Photographer, writer, reporter. Going through life with an eye towards creating records and histories.
On the roof a a friend’s house in Nakasero, Kampala back in 2006, I went through a crate of discarded items he and a few other artists had gathered. On that day, I was looking for something, and I found the lion. Something about the hollowed out, paint chipped toy appealed to my understanding of this amazing continent: I’d never seen a real lion, after all.
Previously based in Uganda, currently in Liberia. Always roaming. This blog provides curiosities, commentary, and photos.
Vice has a new documentary out about Liberia. It’s getting lots of buzz around the web, and a few people have emailed me to ask what I think of it. The truth is that I haven’t seen it. Thanks to a very, very, very sloooooow interent connection I can only read what people are saying about it rather than form my own opinion.
So, is this a straightforward case of overprivleged westerners making fun of the poor, a contemptible piece of exoticism? I think the filmmakers see themselves doing something different: showcasing the strange culture collisions that occur in a world as interconnected as ours… Something about the VBS documentaries – the high quality of production, the unfamiliarity of the subject matter, the narrative of “adventure” rather than history – is generating a lot of buzz. As much as I want to object to the VBS video, which sensationalizes, uses historical footage with little context, and is a classic example of parachute psuedo-journalism, I have to admit that it’s a compelling piece of storytelling and that it caught my attention. Rather than critiquing it, I’m interested in picking it apart and starting to understand what makes it work. What could documentary filmmakers learn from VBS to generate a wider audience for their work? Is it possible to broaden your audience without playing to their desire to see something shocking and outrageous? Is it acceptable to use shock and outrage to get people to pay attention to parts of the world they know and care little about?
The field coordinator for the project was friend and colleague Myles Estey. He writes a bit about it on his blog Esteyonage, a frequent link-ee and definitely worth reading, here. Frankly, the Vice guys were lucky to have Myles working on this project. With the caveat again that I haven’t yet seen the film, I’m guessing that the input Myles provided makes Ethan’s questions harder to answer and keep the film from being outright sensationalism.
Myles tells me he’s getting a copy mailed to him in Monrovia and I’m hoping we’ll sit down and watch it in the coming weeks – as the generator flickers and heroine addicts and rebel warlords roam the streets terrorizing Liberia’s tentative peace! Okay, not really. My house is in a nice neighborhood and there’s a tea shop outside where I buy eggs every morning, there are always kids playing, and people bring chairs and benches and gather round in the evenings to watch movies and football games.
Mo’dernity, Mo’Problems: When I say this is an awesome blog, I’m not at all biased in that judgement by the fact that the blogger is my brother. In fact, I think that gives me all the more license to proclaim his blog crappy, but thankfully I don’t have to because it’s actually incredibly entertaining and insightful. I’m mainly writing this here so that he is shamed into continuing to blog. If you have any doubts about my proclamations, check out some African political science porn, and if that doesn’t get you going, this absolutely will. Even if you’re on ridiculously low bandwidth, I promise that the six hours this video takes to buffer will be worth it.
Rachel in Goma: Formerly in Kitgum, Rachel is now in Goma, transcribing daily life with a quiet sensitivity and refreshing lack of cynicism, at least for my cynical self. Her epic journey back to the USA for Christmas reminds me of all too many flights that are much too long, and her bit on lake gas and her small boat will make anyone want to buy a Ndege-Samaki.
This is Africa: Once you’ve left Rachel’s uncynical land and are looking for a good dose of mockery and perhaps even some lampooning, head over to Chris’s blog. While things called This is Africa usually make me cringe, I’ll forgive him and pretend it’s called Postcard Junky, since that’s what the URL says anyway. Worth your time because it’s always worth your time read people making fun of bad foreign correspondence or see mercenary travel guides, complete with cupcake car pictures.
Check out two cool new photo projects that help break down stereotypes and display more than your standard poverty porn. I also really like that both projects eschew the whole bad news/good news debate.**
The first is Africa Knows (HT: White African) that is a huge databank of the kind of images you can’t find anywhere else – everyday people, living every day lives.
The second is as much a sociology project as a photography project: Middle Class in Africa looks at who the middle class are and what their (usually unseen) lives look like. HT Afrique in Visu.
**More thoughts on this one of these days, but a quick question for all those who complain about all the “bad news” about Africa in the media – when was the last time you read good news in the media about Guatemala? And yes, I do know that Africa is a continent and Guatemala is not, but my point is that most of the media is made up of telling sad stories and bad news.
Deborah Solomon interviews President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf in this week’s New York Times Magazine. I took the photo, which involved carrying a whole lot of equipment up six flights of stairs since the elevator was broken.
The President was very cordial, and amused that a working photographer lives in Monrovia rather than zips in to town to take her picture. I told her how I’d met her in Kigali, in 2007, and she smiled, and thanked me for working in Liberia.
When Chris Blattman was last in Liberia, we talked about blogs. And Kindles and enumerators and a lot of other things too, but also a lot about blogs. He was just about to launch his new site christblattman.com and was looking for a header image.
I pulled out my laptop and started flipping through files of images. I asked him what kind of thing he was looking for. He wasn’t sure, he said.
But, no children.
And, no Africans dancing.
No problem, I said. I have tons of photos of all kinds of things, and since most of his research coincidentally takes place in the two countries where I’ve spent the most time, this would work out nicely. As I scrolled through some thumbnails, he stopped and pointed to one of them and asked to see it full size.
And speaking of going dot com, next week I’ll be launching ScarlettLion.com. Stay tuned for more info. It’s been fun a fun lion sex filled run, blogspot, but it’s time for me to go dot com.
Former warlord and current Liberian Senator Prince Johnson. Copyright Glenna Gordon/AFP
It’s not often that Liberia is in the news, but this week, it is. Here’s a best of:
Myles Estey attends a press conference with the most warlords in one room EVER
Shelby Grossman figures out a few of the differences between the originally released TRC report and the revised version. Read more about this on VOA.
Ceasefire Liberia, a cool project that’s connecting Liberians in Staten Island with this side of the Atlantic, has a few posts on the TRC report
The Independent publishes a story called The plot to oust Liberia’s leading lady. I think this story makes this sound way more conspiracy-esque than it is, but it’s a good blow-by-blow read.
Prince Johnson on Charles Taylor’s conversion to Judaism and how he’s not looking back because Jesus didn’t look back. An exclusive interview on Foreign Policy, straight to you from Scarlett Lion HQ. More on this later, but if you were wondering what I was waiting for, this is it.
Tim Hetherington showcases more amazing images from Liberia, this time of all too telling graffiti called the Walls Speak
Chris Blattman points out there are never just angles or demons in politics
Time.com runs a story that points out all of this will probably not dent President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf’s reputation. Also from Scarlett Lion HQ.
“An open letter to the parasites I managed to pick up in West Africa this summer,” from McSweeney’s:
Anyhoo, just wanted to let you know there are no hard feelings over your unwanted breach of my lower tract. Aside from the occasional cold and a sinus infection once in high school, I’ve never actually had a real disease before, and I think this counts. Well done. This way, at cocktail parties for the rest of my life (or at least until something better comes along), I’ll be able to nonchalantly mention that bout of hookworms I had in West Africa once. People will be intrigued by the suggestion of exotic adventures in my past. They’ll think I’m very interesting and want to be my friends. It might go something like this:
STRANGER AT A COCKTAIL PARTY: These shrimp croquettes are a little overcooked, don’t you think?
ME: Obviously you’ve never dealt with a case of intestinal parasites in post-conflict West Africa!
In just nine hours Guinea Bissau had lost both it president and the head of its army. Why so much violence? Was this double assassination the result of an old rivalry between Vieira and Tagme, or was it something more? The army’s spokesman, Zamora Induta, declared that the president had been killed by a group of renegade soldiers and that assailants using a bomb had assassinated General Tagme. He said there is no connection between the two deaths. Of course, nobody believed that this was so.
And if this is all making you salivate over the thought of heading to West Africa, here’s a job you can apply for, via my brother Grant’s blog Mo’dernity, Mo’problems:
The RA will manage a large quantitative survey of the impact of paralegals in prisons and police stations in Sierra Leone as implemented by a local NGO, Timap for Justice. The evaluation is funded by the Open Society Justice Initiative (www.justiceinitiative.org/) and administered by the Centre for the Study of African Economies (www.csae.ox.ac.uk) The nationwide survey will be spread across 15 – 20 sites and will require that the RA spend a significant part of time per month at field sites throughout the country. In addition the RA will perform a variety tasks including: managing survey teams, cleaning and analyzing data, coordinating with local partners, and ensuring the successful execution of the evaluation.
(And just putting this out there, but working a job like this will likely involve way more cute kids than assassination. And more statistics than cute kids. And definitely enough parasites to be fascinating.)
As donor enthusiasm for Liberia wanes, as it inevitably will, the presence of international development groups will fade. Their trademark large, white SUVs that have become a staple to the roads of Monrovia will start to disappear. The 15,000-person strong UN peacekeeping mission with its thousands of additional civilian support staff has already started to reduce its numbers. This dwindling attention from the international community will have many implications for Liberians. Those most cynical of international intervention argue that Liberia’s sovereignty will be restored. Liberians will be able to make their own choices. Farmers won’t have to grow bulgur wheat just because some UN agency wants them to. Liberians will develop their country on their own terms.
But the pull-out also will mean a loss of well-paying national-hire jobs. The many university graduates working with the UN and international non-governmental organizations will have to find a job in a country where there aren’t many.
Here are three bits of news gathered from the wide, wide web. I see a relationship among them. Do you?
ONE A recent study commissioned by the American Chamber of Commerce shows how the corporate world views Africa. From Foreign Policy:
The survey suggests that African countries tend to fall into three categories: strong countries that are seriously considered as investment destinations; weak countries that would not even be considered by most of the respondents; and average countries where a mix of good and bad news calls for caution. South Africa, Nigeria and Kenya are rated highest for their economic development, while Ghana, South Africa and Tunisia take top honors for their investment climate. South Africa got the highest marks for government attitude, with Ghana, Morocco, Kenya and Nigeria tied in the next highest position. Nigeria, Morocco, Egypt and South Africa saw the highest perceived return on investment. These traditionally high performers are followed by an interesting group of emerging countries that are catching investors’ attention. Libya, Senegal, Mozambique and Rwanda are viewed increasingly positively in government attitude, investment return, and progress with economic development.
TWO People donate things like used underwear, Soviet snow plows, or colored pencils but no paper to Africa. Read about these and more on a great new blog Good Intentions Are Not Enough. (HT: Texas in Africa). Here are five questions to ask before sending a donation:
Is the donation appropriate for the local climate, culture, and religion?
Do they actually need the donation?
Are the goods available locally?
Will the people receiving the goods be able to afford to fix or replace the donated item?
A January 2009 study by the Social Welfare Department – responsible for children’s welfare and supervising orphanages – showed that up to 90 percent of the estimated 4,500 children in orphanages in Ghana are not orphans.
In Ghana a small orphanage might have a budget of up to US$70,000 a year, depending on its size, the bulk of the funds coming from international donors and NGOs, with small contributions from local corporations, according to research by Ghanaian non-profit Child Rights International (CRI).
Donors are attracted to orphanages because they appear to be a simple solution, said Joachim Theis, UNICEF head of child protection for West Africa. “You have a building, you house children in it, it is easy to count them. And they are easy to fundraise for. It is a model that has been used for a long time. But it is the wrong model.”
This video made me smile, laugh, and dance. And wish I were in Brazil. And make all of my housemates stop everything they were doing and huddle around my Mac Book and watch.
I love the visuals here in a way that makes me want to do nothing but watch this over and over again, all day. This is a wish that is unrelated to possible procrastination habits.
HT Every location in Liberia that plays this song a minimum of three to five times an hour, often consecutively.
Any song that features a man calling his woman “my sweet potato” and “my sugar banana” is pretty awesome in my book. I prefer men who refer to their women as starchy foods rather than bitches and hos any day.
Because this song is great listening, and if I wait any longer to wash my hair, it’s going to look like this. As lovely as it is on her, it is not flattering on me. (It’s amazing how even in a climate as hot as Liberia’s, taking a cold shower every day still really really sucks.)
Audrey Bardou’s photo essay about her parents is posted on Burn Magazine. I flipped through the images just this morning and felt incredibly moved by the emotional intesnity and narrative power of the story. They are simple and beautiful. There is nothing here of “international importance” or grand significance, but a story of two people who love each other and the loss that is part of ageing and living.
Via State of the Art, I found out about Tim Hetherington’s soon to be released photo book on Liberia. On his homepage, you can see a lot of his images of Liberia during wartime. The pictures are amazing and show a commitment to making images in Liberia over several years. Definitely worth checking out.
MSF is everywhere doctors are needed and they always hire amazing talent to document their work. You can see a lot of the images here. What I appreciate about a lot of these images is they aren’t stock white-doctor-helping-refugee images, but often show a side of conflict that is beyond the frontlines. The photo here was taken in Chad in 2007.
Erik Hersman, who writes the blog White African is in Monrovia right now. We had dinner the other night and it was great to hear what he’s up to and to hear his evaluation of the tech scene in Liberia. You can read more about it on the Ushahidi blog or here, here, or here on a TED posterous.
To me, blogging about working as a journalist in Africa is often as important (if less lucrative) than working as a journalist in Africa (which is also not lucrative). My blog is an outlet for the stories that don’t work in the mainstream media, photos that don’t make the wire, and thoughts about daily life that otherwise wouldn’t see the light of day.
Based on how many other Africa journalists also blog, I’m guessing I’m not alone in this.
I’d like to make a sort of ongoing list of foreign correspondents in Africa who blog. Feel free to add to the list in the comments section and eventually I’ll put out a revised full list, complete with your suggestions.
Former warlord and current Liberian Senator Prince Johnson. Copyright Glenna Gordon/AFP
