My Adventures With the LNP – Part II

Although it was my every intention of finishing my last blog post before my return to the U.S. I unfortunately ran out of time preparing for my trip back, saying goodbye to friends and finishing up some work I was still in the middle of. But to tie everything together from where I left off, here are the three articles that were published on Emma and her story, and the impact they made. Many thanks to Mae Azango, the New Narratives fellow who I collaborated with on these stories:

* Original Article in Front Page Africa

*Second Follow-up Article in Front Page Africa

* Third Follow-up Article in Front Page Africa

From New Narratives:

Chief of police forced police to arrest a police officer accused of rape and launches investigation into police brutality after reporting by NN fellow Mae Azango and Ichi Vazquez – August 8th, 2011.

Too Many Ideas, Too Little Time and My Adventures with the LNP

I was looking at the calendar the other day, and I couldn’t believe it — I have just two more weeks left here! It’s very bittersweet, and I kind of don’t know how I feel about it. On one hand, it will be great to go home and see all my loved ones, but on the other hand, I am definitely going to miss this place. I’ve been thinking of more story ideas that I don’t know I’ll be able to do between now and the time I leave, but I’ll make a brave attempt at it anyhow.

The past two-and-a-half weeks has been extremely busy — busier than most of the weeks I’ve been here. Because of this, my sense of time has been warped somewhat, and things have flown by quicker than I expected. I’ve been juggling something like 3 stories at a time plus a couple other projects for Front Page Africa, and because of the general pace of things in Liberia and getting interviews or the information I need, most of the time things have moved slower than I’ve wanted them to, but I’ve still been able to get some work done. Poor Alvin has had to drive me absolutely everywhere! (Emily was out of the country for about 10 days and just recently got back to Monrovia.) He’s accompanied me to several interviews, the Ministry of Gender, the police station in Congotown (twice!) and so on… but I’ve let him know how much I appreciate it.

To add to this, I just found out a couple of days ago that one of the security guards in my building — George — added me on his mobile phone under the name, “RUNNING GIRL.” When he told me this, I couldnt’ stop laughing. When I asked him why he named me that he just said matter-of-factly, “Cuz you always running everywhere! You go fast!” It seems like only yesterday that I just got to Monrovia, and I didn’t even know how to start doing what I needed to do — I was completely clueless. And now, according to George’s mobile phone, I’ve been speeding up to something close to the crazy New York City pace I’m used to. I’m not entirely sure I can ever reach that kind of pace here, though, only because of technology constraints and difficulty in sometimes acquiring even the most basic information.

But honestly? It’s all good with me. When I get back to New York, I’ll have plenty of time to work too hard, lose sleep and pull my hair out because I’m on tight deadlines for everything. Right now, even though I have that instinctual urgency to work, it’s felt more like a creative boost than anything… and it feels great, even though I’m usually exhausted by the end of the day.

It’s ironic in a sense because I’ve been doing more reporting here than I have time for in New York (thanks to school), but there’s been less writing. However, some of the stories are a little difficult to put together and finding the right people to talk to can prove to be a challenge… particularly when it is at odds with journalism ethics, leaving me completely clueless as to how to proceed in the right way. But I’ll get more into that later…

Right now, a story that one of the fellows (Mae Azango) and I published last week at Front Page Africa is blowing up a bit of a storm. Rodney assigned us to go out and report on a woman whose 12-year-old daughter was raped by a young man living in her vicinity. When the mother went to the police station in Congo Town to report the rape, the police allegedly taunted her, and they refused to believe her. After some heated verbal exchanges in which the Liberian National Police (LNP) officers felt insulted, they decided to put her in a cell. She told us that about five officers assaulted her, and then kept her in jail for three days.

Meanwhile, her daughter stayed at home without any assistance after her ordeal. The woman was released after a friend bailed her out, and one way or another, she was able to get in touch with Rodney. I believe that the woman’s friend — Kumba — might have been the one to be in touch. When Mae and I went to meet the woman  (Emma) at Rose Garden Plaza, where she usually buys water from Kumba to sell and make her money for the day, she brought along her daughter as well.

The little girl sat on the couch and put her head down on the armrest as her mother talked to us. One of her legs was restless, and her knee moved left and right, almost like the movements were comforting. She didn’t talk much — and when I asked her something, like if she was in school, and what grade she’s in, she’d respond very quietly in one or two word answers.

The entire story seemed so wrong on so many levels, and Mae and I knew the LNP would deny everything. But I also thought that if Emma couldn’t get real justice for what happened to her daughter as well as what happened to her, at least she could talk to us so that we could do some more reporting, get her story out and send out a red flag that something very unfair might have happened here. (And that events like these, unfortunately, are very common.)

So Mae and I set off to the Congo Town police station, Zone Three Depot, and looked for the officers whose names Emma had remembered – there were three of them, and I had all their names written down in my notepad. As soon as we got to the station, we found one of the officers – a man named Amara Kamara. As soon as we told him what our business there was, he immediately got defensive and slightly tongue-tied. As we suspected, he denied everything fervently. First he told us that it was all a lie, only to then tell us that he wasn’t allowed to speak with us without the permission of his commanding officer (who was, by the way, another man that Emma named during her interview). After this confrontation, and an attempt to talk to the commanding officer without luck, Mae and I decided to return the next day. Besides, I think that we made Officer Kamara sufficiently nervous for the day – Mae was laughing afterward when Alvin picked us up, noting how Kamara practically followed us into the station to see what else we would get up to. The man was clearly worried and not hiding it well…

So, I have a confession to make, because I can’t really lie about this one: I made a mistake when reporting for this story. And the reason I made a mistake was because I got tied up into this story believing everything our primary source Emma told Mae and I from the start. Under any circumstance, this is highly unadvised, and not a great use of judgment as a journalist. However, the story Emma told us was just so twisted and so backwards, it didn’t make sense for her to make it up or lie about the details. And this was not the first time Mae or I heard about the LNP being completely careless and cruel with people… there are countless other stories. Also, Emma had nothing to lose – in her case, she is extremely poor and has no money to bribe people with (which is what happens around here if you want to get anyone’s attention), and pursuing a crime around here costs triple the energy and more money than people have/it’s worth. And even if a case is completed, people are left with a lack of satisfaction for the amount of energy put in versus acquiring actual justice. It’s enough to make anyone frustrated beyond reason, and wonder why the justice system here is in such shambles. In Liberia, when you report a crime, it’s up to you to pursue your case until the end, because the LNP sure won’t. It’s pretty rare for them to keep those kinds of tabs on people. Mae was telling me that if the LNP arrests someone one day for a crime that was reported, if that same person doesn’t continue to pursue the case, the perpetrator just gets released several days later… she sees this happen all the time.

What made my mind put those thoughts about bias aside was that in the next two days, it became more and more clear that the LNP was lying to our faces, and coming up with any excuse possible to get off the hook.

Mae and I returned to Zone Three Depot the next day (after our encounter with Officer Kamara). Sure enough, he was there again, and this time, Commanding Officer Three was in his office. So we went in and had another interesting talk with him.

The conversation with C.O. Three was extremely frustrating, and gave me the feeling that Mae and I were charging headfirst into a brick wall – repeatedly. However, even with the present obstacles, it made us also feel more secure that the story had to be published. C.O. Three refused to so much as tell us a single thing about what happened with Emma the day she came to the station. He not only pulled the “I’m not allowed to talk to the press” card on us like Officer Kamara, but he also told us that this was a policy, and that “police have ethics, and these ethics prevent us from talking to the press about any cases.” And so he delegated the responsibility of making a statement to George Bardu, who is the communications chief and press affairs at the LNP Headquarters.

Throughout our conversation, Mae, who was sitting directly across from me, would catch my eye, raise her eyebrow, and sometimes laugh outloud when C.O. Three would make a comment that was absolutely absurd and unbelievable. So I grilled him a quite a bit, and asked him some hard questions throughout his stream of excuses. One of the things I told him was that his absolute refusal to make any statements about this story or explain his side of things could potentially make this look highly suspicious to other people. I also told him that while we would really prefer to get statements from him on his side of the story, we were going to run the story either way. “So you might as well talk with us, so we can run a fair and balanced article,” I remember telling him. But he wasn’t swayed at all.

So when he told us about getting George Bardu’s permission to talk, I paused for a moment, smiled at him and said, “So let me get this straight. If anyone from any news agency wishes to talk to any officer in this country about a case they were involved in – whether it’s a rape, a theft, a high profile case or whatever – they are not allowed to talk to the officers involved in these cases? They have to get in touch with George Bardu, the head communications, even though he will have no clue as to what’s going on, or know any details about these cases?” When C.O. Three answered, “Yes” with a straight face, Mae just burst out laughing again. He even went further with this point, saying that if he spoke he could get in “trouble”.

So I played along and said, “Okay! You want me to get George Bardu’s permission? We’ll do it. I have his number right here. I’ll talk to him right now…”. So I dialed Bardu’s number while Mae sat with her hand resting on her head looking worn out and extremely amused, with C.O. Three and his assistant staring intently.

Once on the phone with Bardu, I asked permission to get the statements of all three officers Emma named in her story… and then Bardu asked me what the story was about. I explained to him what Emma told us, and why we wanted to talk to the officers, when Bardu immediately replied, “No, you are not allowed to speak with them to get statements.” And that’s when I had to laugh – these guys were just incredible.

I asked Bardu to talk to us instead, and he made some very general statements about where Emma could go to proceed with her rape and police brutality cases, since they have to be filed at the headquarters in two separate departments: the Women and Children’s Safety Division, and the Professional Standards Division.

Needless to say, we didn’t get much out of those guys, but a part of me was a little bit satisfied at having made their lives a little more difficult by arguing with them.

Mae and I decided to wrap things up at C.O. Three’s office, and right before we left, we told him that we were taking a picture of the front of the station. This is supposedly not allowed for whatever reason, but he didn’t put up a fight with us.

When Mae and I went outside to take the picture, an officer stopped me and asked me for I.D. (I almost didn’t believe him and had to repeat his question) but then he quickly changed track and told us we weren’t allowed to take pictures. When we told him we had gotten C.O. Three’s permission, he said, “Stay right here, I’m going to go check and see if that’s true.” Mae was laughing again at the ridiculousness of the situation – it was just one ludicrous thing after another.

Mae motioned for us to leave when the officer went in the building, but I said, “No, wait, I want to see if he actually comes back outside to tell us not to take pictures.” And she responded, “Ichi, the guy isn’t coming back! You’ll see….”. We stood out front for five minutes and waited, and the officer never came back outside. Mae and I got into the car with Alvin, who was waiting at the side of the road, and we talked about the entire experience just to process everything that had happened in the last hour or so.

We came up with a plan to talk to George Bardu the next day, and get some statistics on child rape from the LNP, as well as a copy of the LNP ethics and rulebook. I wanted to prove that the officers had lied to us about this no talking to the press policy, and we wanted to make sure to include it in the article so there would be no question in anyone’s mind that these guys were hiding something.

To be continued….

Rainy Season from My Balcony

For this post, I’ve decided to go for more of a journal-entry style and delve a little more deeply into a personal perspective on a subject. Most posts describe what I’ve been doing in terms of work/play, and only skim the top on describing how I’m actually feeling. So this is a little experiment… 

~ ~ ~

The West African climate consists of a dry season that lasts for the majority of the year, usually with lots of sun, followed by the rainy season, filled with heavy rainfall and thunderstorms from May to October (which are occasionally highlighted with periods of sun).

Funnily enough, the rainy season here hasn’t felt excessively rainy… in fact, it’s actually been quite lovely. So far, there have been very few times I’ve walked home half soaked in the rain, wearing my flip-flops (because the water soaks through my rain boots, and that’s kind of redundant) and carrying a half-broken umbrella thanks to the force of the weather. The rest of the time, mother nature has been much more gracious…

It’s felt pretty balanced. In the course of a week, on average, we get about 5-6 days of rain — but it’s actually not as terrible as it sounds. Even if it rains or drizzles, most times it doesn’t last all day, let alone several hours. And the weather can change so fast that one minute you are getting lightly rained on or drenched, and the next you are basking in the sun’s equatorial rays. The last two days here have been gorgeous, and it’s caused me to venture out to the small courtyard at the back of the Women’s Campaign International Office during my brief lunch breaks. It looks like a mini garden of Eden right now, with its beautiful cement fence of budding and fully bloomed flowers, and swirling leaf vines.

But mostly, I love to watch the unpredictable sky and the ocean from a distance on my front balcony sofa — it has become my little meditation or zone-out relaxing spot in the evenings, and even late at night when I can’t sleep. (As those closest to me know, I’m a total insomniac and sometimes getting me to go to bed is futile.) When I sit out there, I grab a drink — or my iPod — and light up a cigarette while my mind races through thoughts at the speed of light on the progress of work I’ve been doing here, the new experiences I’ve had so far, my life in New York City, the people I love and what’s next for me…

It’s during these personal musings I began to realize that the recent, constant periods of change between rain, sun, cloudy, clear and everything in between have served as pretty accurate mirrors of my own inner states.

Quite frankly, most times it has been quite satisfying to sit on that couch on the balcony while buckets of water pour down from the sky, with lighting flashing every minute or two, and the rain is so thick and coming down so hard, I can only see the blur of smaller buildings in front of me and nothing more. It feels more than appropriate for those times I’m feeling kind of lost and a little frustrated or sad at the world for being so damn difficult sometimes.

Other days, the sky is a deep blue and the sun makes everything look brand new, and I feel new. I walk to work and see one, sometimes two butterflies dancing over the grass or with each other, (have I mentioned the quantity of butterflies I have seen here so far? There are so many!) and when I get home, I enjoy the faraway view of the waves and listen to the neighbors chat outside. And that’s when I know I’m definitely, without question, in the perfect place right now.

But the truth is — a single day is filled with a complex mixture of these two patterns, going back and forth between the various degrees of extremes. Sometimes, it feels like being on a high-speed merry-go-round with a blindfold on, and the only way to get off safely is to go through the motions without resistance until things slow down on their own. It’s so easy to zone out and think about New York, or my family or countless other things — but lately I’ve been learning how to drag myself back into the present and stay there, even if it feels uncomfortable in the moment.

I’m glad that my time here has been switching between mostly bustling around but still finding the time to sit and center myself; I always feel like I never really have time to do this in New York City, or if I do have the time, I get the feeling I should be using it by keeping busy with something else (usually career-related). As an extra “me” activity, I’ve even started running a few days a week after work. (Wow, going up the UN Drive hill from Waterside that first time was so *hard*!)

Instead of contributing to my boredom on the days it rains too hard, the weather in Monrovia has aided me in taking this much-needed time to explore the powerful hurricane that is my inner self, and discovering that despite the chaotic winds, it is possible to reach moments of stillness.

Walking to or from work, I never know whether I’ll get rained on, or if I’ll be blessed with some sunshine — everyday is a little bit different. And everyday is new.

A Weekend in Gbarnga…

Happy Belated 4th of July, folks!

I know it’s been a while since I last updated, but part of it had to do with me being out of town two weekends ago, followed by Internet troubles at home and in general. I’m back now — and ready to share some more updates! I can’t even tell you how surprising it is to find time just whizzing by here…. I’ve been doing some pretty interesting work, and generally feeling over the moon with the amazing people I’ve been spending time with this summer.

First of all, the weekend of June 24, New Narratives fellow Clara and I went to Gbarnga (three hours out of Monrovia) to get some leads and possible interviews on a story Emily and I heard from one of the expats. We left on Friday to investigate whether young, local prostitutes were sleeping with United Nations workers in exchange for rice and other provisions. Clara has a cousin in Gbarnga , so we asked her if there were any women’s organizations in the area that we could get in touch with that might have caught wind of this happening. In addition to that, we planned to go out at night to try to talk to some of these young women at bars and local nightclubs.

Prostitution in Liberia continues to be a large problem, and is sadly still on the rise. Thanks to scarce educational opportunities and jobs, plus human trafficking, women are forced to sell the most valuable thing they own: their bodies.

It was definitely an interesting venture for many reasons; I expected this story to be extremely hard to prove, and I believed getting a prostitute to talk to us would be pretty difficult — after all, there was no reason for them to trust us at all. But luckily Clara had already done a few stories on the subject (not related to the UN, though), including one with Emily and another fellow, and had figured out a way to get the interviews and conduct them in such a way that established some sort of trust or safety for the women.

So we went out at night with our driver — Alvin — and a companion he found who knew all the local hangouts where these young women would be. The way in which we got the interviews was pretty well thought-out, and had proven successful for Clara’s previous stories: Alvin and the other man (I believe his name is William), acted as “potential clients” and strolled into the bars and hangouts looking for young women who would show an interest in hanging out, thinking they were looking for a good time. When they found a woman to talk to, they would then walk back and tell them that Clara and I just wanted to chat with them for a few minutes in the car. However, the New Narratives car has a clearly marked “press” sign on the windshield corner, so they had an idea of what they would be getting into if they chose. (One thing I found out through this thanks to Clara was that the people here tend to trust the press a little more than people in the U.S. trust their press, so long as you respected them.)

The first young woman to talk to us was a very beautiful 20-something from Sierra Leone, who hopped into the backseat with us and listened quietly as Clara and I introduced ourselves and explained what we were trying to do. We promised that all the girls’ identities would be kept a secret, and that we would only need a snapshot of them from the waist down. However, as Clara continued to talk about the kind of story we were looking to do and why we wanted to talk to her, I noticed an immediate change in her demeanor.

Although the young woman’s large, almond-shaped eyes were completely devoid of negative emotion as she listened raptly, her energy changed drastically in about 40 seconds from somewhat hesitant to completely closed off. I felt waves of discomfort and defensiveness coming off of her body, and I knew before she opened her mouth that she would not comply to an interview.

And my instincts were correct — when it was her turn to speak, she told Clara and I that it’s not something that she does, that she was there with a friend, but that she knew other girls — friends of hers — who are prostitutes, and they would probably be comfortable with talking to us. We let her get out of the car after she chatted with us for a few minutes, and she went back outside and returned to the small crowd of people scattered around the front of the little club. Although I knew we would have plenty of other opportunities to talk to some of these women, I was a little disappointed the Sierra Leonian girl wouldn’t talk with us; I had to wonder at how someone so beautiful and young ended up in such a troubled situation, and I wanted to know about her life.

But Clara and I let things be because it’s normal for the women to lie about what they do — oftentimes, if anyone who isn’t a potential or regular customer asks, they just say they’re out having drinks with their boyfriends or fiancées.

That night there were a few girls who showed an initial interest in talking with Clara and I, but ended up backing out at the last minute. After a few tries, we luckily managed to get an interview with a woman who decided that the story we were looking into was important, and that somebody needed to get the word out, since she felt the government wasn’t really doing anything for the women in her situation. Although a little nervous in the beginning, she was very sweet, answered all of the questions thrown her way, and provided a brief overview of her life. Listening in, I admired her frankness about her life, and the fact that she was supporting her children. And I believe that the interviews we got the next night (we were able to talk to three more women on Saturday) were because she told her companions that the interview wasn’t scary, intrusive or damaging in any way and that we were ok to talk to, and we asked her for a false name to protect her.

To my surprise, our first interview confirmed most of our leads: A group of UN workers definitely come regularly and hire the women for their services — but they don’t pay them in provisions, only in money. I couldn’t believe that we were able to uncover this information pretty much immediately. One of the other girls we talked to even mentioned that the workers in Gbarnga drive to the bars or clubs in the UN cars (an all-white van with large black letters on the sides) and remove their license plates beforehand so they wouldn’t be identified. Suddenly, I remembered seeing one of those vehicles outside the club earlier on in the night, though it was parked outside briefly.

Although the United Nations has had trouble in the past with Peacekeepers hiring prostitutes in the various countries where they are stationed, and they have initiated investigations into such cases, the situation is definitely ongoing, and not just in Liberia.

So now that we’ve gotten the interviews, we are doing some further reporting and looking into talking to more people sometime soon. I’ve been making phone calls to various women’s organizations to figure out if any of these women are being given food or other provisions as well. I’ll let you know as the story unfolds…

On another less serious tangent, I spent most of last week preparing an Intro to Multimedia Journalism Workshop for the reporters at Front Page Africa. Last Friday, I talked for almost three hours about multimedia, new media, social networking, online portfolios, online journalism/reporting tools and more. I don’t know what I would have done if it weren’t for my Interactive I and II classes! It definitely would have taken me forever to figure out what to say/include, and find the materials I needed. In the end, I prepared a five-page hand-out filled with information blurbs on how to start off as a multimedia journalist, plus a list of resources for each topic, and I sent them e-mails on other information before and after the presentation. The journalists were wonderful — they asked many questions, joined in discussions enthusiastically and have even asked for more workshops on other things they’d like help with!

So I will be teaching more in the near-future, going over WordPress with people interested in making their own online portfolios, and doing another workshop on Internet and social network basics for some others. It’s funny, because I never considered myself to be knowledgeable enough about a subject that I could teach it formally. But here it’s different — all the things I learned before and during grad school are completely new here. So it’s interesting to have a different perspective of things, and be in the position of standing in front of a room as opposed to sitting and listening, as I have been for most of my life. It is definitely as rewarding as they say!

One way or another toward the end of the workshop, we got on the topic of copyright law for the Web thanks to someone’s question. I was pretty stumped because Liberia doesn’t have any Web laws about this. Someone helpfully volunteered that if Liberia doesn’t have a written law about an issue, it embraces the U.S. equivalent of it by default. If this is true, then the journalists here are also subject to the Digital Millenium Copyright Act, but the truth is no one is 100 percent certain of this… so that’s something to figure out. Another point someone also made to me in the past is that Liberia’s libel laws aren’t really that clear, if known at all. I thought this was strange — that Liberia has libel laws, but people don’t have access to what they are. I’m going to see if I can do some more digging around on that…

Anyway, on my next update I’ll hopefully be able to tell you more about what I’m going to start working on toward my capstone project. I’m hoping to work out a better focus for it before I start making calls to set up those interviews. Once I do that, it’s going to be a crazy week! I’ll let you guys know about it soon…

Lastly, the National Elections Commission announced yesterday the official presidential candidates for this fall’s elections. There are something like 22 registered political parties! I’ve been trying to look for all of the information online, but it’s hard to find right now, seeing as the main local news coverage has been on the stronger candidates. I think that more information will be trickling in real soon. Rodney at Front Page Africa has asked me to do a little project for the elections, so I’m thinking of doing a Flash presentation on the main candidates. Once I have all of the information available, I’ll be starting on it at the end of the week. It’s been a little while since I’ve done a Flash project, so I’m happy I’ll get to do something creative.

Before I sign out for the night, let me just say one more thing: the 4th of July in Liberia is definitely the silliest celebration of Independence Day I’ve had so far. A simple get-together next door at Sasha and Erica’s turned into a room full of almost 30 people with chicken, pumpkin, beans, corn bread, a cake with red, white and blue layers (which Sasha and I hoped wouldn’t mix as it baked!), and of course, lots of Savannahs. Someone also had the brilliant idea of printing out a copy of the Declaration of Independence and reading it out loud, and we all had the pleasure of taking a hearty gulp of our drinks whenever we heard words like “freedom,” “liberty,” etc. Even without the fireworks, what a lovely night…

My First Weekend Out of Monrovia…

Last weekend, my new friends (a handful of interns) and I decided to head up to Robert’s Port. I didn’t know much about the place and wondered if the weather would be good enough to escape to the beach there for a couple days, until someone told me, “It doesn’t matter if it’s raining — just go! It’s still worth it, and it’s absolutely gorgeous there. You’ll see what I mean…”. Well, whoever told me that was absolutely right. I had a wonderful time exploring the beach and the local town, sitting on the sand and watching the waves, chatting over drinks, sunbathing (whenever the sun managed to peak out of the clouds) and dancing the night away with my friends in front of the ocean. (Usually there’s no music all night — we just got lucky that weekend thanks to some Lebanese friends of ours who brought a DJ with them that weekend!)

Now, I fully intend on returning to Robert’s Port at least once before I head back to New York City. If anyone’s interested in some basic background information, The New York Times wrote an article about this place earlier last year. And if you’d like a better idea of what the beaches there look like, check out the photos I took! I had to make a Soundslides for this one…
http://digitalstoragespace.com/11/caplanmonday/vazquez_ichi/Soundslides/RobertsPort/soundslider.swf?size=1&format=xml&embed_width=500&embed_height=400

Waterside Market

Sadly, FlickrSlidr doesn’t work properly with WordPress, so I can’t put up a slideshow of the pictures I’ve posted on Flickr. However, last week I mentioned I had gone exploring around Waterside Market. Here’s a link to the set on my Flickr account… enjoy!

Brainstorming and Surfing…

Wow — what a crazy past few days it’s been! A whirlwind of events and new ideas have been thrown around since the last time I posted, so I kind of don’t even know where to start. It seems as though every skill I know will have to be put to good use this coming week, because there are already a few fascinating and challenging projects that I will have to execute either alone or as a team.

First of all, things at New Narratives have picked up drastically. Between coordinating with the fellows and sitting down with Emily to come up with good story ideas and thinking about what I’d like to do for my capstone project, I’ve felt a little scattered — which normally happens when there are many great ideas, but I don’t know which one to start following up on first.

Last week, Emily and I had a few brainstorm sessions, and even when we weren’t working at the Women’s Campaign International Office, we were discussing possible stories while having drinks in our downtime. On Wednesday, we sat at a place called Rasta Bar overlooking the beach just further down the road from Cape Hotel. That night, there was a full moon eclipse, and the sky was almost completely clear save for a few clouds that occasionally covered the moon, which looked like an oversized, red balloon. It was so mesmerizing, whatever conversations were being carried between us and our friends would be punctuated with periods of silence, and everyone would just gaze upwards, lost in silent contemplation.

I remember thinking to myself, “What am I doing here? I can’t believe I’m here. I’m sitting on this beach, listening to the sound of the ocean while having a beer, discussing what stories I’m going to go chase after in this strange, wonderful, troubled country, and I’m surrounded by all these sweet, hard-working people who are doing amazing things here… this is surreal.” It’s kind of felt like that for a while now, and it’s only been two weeks!

To get back to our conversation, amongst some of the ideas we thought about for stories were: a NN story about prostitutes being paid in rice — but that’s only half the interesting part; the main focus of the story is on the actual clients! More about that later… Then there’s an idea I thought of to kickstart what I might want to do for my capstone project, which is the current state of ex-combatants in Liberia: What are they up to now, eight years after the war (or World War III, as they call it around here)? Why have some ex-combatants reintegrated into society better than others who are still stealing or living on the street? I’d also like to tie in any reform or rehabilitation programs ex-combatants participated in, such as UN Disarmament Demobilization and Reintegration (UNDDR), and see if this and other programs were a factor in helping ex-combatants live normal lives again. Right now, my idea is extremely broad and is going to take a lot of thinking and pre-reporting to figure out what my main angle will be. I’ve already commenced some of this work, and there’s still more to come!

Workwise, this week has filled up pretty quickly. Yesterday, I had my first several interviews with ex-combatants. It came as a surprise, because the woman who helped me find the interviews called me very suddenly today without warning to say that she had lined up seven people for me to talk to. Initially that included two female ex-combatants, but they backed out at the last moment and I only talked to younger men. The woman’s name is Camila, and she works for an organization called Innovation for Poverty Action. She was able to arrange those interviews for me because essentially, her main job for the organization is to interview ex-combatants, so she knows many of them and details of their lives. Although we had sat down to discuss setting up interviews last week over lunch, it was not certain what day she would get in touch with me.

Doing interviews with ex-combatants can be extremely tricky, and often times risky, depending on where you hold the interview. Risk factor aside, they are usually not quick to just tell you anything you want; you must give them something back for their trouble, usually in the form of money (for transportation and effort) or food — very preferably money. This is the way things work around here. Although this would normally call journalism ethics into question in places like the U.S., Liberia is an exception for the mere fact that many researchers, students and reporters have swooped into the country to talk to ex-combatants and locals about the war. It is not particularly pleasant to recount and retell their stories, there is a general sense of expectation to see some sort of results on whatever you are working on (naturally), and at times people have not complied with this — they have just gotten the information they needed and left. Also, even if an ex-combatant is living a stable life with a family and an odd job, the country’s economy is still in recovery. With an unemployment rate over 50%, most people will accept (and ask for) any kind of help.

I met Camila at a place called Red Light around Gbachop Market, where we followed a young man riding his pepe (motorbike) to a ghetto neighborhood. She told me not to bring anything valuable with me, so I left my phone, my wallet and only brought my Marantz recorder and my camera. The seven young men I ended up talking to were very young — ages 14 to 24. However, the venture ended up not being that successful, as the boys were reluctant to talk. I expected that it would be hard, and by the second interview knew I would have to come back. Out of the seven, only two admitted they were recruited as soldiers, and the rest lied and said they were only witnesses to violence. I knew this wasn’t true because Camila knew all of the boys and was informed on the details of their recruitment and familiar with their stories. But I didn’t push it, because I knew it would not be useful and it would close them off even more. I made things as conversational as possible but stayed silent when they talked, paid rapt attention to what they said and repeated questions consistently to see if I could get different answers. It worked for some; a couple of boys began to give me contradictory information, but then they would go back to denying their involvement in the war.

It was also hard because there wasn’t really that much privacy. I interviewed the boys in a small shed where people normally kept some wood, but it had wired windows, so little children would walk by then come over out of curiosity, peering in through the mesh and watching me conduct the interviews with this strange machine I was holding.

But I know this is going to take time. Some people are happy with volunteering information, and others aren’t. And I’m still learning how to create trust in these situations, especially being a foreigner and only here for a certain period of time. (I’m quickly beginning to learn, however, that you need a lot more than two months to learn the ropes around here…)

I will write more about this project in another post, because I am currently in talks with some people at the National Ex-Combatant Peacebuilding Initiative (NEPI) to help guide me with research, interviews and getting some general advice so I can be as courteous as possible throughout the process.

On Friday I am going to give the reporters at Front Page Africa an “Intro to Multimedia Journalism” workshop. Emily and I sat down with the Editor-in-Chief of the daily paper, Rodney Sieh, and he explained that he had a hard time getting his reporters to so much as use their e-mail. He wanted to introduce new tools to them to begin using in their work, and encourage them to become more technology fluent in order to help with their reporting and improving the newspaper. I’m very excited for the opportunity to do this, and also a little nervous since it will be the first workshop I teach. It’s a great thing my Interactive I and II classes came in handy and I kept almost all the materials from these courses! I’ve been outlining a rough plan for what I’d like to cover with what tools the reporters have available, so I’m hoping it’ll be good and they enjoy it and take something from it.

There’s so so much more to write about, but I’ll have to save it for another post! I went to Robert’s Port — a well-known surfing and tourist attraction — last weekend with a group of friends, and had the most wonderful time! Of course I went picture crazy again, so I’ll see what I can do to put them up. The ocean current was pretty strong on Saturday and I was being pulled deeper into the water than I wanted to, so I learned how to surf a little bit on Sunday instead. More pictures to come soon!

 

Settling In…

“Forget safety. Live where you fear to live. Destroy your reputation. Be notorious.” — Rumi

It’s day 5 and I’m starting work tomorrow with New Narratives, and yet, so much has happened in the past few days! Between meeting even more expats that I ever imagined, moving into my room, impromptu nights out over beers, and being whisked away to a night club, I have to say that I’ve had one heck of an introduction to a city that is becoming more and more familiar by the day. I can’t say that I’ve seen everything yet, but I am definitely beginning to slowly make my way around on my own, and I’ve even had a chance to talk to some locals around my neighborhood (Mamba Point).

First there’s George, one of the security guards of my building. He’s a very sweet, laid back guy who’s working toward a computer technology degree in his spare time. One day I wanted to go to Cape Hotel when the wifi in the apartment was down, and instead of giving me directions (which is what I expected), he got up and led me on a 10 minute walk down the hill to show me the way. And as he dropped me off in the front of the hotel, he said, “If you need anything, just let me know. One day you want to go and see more things, I’ll show you all around Monrovia!” And then he left cheerfully. I smiled and thanked him, touched by his kindness. The curious thing is that mostly everyone I’ve met so far is this welcoming.

Another security guard, Emmanuel, is currently in high school and is interested in economics. We spent a good while sitting on the balcony outside my apartment talking about politics, the future of Liberia, President Obama and elections in the U.S. and here. So far, the best thought-provoking  or revealing conversations I’ve had these days have happened spontaneously with both locals and expats. This is definitely my favorite thing about being here so far, and it’s allowed me to get in touch with the local mentality as well as the problems people currently face in the country. One person I met at a dinner party one night, a French expat who has lived here for over a year, put it in a nutshell by calling Liberia “Sweet Hell.” While there are definitely beautiful things about this country and the people here, it is a place that is inevitably filled with many problems and frustrations, particularly those working at various NGOs trying to push the country forward. I’m sure I’ll be able to delve a little more deeply into this and explain it better once I start doing some real reporting…

On Friday evening, I was invited to dinner by some friends next door, both of whom arrived in Liberia around the same time I did. We took a cab to Sinkor, and ended up meeting some people at an Ethiopian restaurant. The staff had to put three tables together to sit us all near each other (someone from the group knew Harvard graduate students working for various ministries here for the summer and they all came out to meet us). It was a lovely night — we all bonded over great food, good conversation and Savannah cider, which has quickly become most people’s favorite drink of choice. (In truth, the only other beer options around in most places are Heineken and Club beer, the local brew).

Without much planning, a few of us found ourselves at a bar called Red Lion. For those of you teasing me endlessly about possibly being the only Puerto Rican in Liberia, I now have the pleasure of proving this theory completely false! Not only did I meet a whole group of Latin Americans at Red Lion, but Friday night at this place was actually salsa night! Yes — you heard me! I walked in, not quite believing what I saw: locals and expats sitting around the bar in big couches, crowds at the bar, and on the far corner of the place was a little dance floor. I was greeted with the unmistakable sounds of salsa (and bachata) music, while various couples with different dance levels glided across the floor. That night, I met an enthusiastic latino who literally marched me around the entire bar and introduced me to different people — Argentinians, Venezuelans, Colombians, Guatemalans… all here for various reasons doing all sorts of work in the country, including law enforcement.

Saturday definitely turned out to be the most interesting day by far. The hilarious cleaning lady next door, Mabel, and my neighbor Erica and I walked all the way through Waterside Market, a pretty long walk from our apartment. We were out for around 5 hours just looking at shoes, fabrics, beauty supplies, women’s and men’s clothing, and pretty much anything you could think of. Mabel acted as our guide, and watched over us as we passed through the busy streets of sellers, table stands, shoppers and people just sitting around passing the time by. I brought my camera with me, and it immediately got attention, as I suspected it would. A couple of vendors wanted me to take pictures of them (I obliged for some of them, but not everyone) and showed them pictures. One group of particularly funny men burst out laughing when I showed them the silly picture I took of them, and they began to clap happily. All I could do was laugh myself and say thank you to them, and keep on walking forward. We ended our long walk with some drinks after we left the market, and we parted with Mabel after she saw us off in a taxi. With this story, it’s best if I just explain it in pictures — and I took many of them! I’ll try my best to post them as soon as possible. It all depends on the internet connection, which comes and goes around here since it is satellite streamed.

Although it was raining later, my friends and I decided to go to a housewarming party. Another young woman named Emily had been working in the country for a while, and just recently moved into a new apartment with her boyfriend. Most of the people I met on Friday night were there, and there were also some new faces I hadn’t seen yet. I spent a couple of hours just talking and hanging out (with Lady Gaga, Drake and Rihanna blasting in the background). All of a sudden, a song that sounded almost identical to Jay Z’s “Empire State of Mind” came on, except that the rapping part sounded a little more different than I remembered. I ask a new Liberian friend called Mamu what this song was, and he grinned at my confused expression and explained that this song wasn’t about New York City — it was about Liberia. Sure enough, when the chorus rolled around, I heard, “L – IIII!!”

The entire room of expats were grouped together in the living room waving their hands in the air, dancing and laughing, singing along to a Liberian cover of “Empire State of Mind,” a tribute to the country they currently lived in. That made me laugh for a while…

Sometime after midnight, the word came around that people were leaving to go dance at a nightclub nearby called Deja Vu. I was almost ready to call it a night, but something made me change my mind at the last minute. It was my third day… I had to live a little, right? So I got into a ride with another woman I met — her name is Zayda. My neighbor Sasha had introduced us because Zayda was also Puerto Rican (see? I told you!) and they were co-workers at the Ministry of Health.

Dancing that night was pretty epic. I believe at one point, I looked around at my group of new friends and everyone had these ecstatic, silly looks on their faces, and we were all dancing like mad to Tiesto’s remix of “I Got A Feelin,” and “Dynamite.”

All in all, it was a great way to break the ice and integrate a little better into life here. Although the weekend was a wonderful flurry of events, get-togethers and exploring, I’m excited to get to work and do some reporting with the fellows, who I’m hoping to see tomorrow at the office. I’ll keep you all posted on the stories we decide to work on. I will definitely be doing more exploring around the city! In the meantime, here are some photos of the view from my apartment, and other nearby sites just to give you all an idea of where I live.

Although it’s rainy season, the weather has been merciful with us so far, even if it has rained and stormed a few times already. Hopefully we’ll continue to get some more sun this month even if it is periodically interrupted with rain! But just to get an idea of how beautiful it truly is around here, I’ve managed to upload a few photos (before the internet crashed, hahaha) so enjoy!

http://www.flickr.com/slideShow/index.gne?group_id=&user_id=35400089@N06&set_id=72157626828865595&text=
Created with Admarket’s flickrSLiDR.

Corrections: In my last entry, I mentioned that while buying credit for my phone, the young Liberian men refused to accept my $20 bill because it was a newer bill. However, it is actually the other way around: the bills with the smaller pictures of President Jackson are actually older, and the ones with the larger, oversized pictures are newer.

Rules for Communication

Insights from a friendly and very funny Latin American named Dennis:

 

If you want to talk to a man, speak in German

If you want to talk to a woman, speak in French

If you want to talk to God, speak in Spanish.

 

 

Welcome to Monrovia – Part II

What can I say about Liberia so far? I’ve been here less than 24 hours, but already I’ve been making a few amusing mental notes. For one, even though American currency is accepted widely here, there are certain bills that Liberians won’t accept, even if they are real. I had this experience while trying to purchase some credit for my new SIM card. I handed a man $20 — a newer version of the bill with a much smaller picture of President Andrew Jackson. He looked at the bill strangely, then he looked up at me and said, “This ain’t real!” I laughed and showed him the watermark that proved it was real currency and not a fake. That’s when another young man stepped in and told me that even if it was real, it wouldn’t be accepted in other places, because people are used to the appearance of older bills. So he asked if I had the $20 bill Liberians are used to seeing, with the oversized picture. Emily, who was standing with me this entire time, was also grinning and told me that even she didn’t know about that. I gave the man the $20 bill he wanted, and then took the credit to add to my phone.

To continue where I left off last time, the drive to Monrovia was breathtaking — there is lush greenness everywhere, and when we got to the capital, the view of the ocean stunned me. (Monrovia is on a peninsula, surrounded by the Atlantic Ocean on one side and the Mesurado River on the other.) Liberia has a population of over 3,700,000 people, 80% of whom live below poverty level. Despite the poverty levels, this place has a strange charm that I cannot quite put my finger on. Maybe it’s the people bustling about; the women with buckets of water or oversized baskets of food balanced expertly on their heads, or the men sitting in corners selling phone credit cards, drinks or other goods. Or maybe it’s the friendliness of the locals and the expats I’ve encountered so far, or the children running around playing games. Whatever it is, I’m happy to be here.

Emily and Alvin drove me to my apartment after a quick stop at the headquarters of Front Page Africa, a well-known newspaper in the country. I’m living in a building called OSIWA, located at walking distance from the U.S. Embassy as well as Women’s Campaign International, which is where the New Narratives fellows meet on most days to do their work during the week.

The apartment I’m staying at is lovely — it has a spacious living room with several couches and seats, a dining table, kitchen, cable and AC. And the room I have has a view of rooftop buildings and the sea at a distance, my own bathroom, a dresser, a desk and a large, comfy looking bed. Right now, I haven’t been able to accommodate my things because there’s someone still living there, but they are moving out this weekend. In the meantime, I’m crashing on the couch and any place with an extra bed, and taking my time in getting settled in.The crazy part of all this is that I’m going to be living in the same room as the journalist I met on Staten Island a couple of months back, while doing an assignment for my international reporting class! The photojournalist — Glenna — called me up a couple of weeks before I left the city and asked me if I could take some extra SLR batteries to a friend of hers in Monrovia. I gladly obliged, and she also included a card for me to give to two other friends of hers — who turned out to be my roommates! At the time, I had no idea where I would be living. All I knew was that  I would be living with other people, and that’s about it. I can’t help but smile at little coincidences like this…

Today, I met three of the seven fellows I’ll be working with, and one of them — Fabine — took me on a tour of Radio Veritas, one of the radio stations located at a church. I had a great time getting to know her during our brief hang out. Initially, I was supposed to meet all the fellows today, but many of them turned out to be pretty busy, so I’m guessing I’ll convene with them again sometime soon.

Part of today’s adventures consisted of riding a motorbike taxi with Fabine. Around here, they’re apparently called “suicide bombers,” because a lot of them drive so recklessly fast, it’s common to get hurt during a ride. And here in Monrovia, there are no traffic lights — just people stopping at cross-streets to let each other pass, or if they’re less patient, speeding up to get by or going around cars that are stuck in the middle of the street. It was more fun than dangerous, though, since our driver didn’t seem to be the reckless crazy type, and we passed by some of the main roads filled with shops and outdoor markets.

This weekend, Emily and a small handful of people are going to be in Sierra Leone, so I’m going to take the time to walk around here with my camera and do some exploring on my own. I can’t wait! Pictures coming soon, I promise…

All my love,

Ichi