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.