I never cease to be amazed at how much time people spend waiting.

Post title from Jezebel. Love it! I took this photo on Monday when snapping the Yellow Fever vaccination campaign. A lot of the shots I got from the day are pretty typical and expected, but this girl’s expression helps set the image apart from the others.  The uniforms also really set the scene. They’re standard fare here, but look almost smarmy to outside viewers.

This is the largest ever round of yellow fever vaccinations, for about 12 million people, was launched today in Liberia, Benin and Sierra Leone. Three million Liberians will be vacinated in the next ten days during a massive public health campaign sponsored by the World Health Organisation (WHO), UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF), and others. About 30,000 people die every year from the viral disease, which is carried by mosquitoes. Its most virulent form can kill more than 50 percent of those infected.

Sometimes they don’t seem so little.

Hassan is a Fula man from Guinea who has lived most of his life in Liberia. He drives me almost everywhere in a yellow taxi cab. His old cab had these ducks on the dashboard. The windshield was cracked, and only some of the windows went down as it rattled about town. He’s upgraded to a nicer taxi, which is probably good safety wise, but I miss the ducks.

Along with partner in all things Pulitzer Center, Jina Moore, I’ve got a story up on the Foreign Policy website about the “copyrighted” law in Liberia. It’s just as crazy as it sounds:

[Philip] Banks [the former Minister of Justice and current head of Law Reform] led a team of lawyers, a group called the Liberia Law Experts, to codify the country’s newest laws. The project, which picked up where an earlier pro bono effort by late Cornell University professor Milton Konvitz had left off, won just over $400,000 in funding from the U.S. Department of Justice (DoJ), according to e-mail exchanges between Banks and key legal players, obtained by Foreign Policy. Konvitz had codified laws up to 1978, just before Liberia plunged into 20 years of sporadic conflict. Those volumes list the copyright as belonging to the government of Liberia.

Defending himself in an interview with FP on Oct.27, Banks says he numbered, bound, and indexed the newer laws — intellectual work that he claims as his original property. Without his efforts, he claims, Liberia’s laws would exist only in loose-leaf pamphlets and would likely be lost. Banks says the DoJ funding wasn’t enough to cover his costs. So when DoJ declined to give him more, he asserted a claim of copyright on the work, according to an explanation of the issue he sent by e-mail to a justice sector consultant in 2006. It’s a claim he has appeared willing to relinquish several times for sums between $150,000 and $360,000, according to the e-mail exchanges, which were obtained by FP.

But Banks sees the copyright as an altogether different tool. “These are resources that you’ve had to expend in putting all of this together, and the question is, should you be compensated? I hold the view that you should,” he asserted in his interview with FP. “And for folks that have said, no you shouldn’t, I’ve said to them, go and get your loose-leaf.” DoJ, meanwhile, couldn’t find records of its agreement with Banks, but a spokesperson says it would be “highly unusual” for the department to have agreed to let Banks retain the copyright.

Read the whole thing here.

When I first started working as a journalist, I really hoped my stories would change something. After being disappointed again and again when things didn’t change, I simply stopped hoping for that as a result and instead focused on the importance of reporting – regardless of any kind of outcome.

And now I find myself, several years later, hoping that a story might change something. Fingers crossed that sometime next year, Liberian lawyers might actually argue, you know, law.

Last week, Duckrabbit posted on A Developing story:

Journalists in developing countries are often very poorly paid. Many of them have second jobs. Photojournalists especially struggle because of the cost of equipment. Up until recently many NGO’s and the western media have ignored local photographers, spending a lot of money on sending their own photographers to shoot stories. The end result is that many local photojournalists just can’t make enough to survive and either hang up their camera or try to make a living in another field of photography (like fashion). That’s disastrous for democracy because it means there is no local talent turning the lens on corruption and human rights abuses.

I once wrote to the photo editor of a very large international NGO that I greatly admire. I wanted to know why they never used local photographers in Africa and I got the rather disappointing reply that it was because:

1. They didn’t know any

2. That local photographers might not be able to deliver exactly what the NGO wants

Of course they won’t be able to deliver if they never get any commissions, which means they don’t have any money, which means they are never able to develop their talents. Its a vicious circle.

I responded in the comments section, and this is something I’m still thinking about.

Part of the problem here is how NGOs think about photography. Many of them think of it not as something that should happen regularly to document changes, continuity, or community, but something they want to spend a wad of cash on once or twice a year and use in big PR campaigns. The latter model necessitates an international photographer to produce the kind of slick images – often on a very very tight time line where there’s no room for a learning curve – that the NGO wants. I think if NGOs used media more regularly, took photos, say, once a week, rather than once a year, they’d be able to give local photojournalists the kind of practice and experience they need to eventually take the slick photos. And they’d have surprising and wonderful results that are serendipitous in addition to the kind of images you need a skilled photographer to make.

Meanwhile, last week I trained a handful of local photographers with the support of UNICEF.

Going into this, I knew that there won’t be many opportunities for these guys to make a lot of money off of their photography anytime soon. A bit of training can help a lot, but without the fancy equipment or know how to get NGO contracts, most people won’t be knocking at their door. I hope that they can make better images for the newspapers they work for. There’s a local market that’s eager for images too – there aren’t a lot of postcards in Liberia, local magazines always need images, and businesses need product shots.

This is Bill E. Diggs. He did more with a point and shoot camera than I’ve seen lots of people do with a dSLR. He wants to do more – practice more, use different equipment, work more. But, he’s still going to college while already freelancing at a local paper. Like so many people in Liberia, he’s just gettin’ by.

This is a photo Bill took during the workshop. It’s pretty great, I think, and shows that Bill has a lot of potential. Later today, I’ll be teaching another workshop through UNICEF – this one for kids. Bill’s going to help me out and try out playing with UNICEF’s dSLR. I’m excited to see what kind of images he’ll make – and the kids too. Stay tuned.

“I promise you that today, TODAY, you are going to see George Weah!” the public relations officer said to me while driving around the outskirts of Monrovia in a beat up yellow taxi.

During the thirty or forty minute drive, he probably said this about thirty or forty times. PRO, we’ll call him, works for the CDC, Geogre Weah’s political party. I’d met him a week or two earlier when I stopped by the headquarters. Since then, we’d spoken on the phone half a dozen times to arrange what turned out to be this very car ride.

Weah was in Monrovia to support the CDC’s candidate during a somewhat impromptu feeling senate race to fill the open seat for Monrovia’s district after the previous senator had died.

I don’t remember hearing about a senator dying, or plans for elections, but all of the sudden a few weeks ago the streets were plastered with political posters. People were wearing brand new tshirts stamped with candidates faces and logos. My favorite slogan was, “You know it works.” Pick up trucks with megaphones seemed to be talking about politics instead of the usual cell phone promotions or amplified public drunkenness.

I wanted to see Weah out some sort of curiosity. I’m not a big soccer fan, but this man is more than soccer to Liberia. I was also pretty sure I could send some photos to a newswire, and quickly got confirmation from an editor in Abijan that he was interested.

So the phone calls between me and the PRO began. Times were set, times were cancelled. Promises were made, promises were broken. When I finally got so frustrated with him that I told him he wasn’t doing a very good job of “public relations”, he hung up on me. Then he called me back a minute later and said we could go, but only if we went right then.

And so I found myself heading out to George Weah’s house. With a very enthusiastic PRO.

“Geogre Weah is the king of Liberia! If he say to Liberia, ‘lay down,’ they will lay down!” the PRO told me with pride. “I promise you that today, TODAY, you will see George Weah! You are with me so you have to see George Weah TODAY.”

When we drove past the Governance Commission, the PRO belted out, “That Amos Saywer! He eating all the money!” (Amos Sawyer is one of the more respected members of the political elite in Liberia.)  When we drove past a new hotel, he said, “Ellen built that hotel and when George Weah is President, we will seize this building for the people!”

Closer to George Weah’s house in a neighborhood called ELWA, just past Rehab Junction (no relation drug problems) he said, “Everyone wants to live here because this is where George Weah lives!”

At his compound, at first I was requested to “wait small” since George Weah was resting. “You will see George Weah today!” and then in quickly became clear I wouldn’t see him at all. Having now wasted several hours, taxi fare, and way too much phone credit, and would soon disappoint my editor, I was, as the PRO called me, “vexed.”

“You can wait! You will see George Weah today!” I refused to wait, and got ready to leave. The PRO seemed personally insulted. He gave me back my business card. I accepted. I think this was supposed to be symbolic, but I’m not sure of what.

Voting yesterday was apparently as disorganized as my trip to see George Weah. Ballots were missing, polling stations closed, and people unsure of when to vote. The results of the elections have still not been announced, but I’m told they will be announced TODAY.

This week, I’m teaching a workshop to “build photographic capacity,” whatever that means. The first bit is easy – showing someone the difference between taking photos only at eye level and bending down or getting up on a chair makes an immediate difference in the resulting image.

We’ll see how the next few steps go, though.

The hardest thing is communicating the idea that you have to spend a lot of time working at taking pictures before you actually take good pictures. And a lot of time in one place, working on one story. Everyone in the workshop wants to do that, but wanting to do that and having the resources to do that are two very different things.