. The best interactions, however, were with the local Makeni police force, a sorry lot if I've ever seen one (I'm taking this assessment from my CIVPOL colleagues as well). The theme of this week was accountability and transparency, and discussing the many ways a police man could get into trouble if he hadn't properly filled out his "pocketbook," or notepad, regarding police-related matters. In a morning survey of the troops, few had filled out the notebooks correctly, some not at all, and others had never been issued the books because they were illiterate. They got to hear about that, but I really pitied the man who had somehow lost about $20 of a suspect's money-saying some had been used to pay off the suspect's hotel bill and he didn't know where the rest of it was. There was a sort of written account of the money but it was neither legible nor comprehendable, apparently. The talking-to Colin gave this man put my mother in her heyday to shame.

I learned a couple of valuable lessons this week: I'd been working alone, and needed to learn to direct and produce for Rob--i.e. communicate exactly what I thought needed to be shot and done. Once I did that, life was good-but there were a couple of interesting interview moments when we were trying to communicate while I was interviewing, which was not too effective. I learned that the best question I could ask people here was, believe it or not, whether they had any questions for me. That seemed to take them completely off their guard and get them rolling right along with all that they had Really wanted to tell me. I should have put a radio microphone on Willie the policeman when he was talking with Colin because the surrounding police station noise is quite distracting and the exchange was amazing--though my notion to have Colin interview Willie rather than me was a good one. I relearned that, in situations like this, when some things and comments only happen once, you have to roll more than you'd thought. You mic all of the time. Your subjects just have to live with that, which is why you choose willing subjects. I learned that you have to take what you can every single fucking time. I had held off on my major interview with American Amy Baker (remember her, the original raison d'etre for my trip to Makeni) for this week when Rob would be there to help me and she got hideous pinkeye--rather than let her wear sunglasses in our interview we shot really wide on the prettiest scene we've yet done. I've given in to the fact that I'll have to do more than one interview with my main characters because the more I learn the more I need to know.

Willie told me that he hadn't taken much action when Amy and I had a flat because he didn't know us and we hadn't asked him to intervene. I thought that was both clever in a way and indicative of the way the police seem to do business around here. Willie is a hard worker who was up and working to keep the traffic flowing when we left Makeni at eight this morning, so what can you say? What are the standards and how to judge? That's peace building.

We met my favorite named character, "Base Marine," a former RUF fighter who currently operates a pineapple farm, a bar, a bakery, is doing HIV/AIDS education, and generally working this post-war NGO world for all it can give him. I'm conflicted about former combattants (calling them that is no longer PC, because we are supposed to see them all the same--though they have received dollars and training for being exaclty that-ex-combattants), who are now reaping great rewards from simply ceasing to terrorize their fellows. But that's the way it works and without incentives I guess they would never stop-certainly didn't before. But it was good to meet with this guy and I would have liked to meet his CDF counterpart from the other side, but he was in Freetown all week while we were in Makeni.

We filmed Amy jogging through police road blocks, filmed her changing money in Krio, filmed her shopping for fresh tomatos in the local market-Colin won't shop for food in the local market, preferring to eat boxed pasta from the UN store in Freetown. He feels that he'll stay healthy that way, and he may be right--Amy's currently suffering from the "Apollo," what we would call pink eye--but they call it "Apollo" here after the space shuttle crackup because they think that the particles have affected the cosmos here and can still fly into your eyes.

Rob got to watch a green mamba snake cross the highway and then got to be in the UN vehicle that smashed it into the road after it apparently reared its head in a very dramatic way. I missed the snake, though I may see one at some point. It's snake season and the green and black mambas seem to be out in force, at least in the provinces.

The most amazing scene we shot, however, was the helicopter story, which was even better than I had hoped. We cruised out to the scene of the crime, a small village a 20-minute drive from Makeni, where we met the local headmaster, his colleagues, and an Italian Catholic priest with a mouthful for the UN. As a Civil Affairs volunteer, Amy was the local representative who these guys were all venting to, though Colin and Uwe were present. It seemed that the village had just received a check from the UN for the amount of $6,000 for the destroyed roof that had been torn off by an errant helicopter last May. But in the meantime, as we witnessed, the rains had destroyed the entire structure of the school, necessitating a complete rehaul and more money. Amy withstood the firey rhetoric bravely, pink eye and all. But the picture of the entire village crowded around a cluster of school desks set outside in the middle of the village was something we'll never forget. I wonder how the story will go. As these things are never simple, the headmaster later suggested to Amy that he would really rather go to America in the end. I think Amy will manage to postpone that one until her departure in December, which I hope postdates a new school. I'll be following that one.

Otherwise, we attended a going-away party for a MILOP in Makeni. It was held in the bottom floor of the UN container that Amy Colin and co use as offices. Flourescent lights, cold fish and chips, bad music, warm beer and cheap scotch about defined it. Fifteen or so different nationalities between them. Which is one of the beauties of the UN.

A much more satisfying scene was last night's meal at the CIVPOL group house (Colin lives alone at the guest house where we stayed-the one with a generator). Nor, the Malaysian, cooked a traditional (read HOT!) meal for all of us by candlelight and his headlamp-over a small charcol brazier outside. Like a barbecue but a bigger pain in the ass. Fabulous food, great company. Uwe ran around to cook us some interesting vegetables from a bag he'd picked up at the UN compound in Freetown.

We were hot and heavy into the speculation of how exactly we were going to put 'Fred's feet to the coals, given that he'd postponed his Wednesday, then Thursday trip to Makeni. It was 8:30 Friday night and we got the call. Alfred, in Makeni, wondering where to meet me. I hadn't mentioned the money outright since our conversation in Freetown, so we weren't sure what to expect. The boys drove us out in the big UN forerunner to meet 'Fred and I hopped into his SUV, guiding him back to the UN compound, a formidable sight with its barbed wire and deserted watchtower in the daylight. Alfred and the ICG driver, Edward, were quiet for the ride, probably terrified. When we stopped the car in front of the UN container/offices Colin parked his car behind the SUV, to block it in.

Imagine an empty office at night, squalid, flourescent lights, ugly. Two cops still in uniform present, Rob, Edward, Alfred, and me. I didn't try too hard to make small talk, and Alfred handed me an envelope, which I gave to Uwe to count. It was money, and it was real. Alfred saw him checking the money and showed me a bank receipt. I didn't ask any more questions and he didn't offer any more answers. I was also missing a mini-disc recorder (and still am), which I highly suspect disappeared during my residence at ICG, but I don't think I'll see it again. Alfred says he's looking into it. The funny thing was that it didn't seem like such a triumph, though it had been such a stressor. Alfred just looked sad and defeated, and I still think that he is a basically good man who got himself into a bad situation. I still also think that I may get a call for a drink before I go and if I do I'll take him up on it because I would love to know what really happened.

Expect the unexpected, always. Our Makeni trip went so smoothly, I am convinced, because we had our little Africa hiccup at the beginning of the week.

That's about it for now. We drove down with Amy and Colin for lobster in Freetown this morning and they've now gone. I think that our work in Makeni is good-we have some amazing footage. I don't yet know how the film is going to come together, especially since we haven't hit our biggest X factor yet-Liberia. We're off to Monrovia early Monday morning. I'm very glad that Rob will be going with me.

Over and out from Freetown-
Jessie and Rob

That's the Badger!

Yes, indeed. That's the badger. My favorite new British phrase, for something that's really cool/the thing/the greatest/right on. From our new British star, Seb. You will be seeing Seb in this film.

That's the Badger, for those of you who worried, that Rob made it to me, live and in person, with all of his gear in tow. It's great to have him here, and we'll be heading off on our next adventure, insh'allah, on Monday. He had to laugh at our accomodation (well, where we're living until Monday, when we move all of our stuff into the UN office for safekeeping)--the ice cold drippling water that eeks out of the European shower head, sleeping in a pool of sweat after the generator-powered air conditioner kicks off at three in the morning...you get the picture. Welcome back to Africa. He gallantly suffered through an ex-pat beach party until one this morning because my UN host kindly offered to drive me to to pick him up at the airport and then, of course, we had to stop by the party. Rob can hold his own.

In keeping with the theme of this voyage, our newest star, the British military observer, Seb was only found after I missed my initial helicopter flight to Kailahun, which is about as far East as you can go in this country, and one of the most important former rebel strongholds. I missed the flight because you've got to have your Movement of Personnel & Flight Request Form filed 48 hours before you fly, and, though I had requested the flight a week before, the paperwork hadn't been filed. That would have really diced my day but there happened to be a special flight leaving an hour and a half later, so I caught that and made it to meet my Candadian connection, Ross, in Kailahun.

I could quickly tell that Ross was going to have a B part in the film, that he didn't really want to be filmed and was just trying to give a girl a hand, rather than really enthusiastic about the idea of being followed about while brushing his teeth. So, it was a dark night. I was wondering how I was going to spend the rest of the week at the end of the country (there was no fast way out as it takes a good two days of horrific travel to get back to Freetown from Kailahun) as I bedded down in the Pakistani guest tent for women. I was there because Ross thought it would be more comfortable than the UN house of men, but that was to change.

In the middle of the night I semi-awoke to a figure dropping an oversheet on me. I had only one sheet, so I'd rolled myself into a Jessie-taco. I was so tired that it was more like a dream and I didn't think much of it. The next night, however, I heard a rustle and looked up to a dark figure in white shorts coming into my tent, and it didn't look as if he was bringing me any amenities. He bolted when I said, "Hello?" but I didn't get much more sleep that night. So much for Pakistani hospitality-I moved on to a vacant room in the UN house. But the Pakistani battalion chow kicked some serious ass. For $10 a day, I got the tent and the food, $2 day bought the food alone. The UN staff has worked out a sweet gig in Kailahun where they pay to be fed. It's lovely, as long as you're into spicy dahl, chicken and lamb daily.

I knew that I had to look for other characters, and I'd talked to Seb about horses, so I asked him if he'd mind wearing the radio mic (wireless microphone) when we went out on patrol. He didn't, and Ross was much more natural when he wasn't thinking about me listening to what he was saying. I'd hoped not to make this a Brit-centric show but that may be the way it lands. The team commander is a smart, articulate man from Zambia who was here in 2000 and has said he would probably go on camera if I went back to interview him later, so Kailahun may be the last week.

Did I tell you about the roads? I have finally indeed discovered the reason for the existence of the 4x4, and I have a new appreciation for what those bad boys can do. We were traveling on roads, or mud paths, rather, with ruts and rocks and, in places, several feet deep of water, up and over rocks and bridges made of logs that spanned streams lengthwise-stuff that even I would look at and cringe. I couldn't believe that we could do it, the vehicles making some of the most interesting scraping and grinding noises I've ever heard.

Of course we got stuck in the mud. Or, rather, our Nepali "driving Miss Daisy" (Seb-termed) colleague did. Twice. I got to witness the real-life use of that little winch thing at the back of the 4x4. They do in fact work.

We were on patrol. Patrols are good. Patrols are meant to serve as a means of taking the temperature of the locals, as well as assuring them of UN presence, security and tranquility. The process of walking through the jungle (no machetes involved) with a group of Sierra Leonean police, one Canadian, one Brit, a Kenyan and a Jordinian into a village is really something. The visuals alone were out of control. Most of the villages we drove or walked through were comprised of circular huts with thatched roofs, mud floors, the lot. Shirts optional for women, who you find with children washing their clothes and bodies in most of the streams we pass over and through. Rice is the main crop here, though there is some coca. One of the main questions we were asking on our patrol was the price of coca. Because changing prices can bring instability. The other main communication we had for the people in these villages, other than an exchange of candy (British "boiled sweets") and oranges (theirs, for us, which they eat by cutting off the top and squeezing out the juice like a juice squeeze) was to let the disarmed rebels know that their disarmament payment, though late, was on its way.

Whenever we drove through a village of any size, especially if there was an outdoor school around, the kids would run after the cars yelling, "Bleeetish, Bleeeetish!" or "Paki, Paki, Paki!" They seemed to have the identiy of our crew down, and the sight of dozens of small children in identical school uniforms running after our Land Rovers waving their hands was lovely. My favorite, however, are the naked boys that rip after us in their bare feet up the red clay roads, usually doing pretty well at keeping up as we wind our way up hills and through ruts. The children here seem generally well-fed and, other than the awful malaria I hear about, healthy. Of course, the unhealthy children wouldn't be the ones running after our cars.

UN personnel are seen today, anyway, as trusted intermediaries between different factions, different villages and the government. The military observers, soldiers in their own countries, are unarmed here. They tell me that they prefer it this way because it makes their job much more clear and that they feel that they have a level of trust with the locals that they would not have if they were bearing arms. Which I think is pretty interesting, these guys who are trained to kill now acting as mediators of peace. We talk a lot about that in the interviews. I have a couple of good interviews, finally. Ross, our Canadian MILOB, finally relaxed at the end of our interview yesterday while talking about missing his dog. He said that two things he would really regret here would be if he were to harm a child or a dog. Ducks and chickens, however, he saw as fair game.

Wednesday's patrol with the Pakistanis, staged for my benefit, was another experience entirely. The Pakistanis rank and file, who I had somehow imagined would be all speaking perfect English, willing, ready and able to tell me what it meant to be a peacekeeper. Not so. Not only do only the officers speak English, but the officers weren't too hip to the notion of what it takes to make a documentary. I.e. advance warning of what the hell they were doing, and the time to set up the camera, sound, gear to capture any of it. I asked the second in command to try to give me some warning about when and where we'd be stopping, and he told me that it was up to the Captain. Which would have been one thing had the entire practice activity not been specifically meant for my benefit. Kind of a good news/bad news situation. The good news was that they treated me very correctly, even having a special plate of grapes and a chocolate muffin they found Allah knows where, to meet my special needs, because they were all fasting. I wasn't going to eat because they were fasting, but the food was bouncing around so much on the plate that I had to either eat it or throw it away. I ate.

The Pakistanis have an interesting relationship with the local population. They, like most of the locals in these small villages, are Muslims, and they have done much to construct mosques, build roads and schools, and during the month of Ramadan the locals line up outside of the battalion for the fast-breaking meal. I asked my second-in-command what his troops thought of the local women-given that they were going from the land of women who dress modestly to a place where naked breasts abound, and he told me that for himself it was no problem, but it did take his men a little while to get used to the sight. He told me off camera that since the women were black it didn't matter so much anyway. Racism is definitely a factor in this equation.

But yes, friends, when I'm peeing behind a tall clump of grass on a helicopter stop on a swath of pavement in the jungle on my way back to Freetown to meet my husband, I tell myself that life is good. Seb tells a story of falling off a bridge into a waist-high river here one Tuesday morning, thinking to himself, "Not a bad way to spend a Tuesday morning, after all." And I'll have to second that. I think we'll have a story here. The characters and the scenes are coming. We're heading back to the Makeni crew on Monday, and hope to do Liberia the week after that. Not sure how much role Monrovia will play in this story, but it has to be done, given that this is really all just one big party, one big war.

Otherwise, friends, I'll leave you with these impressions before heading out:
-the incredible generosity of the UN people with who've been giving me office space, helicopter rides, allowing me to get up-close-and personal with their daily lives, introducing me to people and places and generally making this happen.
-the beauty of this country outside of the capital.
-children calling us whiteys "pomoi" (a variant, somehow, of the "Portugese" who were here long ago) and waving as we walk by.
-large trucks who stop regularly to allow ducks to pass on the dirt roads before them.

Rob's here!

Image - Jess hard day at the office

no longer counting

The thing about "producing" a film here, I am learning, is that you really can't produce anything. Because the minute you start to plan something, it all goes tumbling down. Salvation is found in the little moments of serendipitous grace that are, of course, where and when you last expect them, which necessitates always having the camera ready to go.

On planning:
I planned to go a Nepali medal ceremony that would be given to honor the Nepali battalion for honorable service, and that happened basically as planned-although as I boarded the plane for Mayamba I was wishing that I wasn't on it because I learned that UN Day was going to be back in Freetown on Friday, and I had been planning to stay in Makeni through the weekend. I attended the Nepali ceremony because the seat had been reserved and it was a bit deal and I didn't want to make my contact feel bad. So off we went. I spent a day running around with camera (and tripod, for those who must know) in the screaming sun shooting this marvelous spectacle of Nepali troops going through their marching routines in the center of jungle lushness. In homage to their homeland the Nepalis have given all of the barrack houses (presumably for officers--I saw more tents) home names, like "Anapurna," and there was an interesting if not entirely talented paper-mache-like sculpture of the Himalayas on the ground in front of the main dining hall.

Bagpipes, local dancing, tae kwon do-the captivated troops sat through about four hours of military and civilian spectacles before we were finally freed for food somewhere in the afternoon. The troops all wanted to have their picture taken with me, which both helped and hindered my cause. I even caught one guy sneaking in a second photo. We were well if oddly fed, with dishes ranging from curried lamb to some Russian potato salad. All of the guests recieved large curved traditional Nepali knives as souvenirs-I'll send mine home with Rob because it could be a hazard in the edit room.

The captain-like figure (in the heat the ranks fly out of my head) had assigned me a ride to my next destination, Makeni, but I met a British police officer who offered me a lift with his police compadres.

Serendipity.

Colin, a British police officer with some 20 years of experience, kindly stopped the car when we ran across a soccer game in the middle of the road as the light was falling. He's a classic "tough guy," but was the only one of the policemen who squatted down to talk to a small malnourished girl (with the distended belly and large "outie" belly button I remember from Africa of long ago) while I was filming. You should see the roads here. While there are a couple of paved stretches between the capital and places like Makeni, not too far out, they are generally nothing more than potholed dirt, and, I understand, in many places they are just tracks through the jungle. Accidents are marked with clumps of grass spread at regular intervals about 100 yards before the site. We passed several markers but no accidents. I asked Colin what would happen if one were to break down on the side of the road at night and his reply was, "You don't want to break down." That said, the UN tends to trash these vehicles, meant to go on to other work in Liberia.

It took us about four hours to go 84 miles in a four wheel drive, whereas the local transport is minivan--and out in the provinces you hardly every see them at night, apparently. During the entire drive we saw only two other vehicles, one UN, another NGO. We passed a fair number of people walking. That's the main mode of transport when you get out of Freetown because the roads are tracks and there is no great supply of private offroad vehicles in this country outside of the foreign community.

During the course of the drive over these rutted roads to Makeni Colin grilled me on my project and by the end was nearly convinced that he might go on camera for me, whereas I was definitely convinced that I wanted him in the film. I was also intrigued by the notion of his interaction with his three colleagues-one Canadian, one former Nepali actor (!) and one Malaysian--all having done police work in their own countries, all in very differnent capacities, at very different levels, for very different types of police forces. So I had inadvertently picked up a character before I had even met the woman who I'd meant to interview in Makeni, an American named Amy Baker, in Civil Affairs.

Amy Baker is a different kettle of fish. I wanted to spend a day with Amy, as that's what I had ostensibly gone to Makeni to do, and I followed her through a series of meetings. Meetings that were several hours late, meetings where people hadn't filed reports since the last meeting, meeting upon meeting in hot, cramped little offices. Amy was amazing. Indefatiguable. Fresh. I think that had I not begged for her to take pity on me and offer me food after the last meeting she wouldn't have eaten--at 4 p.m. She is a smart linguist who gets along beautifully with the people. There was a lovely exchange with a money changer that I unfortunately didn't get on camera, but I will try to stage another. I think that getting her interacting with the locals in Krio (the dialect spoken in Sierra Leone) will be very nice. I also may take Amy into the field to give me the Helicopter Story.

And what, you ask, is the Helicopter Story? It's one of my favorites here: apparently, when the UN was first deploying here they were wont to use soccer fields as helicopter landing pads because they were the only clear ground. Soccer fields tend to be found in the vicinity of schools, and in Makeni alone four school roofs where torn off by the winds. Having now tried to film several helicopter takeoffs and landings this is not hard for me to imagine. The locals were understandably upset, especially after the rainy season hit and melted the walls that were no longer protected by tin roofs. For more than five months they have been waiting, more or less patiently, for the check to rebuild the roofs. One check has been sighted, and it would be nice if construction were beginning on my next visit to Makeni (on fantasy island).

So Amy and roofless school, is what I'm thinking. She also managed to slam her UN truck into a ditch, giving us the flattest of tires. We were in the middle of the market and drew a huge crowd-they were totally enthralled with Amy's difficulties getting the spare tire out from under our truck and would have suffocated us entirely with their curiousity had she not asked the local policeman, who'd been just standing there watching with all of the rest, to ask people to stand back. She radioed for help, which got us nowhere, but Colin (our British hero, as you'll recall) happened to be driving by and got the job handled with a couple of helpful local guys. It was a great scene that I managed to get on camera this time.

That's Makeni. I may also get a former RUF and/or CDF guy--one is working with pineapples now, the other owns a cashew farm. A friend suggested that they could get together and make a killing (pun excused) selling "peace trail mix." Perhaps I'll suggest that to them. I may also interview Willie, one of the Sierra Leonean cops who Colin and company are supposed to be mentoring. Colin told a story of giving a higher-up in the police force a lift and teaching him to use a seat belt, as he'd never seen one before. That's a small indicator of the level of preparedness in a police force that doesn't get descriptions of children whose disappearances they are investigating.

There is so much going on here at so many levels--more than one UN staffer has suggested to me that it will be interesting to see what happens to Sierra Leone after the UN resources have been transferred across the border to Liberia-a process which has already begun. Makeni, once a former RUF stronghold, has just seen the transfer of its battalion to Liberia, and is now left with very little in the way of protection other than the local police and our CIVPOLs (that's the acronym for Colin and co)--who are unarmed and have no right to make arrests. Others have suggested that perhaps the movement of energy and resources to Liberia has hastened the draw down of the UN mission here. Not everyone believes that their Sierra Leonean colleagues are prepared to take over the reins.

Which is a big question, one that I am putting to Sierra Leoneans as well. I have a couple of candidates for my Sierra Leonean characters, who will probably be based in Freetown. One is a neat guy named Mohammed Suma, who does outreach for the Special Court. Unlike a growing number of his countrymen, he is necessarily a staunch supporter of the Special Court, though I have yet to get to the bottom of his feelings for the UN.

What else can I say? My fingers grow tired. AFRICA, MAN. I had forgotten how much I missed it. The red red ground and foliage so lush and absurdly green that I have to manually white balance the camera, which reads the green as blue. I am going to make Rob tell me what it smells like, though. I miss my sense of smell here in a way that I didn't miss it at home. There is so much going on everywhere you look that my strategy for getting b-roll is letting the action come to me. I followed a group of small boys the other day, one carrying a large load of some sort of what looked like grain on his head. He set it down, doled out some food from the bag, and he and his buddies took a snack break. When they went to put the bag back on his head he dropped it, fell over, and everyone had a good laugh. It was one of those things that just happened.

You even have mud huts in some parts of Freetown--outside Freetown, that's mostly all you have--the round ones, thatched roofs. Some cement buildings with iron roofs, but not many.

Here they still do magic with chicken entrails and the occasional human sacrifice. The Makeni four are dealing with a case of possible child sacrifice now. The local witch doctor has told the police that he was bribed by the chief to stop doing his magic to find the girl--which makes me wonder who's doing the witchcraft, but I suppose I'll find out more later.

Sierra Leoneans are lovely-both physically attractive and friendly-especially when you leave Freetown. All of the UN personnel I've asked thus far what they'll miss most about this place have had the same answer: the children. Who do in some places still rub at the whitey's skin to see whether underneath it's actually black.

Makeni has one restaurant, Reconcile (restaurants with this name abound after the war). It sometimes has food, other times not. We lucky on the afternoon I needed to eat; we were told that we could have steak and fries or chicken and fries. We ordered one of each but both got chicken. I suppose the cow was gone.

But back to planning: Rob comes on Friday and we need to be out of the place I'm staying over the weekend. This was always the case but I had hoped that the person who is coming would decide in fact to go somewhere else, Cote d'Ivoire, for example. I hear there's a lot going on down there. I have halfway decided that, since I was blessed with half of a visitor's office at UN headquarters, I'll store the bulk of my gear here and then worry about renting a hotel for the couple of nights Rob and I will be in Freetown later. It seems a pity to waste the money and energy moving to a new place I'll only be a couple of nights in. And I was just told by my logistics friend that he doubted that Rob would be able to do the UN heli-travel. Which would be odd, given that my contact has always known Rob would be coming...it could alter our travel plans, especially Liberia.

So, early tomorrow I take the helicopter, if the right assistant has got me on the flight, to Kailahun, a far eastern province near Liberia. I'm to meet a Canadian MILOBS (military observer to you) there. He may be a character, maybe not. In any case, there is a lot going on out there--from all forms of diamond mining to LURD rebels, disarmament and not-so-disarmament.

I am trying to talk to everyone I can, take the opportunities as they arrive and not get too hung up on my notion of what I think the story is going to be. Because inevitably, it isn't.

Over and out, friends, family, and fellow wanderers.

Day 5.5

Ah, yes, colonialism. Sunday was dedicated to lunch. Under a shady canopy. Overlooking a beach marred only by the presence of a couple of drunk sweaty white men eating their lobster on the sand. Lunch took about three hours to complete, because that's the way the meals are on Sunday at the beach. The wine was even chilled.

After dining we went to a beach for swimming (contrary to the beach I can walk to, which, I have learned, while good for jogging, is no good for swimming because the hospital dumps its waste there) and swam in the dark as a thunderstorm rolled in. Warm water in the rain really can't be beat.

Lest you think I don't suffer enough, however, when the generator shuts off at one in the morning and the air is that special sort of hot still and the one mosquito who managed to make it past the screen barriers has already bitten me twice and I get up in the middle of the night to take a second doxycycline pill because I might have missed the first one and you can't be too sure, and then I lie awake at night because I'm thinking that Johnny the helicopter supplier really should be a subject in this film I'm trying to make and wondering whether in fact I should go East or North first, and how, if nothing is happening in either of those places, to best cut my losses and move on to the next-that is when the night is long and the ease and comfort of America is far away.

And I say this now. Tomorrow, I take a helicopter to Mayamba to observe the Nepali troops' medal ceremony. What, you ask, might this have to do with my project? Well, they are UN troops after all, and my lovely contact, he-who-makes-things-happen-for-me-here, Kemal Saiki, will be pleased if I attend. I suspect that he'd also like a bit of the footage for himself, which is probably fine. There is also a Nepali actor-turned-peacekeeper who made me think: now
THERE is a man Americans will relate to, but the level of his English is still under debate. We'll see. There is also a connection between Mayamba and Makeni, a Northern province and the next place I need to go. I'll hopefully be able to hitch some form of ride with the Nepalis who've attended the ceremony in Mayamba because some of them are based in Makeni. You get the logic, yes? This is why I have to eat and drink so much with these people--I have to convince them that I am the type of person for whom they want to devise these hellishly detailed travel plans. In Makeni I plan to meet Amy Baker, who I'm hoping will be our American star. I won't say too much about Amy here for fear of jinxing my trip.

Yesterday I filmed the helicopter pad here at the UN. Literally, you look out the office window, there's the pad. Which makes for some noisy meetings, but people here no longer hear the helicopters. The wind created by those things is no joke, and not so easy to film around. I need to perfect my heli-shooting.

Got a first dinner from our house cook last night-chicken in a very thick and oily peanut sauce with white rice. I had two helpings.

This morning I got up early and filmed my neighbors living in a glorified hut behind our house. Half of the family got really into directing and would direct the other half to walk in and out of the frame, to get closer, to redo laundry scenes, etc. I've had kids clown for the camera, but this was something new-I'll go back to visit them again and probably take them some of those silly American-flag stick pins I brought for Liberia-I don't think I'll be spending much time in Liberia. Across the stream from the family is a Christian "semi-private" school for 300 children who wear green outfits. I was allowed to film them buying pre-school snacks of fish and some sort of fried balls with mayo on what looked like a hotdog bun and then shot a rousing series of Jesus-related singing and physical movements-half P.E., half church. I've promised to go back to the school and buy myself a fish sandwich. They actually didn't look so bad.

I'm getting used to carrying the camera and tripod bags with me basically everywhere I go. When my back is killing me and the sweat is rolling down my freshly-showered neck I remind myself that this is my job. The locals don't appreciate me trying to squeeze into the back of a taxi with all of my gear, however. The Nepali medal ceremony invitation (yes, there was an invitation!) requested "formal" attire, but I'm going to assume that camera people are exempt from such niceties.

All right now, I'm over and out. Off to the provinces (doesn't that just Sound colonial?).

Day 3.5

Moving right along. The last time I was in sub-saharan Africa it was as a Peace Corps volunteer, so coming at this from the perspective of the men in the blue hats is a bit of a mind game for me. Because make no doubt about it, we are the colonials, and the rules for us are different. Rules? I think that's one of the things that distinguishes expats from their patriot bretheren-they lose touch with any need or desire to follow society's rules-because the rules in the societies they've been living in don't apply to Europeans. We get into clubs without paying, and have get-out-of-jail free cards for bar brawls, speeding-and forget about drinking and driving -that's not an infraction in these parts (although interestingly, they do fasten their seat belts). It's a culture of working late nights and weekends and dinners that regularly don't end until after midnight. Some of the restaurants serve steak, though I've not yet seen a cow. We eat and socialize with other Europeans. Most locals can't afford to eat in these places.

Forget political correctness. We all (minus this part of we) smoke heavily, drink copiuous amounts and stereotype certain races and creeds and women with impunity. We frequent bars where local women aggressively try to solicit a "good time" for money and yet feel free to mock them (even as some of us employ their services, which we don't joke about). This is one of our verbal pastimes. We hire drivers, cooks, people to wash our sheets and our underwear. In fact, we do next to nothing for ourselves because we are, after all, working for the people here.

And they are trying to help, and, in many cases, helping the people of Sierra Leone. The Sierra Leoneans I've met and am working with seem to take it all in stride. Yesterday I met a Sierra Leonean guy who does outreach for the Special Court and he was the most eloquent proponent I've yet heard for its existence. He told me that he hoped that, in his country where judges in the provinces "levy fines before hearing the case," the Special Court could become a model for judical reform, with due process and real justice. I may head to Bo, about 4 hours away, with this guy, to see how he spreads the good word of the Special Court to the people in the provinces.

I finally shot a little bit yesterday-though the sun didn't come out until an hour before sunset. I was in downtown Freetown, getting basic people shots. Other than the man who "befriended" me and held the rest of my admirers at bay, I was basically unmolested. I had the usual crowd of kids around me, but they were mostly quietly observing, which appreciated. Lugging around the gear is no fun, but our new tripod is worth its weight. I have so many offers of help carrying the 3 bags that I try to make it seem as if I'm not a packmule, though by the end of the day I'm sure that I resemble nothing more.

But I am still trying to figure my place out here. In a Peace Corps flashback I got into a fight with a taxi driver last night. He charged me 10 times the going rate. In the end, I had a fit and paid. I doubt that most of my European friends would have fought over the difference between .20 and $2, but for me it was a matter of principle. Which is probably silly. We'll see where I end up. I took photos of fishermen on the beach yesterday. They want me to give them a copy of a photo and I will try to see whether I can print one out. But I AM part of the system, and of course they are going to ask me for money-they believe that I'm taking something from them-it's an old dilema, and I'll see where I come out this time.

Otherwise, I plan to head "upcountry" once or twice this week. I need to get out of Freetown. I need to say, in case you were getting the wrong impression from my words above, that I have been warmly welcomed by my fellow expats here and that I like most of them. They are smart and speak many languages. They know and care about the outside world, and, more importantly, the third world. I think that many of their faults are situational and that in order to work well in UN headquarters or in TRC offices maybe you need air-conditioning, cold drinks and drivers on command. Whatever it takes to stay relatively healthy and sane here, I suppose. More on that later.

Day One

This is a quickie to all to say that I've arrived, well and sound, in Freetown, after an uncomfortable stopover in Lagos.

Green and hot, those are my prevailing impressions of Sierra Leone after day one. Freetown is much larger than I'd envisioned, though the red clay dirt roads are exactly as I had imagined, complete w/nasty potholes, as rainy season has just finished (good news for the shooting). I've already met and dined w/my UN man-who-gives-me-access, which is great. I'm actually writing from his office. We've just met Bridadier-General Adrian Foster, Chief of Staff, Acting Deputy Force Commander, or something like that. In any case, he's what we'd call the Moheem, or big dude around here. He was a bit less welcoming, and wanted to know what editorial control he'd have over my end product. --Here we go--none, I told him, while keeping my mouth shut abt my nice man-who-grants-access's guarantee that the UN would keep clear of all editorial anyway. Hopefully, this won't be a problem.

Otherwise, I pay $50 extra/month to have air conditioning from 8 p.m. -3 a.m. in the room in the guest house I'm staying in, which is a bargain. I get the room for $200/month, plus an additional $25 for laundry and I put into a food kitty when I dine chez nous. It's a great deal for the first two weeks -I'm still figuring out what happens after that. I have cell phone and cash, and am lining up my first travel--to see a medal ceremony for the Nepali troops. Supposedly, they have both a bar named and decorated for Mt. Everest and a former Nepali film star in their ranks. I'll be checking out the film star, of course. If I can work him in maybe I'll use him as the "American" angle.

I also tagged along with the guy who runs our guest house, who is a researcher for the International Crisis Group, as he went to cover a press conference given by the Special Court's David Crane. The most interesting thing about it, other than Crane's unequivocal call for Nigeria to give back Charles Taylor, was the interaction between Crane and the press. They were definitely not afraid to ask him the hard questions, although it seemed as if there was a lot of advocacy and rehashing of old issues going on. I'll be meeting Mr. Crane later.

That's it for now. I've forgotten what it's like to passionately discuss malaira pills over dinner (I feel comfortable w/my doxycycline choice, interested parties.) and I had forgotten the quality of African light. Which is really burying the lede, bc it's all about the light here. In addition to the green heat, of course. Truly, that piercing softness that makes even noon daylight gorgeous--I swear, I'm going to shoot some at noon just to demonstrate. That, w/the red roads and the colorful decaying buildings and the men and women laughing together all over-not a darn thing like Algeria would have been. I lugged the camera and tripod over to the UN this afternoon w/the fanciful idea of shooting helicopters and a little "compound" life, but there were people to be met, UN's own promo films to watch, and now the light is gone.

Please send words and understand if I don't email you personally right away. The intrepid or those who just really miss me can get me on my new cell phone:
00232 76 714 655.

Keeping the faith in SL-