When the sun goes down

At night, it feels like a ghost town. I'm sandwiched between Aaron and a pen-pen at top speed. Pen-pens are former child soldiers who now carry commuters on motorbikes for a quick buck. Abandoning their education, forced to shoot bullets at enemies over issues they couldn't comprehend. Now they think driving is their only option. And for many, it is.

The average pen-pen earns US $2.11 to $4.22 per day. It's not much, but it's a living. Most journalists here make the same amount.

I have yet to meet a pen-pen who smiles or seems at ease in his surroundings. These young men are hardened, devoid of childhoods they will never know or can barely remember, unable to tap into that carefree sense of joy developed in our youth. Instead, reliving the nightmares of unforgiving war and unrelenting fear.

We drive by shells of official buildings, painted signs wedged between crumbling statues that read, "Closed for renovation."

We eventually stop at the Red Lion bar, swinging our legs over the burning chrome and sticky plastic. We pay the pen-pen and he carries on, his face still stone cold. I wonder what he thinks of us foreigners, about to spend money on beer in an English pub, and how unfair he feels his situation must be. Or maybe the slide show in his mind is too intoxicating for him to care.

Aaron and I wait for the rest of our friends to pay their bill. We decide on a local bar.

Strings of red, white and blue light bulbs zig zag high above our heads, lighting our way up a newly paved hill. This is Randall Street, one of Monrovia's major arteries. But at 9:00 p.m. there are few cars in sight.

Most of the storefronts are shut, heavy metal gates hiding their windows and doors. The only businesses open are vacant restaurants and a few cramped bars.

One woman is cooking peeled plantains on a blackened grate over a coal fire. Some men gather on the street. "Take me to Canada with you!" one says. Lucky guess.

We're with Jane, the lovely Australian; Gabriel the sweet Englishman with a slight American accent,; Maria, the elegant German and her Swiss boyfriend Daniel. There's Caleb too, the jovial American with a big heart; English LIz who's getting on a plane tonight, going home after two months here because she misses her boyfriend; Ade, the Liberian starting a business to export wood; Jackie the Canadian who's dating a Pakistani soldier here, and Becca, at the other end of the table who sounded Canadian or American.

We all climb some concrete steps, holding on to a rickety wooden bannister that seems to swing in midair offering little support. It's a roof-top bar, with a welcoming breeze.

The hostess with spiral extensions braided into her hair brings over two thin wooden tables. They're covered in light plastic, stencilled with floral print. Kiawu strolls over to our table, introducing himself. He works at the bar too, and sits down joining in the conversation.

Later, Maria brings over a puppy and places it in Jane's lap. "I don't want her to leave," Maria whispers to me. "I'm hoping the puppy might make her stay." Though she knows she won't. Jane is going home on Monday so we're spending the rest of the week celebrating her farewell tour. She falls in love with the puppy, she's smiling ear to ear, lightly stroking its tiny brown head.

Kiawu then brings the puppy's brother to me, and I rest him in my lap. It licks my arm and nuzzles into me. I'm in love too. Mine has a white strip down his forehead, and at the tip of his tail as if he dipped it paint.

The puppies sit on our laps all night. And the conversation flows as much as the beer.

JHR workshop: Reporting on elections

Monday Jan. 17, 2010.

Liberian newspaper and radio journalists are back at the Liberian Media Centre for a JHR workshop, lead by Yeama from Sierra Leone. She is JHR's workshop facilitator. Her primary role is to travel throughout the country, talking to journalists at multiple media houses. Today she is wearing a fitted black dress. And of course, her trademark three inch high heels. I've already seen three pairs in four days.

Peter Quaqua, the Director of the Press Union of Liberia, starts us off. "I wanted to persist coming," he says. "I'm in the middle of many activities, but they keep calling me." 'They' is Yeama. She's one persistent woman. And she usually gets her way.

Quaqua is here to prepare journalists for the upcoming election in November.

"We cannot underestimate our responsibility," he reminds the group, standing up front beside a board of over-sized white paper. He plays with the blue marker between his fingers. "It is through your work and objectivity that the public will be able to make good decisions. This is one occasion where we cannot afford to be subjective or stupid. Remove yourself from the conflict."

The first African female president, Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, will be running again along with George Weah who ran against her last time. His only claim to fame is that he's a former football star. Another candidate is Prince Johnson who cut off the ear of first full-blooded Liberian president, Samuel Doe, and then ate it on camera before killing him.

Quaqua continues, "When we get involved with cheating, people get disenchanted. Various sides try to influence the media. You see these child soldiers? These are people who have been easily manipulated. We don't want to be manipulated either. The future of Liberia is at stake."

He is referring to a common theme among West African journalists. Politicians pay them off to forward the party's message and influence the public. It's a successful strategy as most journalists survive on very little per story.

"Your responsibility is to be fair," he says sternly. "Your credibility is at stake. Your role is to present each one with their qualifications to the public. When you pick one candidate and highlight why they are good, you are putting everyone else against them. You cannot translate your vote into your work. Let the public make an informed decision."

He goes on to remind us that several media houses in the area are funded by politicians. "Let's use the example of Kings FM. It is owned and operated by candidate George Weah. How can we ask them to report fairly?"

I'm impressed with what Quaqua has to say and hope these journalists are brave enough to not accept bribes.

The next speaker is less enchanting. His name is Bobby Livingstone. He's from the National Elections Commission. The NEC is funded by the state. He talks to us like children. The only interesting thing he discusses is cross-border voting.

Liberia borders three countries: The Ivory Coast, Guinea and Sierra Leone. Many people from the same tribe trickle onto other sides of the border. It's the same reason why people from neighbouring countries get involved in each other's civil wars. Their father is living there, their aunt is just a few miles away. Border lines are ignored. Tribal lines are honoured.

Politicians have also been paying people to travel from neighbouring countries to secure more votes. Many other 'citizens' take advantage of this since a lot of them can't afford the cost of travel and it gives them a chance to visit with family and/or friends across the border.

One journalist asks me if we are able to do the same in Canada and the U.S. I tell him that our voting processes are very strict, and we must show identification at the polling stations.

Livingstone tells us that the NEC must rely on tribal chiefs, elders "and the rest of them" to ensure people don't cross borders to vote. There is no national ID system here.

Our JHR journalism trainer is up next. Aaron works at "Front Page Africa" newspaper. He works with journalists one on one, encouraging them to stay away from press conferences that spew propaganda unless there's actual news behind them. He helps them cover stories which highlight human rights issues and works with them to edit their stories. Aaron also holds human rights reporting workshops at the newspaper. I will be doing the same come Sunday when I move a three-hour drive northwest on a rare paved country road, to Gbarnga.

Aaron is here to continue Quaqua's talk on the most efficient methods in covering elections. He says the responsibilities journalists have during an election are exactly the same as their responsibilities when covering any other type of story.

"If voters don't understand what's going on then it's not a democracy. A journalist's job is to encourage this. This could possibly be the freest election that Liberia has ever had."

Lazy Sunday

It's Lebanese time again. This time, a restaurant. A blanket of dried palm leaves suspended 20 feet above shields our putty-coloured plastic table. The leaves surround the restaurant on every side. I feel like I'm in a Toronto Zoo exhibit, this time on the other side of the glass.

This is my formal introduction to Lamii, JHR's Liberian country director. He's chewing on a toothpick, scanning the room for onlookers.

I ask him what he thinks is the biggest human rights issue in Gbarnga, where I will be staying for months starting next Wednesday.

"The judicial system is very bad." His white teeth are almost blinding. The yellow-toothed at home would pay thousands to get them bleached his shade.

He continues, "People are detained if they are accused of a crime, without a hearing. There are some who have been in jail for years, without even committing an atrocity."

Jess is here too, telling us about visiting a Monrovian prison for a story she was working on with a Liberian journalism student from the university. One man has been detained for three years, accused of armed robbery and still hasn't set eyes on a court house. The other doesn't know what he's in for.

An inebriated stray cat resembling my first one as a child approaches our table but the Liberian waitress shoos her away.

It's Sunday today, the formal resting day in Monrovia. Most people are moving slower than usual. Others are working.

On our way to lunch I see crews of men, building new paved roads. It wasn't long ago when rebels were knocking everything down. Now the people are building it back up again. And even improving upon what once was. Many locals give Monrovia's female mayor and Liberia's female president the credit. People are tired of fighting. During the war, which ended less than a decade ago, all the markets had to shut down. People starved, trying to find anything to eat. Many survived on oil from palm trees.

After lunch Aaron takes me to the beach. He says he needs it as an escape every once in a while. Fine with me.

We go to "Thinkers Point," where other ex-pats assemble in clusters under thatched huts. Surf boards stuck in the sand. Two foreigners whip a tennis ball back and forth between two wooden paddles. I long to join them. But the waves are waiting.

"Let's go!" I say to Aaron, and we walk through the deep sand to the water's edge. The coffee (con leche) coloured sand squishing between our toes. Sinking deeper and deeper. If I stand in the same spot for more than a minute, my foot may be lost forever. These15-foot waves closing in.

The salty Atlantic is tepid, not shockingly frigid, like jumping into an Ontario lake on the first day of summer.

We move slowly into the grey daunting waters. The sky is still full of dust, blending the ocean's horizon into the atmosphere. Crash! I'm not fast enough to catch the wave and the bubbly wake hits my back with a mighty force. "I am smaller than all of this." I feel subjected to the whim of the earth's moods.

Aaron floats on his back. I wish I could do the same but I shouldn't even be as deep as I am after an ear operation a couple of years ago. I'm not allowed to get any water in it. And no plugs can do the tricks, the doctors say.

We play in the water and time disappears.

Eventually Aaron is ready to get out, so I join him. I'm not going to play roulette with the sea, apprehensive of being swept away into the raging riptides.

We sit in our salty soaked suits, drying off and talking about human rights and our families. An Australian girl and her Dutch male friend block our view of the ocean. "We are going for Ethiopian food tonight, would you like to come?"

"Yes, that sounds good," Aaron says. Jane looks at me, "You should join us too." And they disappear.

Later, Aaron and I say goodbye to the beach and squeeze into the back seat of a taxi with two other people. Taxi's consider themselves full with four in the back and one in the front. The 10-minute trip costs about a dollar. We could have hopped on the back of a motorcycle for hire, but I'm wearing a skirt and Aaron says our destination is too far away for two wheels.

We get out and transfer taxis. Each destination has a special hand signal to wave a taxi down. We stick out our right hand in the direction of where we want to go, moving it up and down, fingers straight.

Another close ride. But people don't care about resting their arms each other's laps or swinging them behind heads. There's no where else to put them.

Six of us sit on a patio. Two Americans; one with a British accent. A German, an Australian, Aaron and me. We order a variety of dishes with spongy sour bread that soaks up the sauce. Chunks of lamb and chicken sandwiched between.

Conversation moves from Gabriel's recent trip home, where he climbed a mountain in the snow. His eyelashes caked in ice. Maria, the German woman, talks about trying to save endangered sea turtles. People from her organization talk to locals, trying to prevent them from taking the eggs these turtles lay on the beach. "They will become extinct," she tells them. Maria says the locals are understanding and agreeing to stay away. I wonder what their alternative food source will be.

We plan some events before Jane the Australian has to leave. I haven't been to many of these places, so I'm grateful to be included. She is in the process of building a raft out of large plastic water bottles and wants to set sail in the swamp before departure.

"How many people will get on this raft?" I ask.

"Well, may be just one. My plan was to get 300 water bottles but I only have 25 now and I'm leaving in a week."

She asks me to save my empty bottles for her boat. I tell her I will.

My first full day in Monrovia

... the following was written yesterday but i was unable to connect to the internet...

Yesterday was strange and wonderfully unsettling. It started with a four hour meeting to review a final draft of a constitution for the Human Rights Reporting Network.

We can't read it because the room that holds the printer is locked. We are waiting for Jah Rule to come with a key.

We've been sitting here since 9:00 a.m, also waiting for the other journalists to arrive. By 10:00 a.m, most of the editors have casually strolled in from a variety of newspaper and radio stations in the area. We face each other in plastic arm chairs on the second floor of the Liberian Media Centre.

The back door opens onto a towering green hill, housing built into the rock where some women wash their clothes in metallic buckets. The wide open door offers no breeze to relieve the pressing heat. Journalists in jeans, some in soccer jerseys. One newspaper editor, Heston, is draped in a lime green tee-shirt. It's pasted with a picture of a donkey that reads, "I'm a Smart One."

The man in the ass shirt keeps rewinding through the constitution. "We are going to be here for hours," I think. I look over at another JHR trainer, the impatience is permeating. I try to relax. "Ride the wave, this is what it's like. You're just used to the Canadian way," I think.

I am tempted to mimic my previous boss at CTV from our story meetings. When it gets out of hand or if the assignment editors are lingering too long she shouts, "NEXT!" But I refrain. Today is my first day. This is their constitution and it's being put in place so that when Journalists for Human Rights leaves the country, they have a mandate to continue the work.

I stop making suggestions, letting them decide what they want. And back and forth they go again.

By 1:00 p.m, we are almost finished approving the six-page document. One man asks if there will be compensation for the executive. Another answers, "This is a sacrificial job, o!" We all laugh. And lunch is around the corner.

A woman from down the road brings a trays of rice, chicken and fish. We line up. I choose the fish. Head and tail overflowing the sides of my plate. It's complemented with a heaping spoonful of rice and three fried plantains.

"What kind of fish is this?" I ask the ass-man.

"River fish!"

Oh.

I take a bite, delicious and fresh. The green peppery paste is a nice addition.

After lunch Aaron and Jah Rule take me to buy a cell phone. The shop is run by Lebanese merchants. Aaron tells me the Lebanese are practically running Monrovia. We then move on to a fancy grocery store, also run by a Lebanese family that imports St. Andre cheese from France. I'm tempted. St. Andre is my favourite. At $11 for half a pound, it would leave a bad taste in my mouth. So I pick up 24 Club beers - made right around the and considerably cheaper than the imported Heineken and Becks.

Following suit, we pay Liberian parking attendants some money for opening our car doors. They call me, "bossman" - I feel even worse. I wonder how many foreigners do this kind of work to thrive on a false sense of power.

Later in the evening after a Bangladesh dinner near the beach, we head to a local bar where ex-pats mingle on the concrete patio lit with unforgiving fluorescent lights. I meet a lot of friendly aid workers, and some who just can't be bothered to make efforts with another one.

One woman from Calgary, Jo, is here trying to get running water to Liberia. If her idea works she will offer her methods to other impoverished countries around the world. She's from Calgary and it was her 20-year-old son's idea. He's back home, calling her from pay phones in snow storms.

As the volunteers and overseas workers dance to songs I've collected on my iPod, a row of Liberians stand on the other side of the gate, gazing in. I ask another volunteer what they are doing. "Half of them are here to rob us on our way out and the other half are taxi drivers."

I look at their faces. Staring blankly ahead. Back to the ex-pats, grinning drunk mugs.

After a few more songs, we call it a night. We cut through the line of people, reaching for a taxi. One man, missing a leg on wooden crutches approaches. "Please, boss, give me some money." I am tempted to take out my wallet, but there are too many people around.

Back to the mattress.

Welcome to Liberia!

She tells me her name is Mamawah. She was living in Washington DC and is going home for a couple of months to work.

She looks out the window as we descend into Monrovia, "You see how green?" she says. "Yes, it looks very beautiful," I respond anxiously, wondering what will come next. Palm trees and others I don't know the names of, as far as the eye can see.

As we get closer to the ground, I can make out the letters, "UN" painted on the sides of white pick up trucks, lining the airport's runway. Liberian men cradling AK47's in their arms, standing on guard.

It is dusty too. It's harmattan (dry) season, when sands from northern Africa travel south, invading West African landscapes. It's a white dust, that doesn't scratch the eyes or burn the throat. And stays until April.

I hear a girl talking about journalism behind me. I turn around and recognize her from a video I found online about the organization I'm with, Journalists for Human Rights.

I turn around. "Do you work with JHR?"

"I used to. Now I'm coming back to make a documentary for Oxfam."

I can't believe my luck. We talk for a while and I turn back to Mamawah.

"You see?" she says, shedding her scarf from her shoulders. "You have friends in Liberia!"

Mamawah had given me her number earlier and now I have Arwen's number. I know two people in Liberia and haven't even stepped off the plane.

We shuffle awkwardly out the plane's front door and down the bouncy metal stairs. A warm soupy heat surrounds us. I take Mamawah's heavy bag and we walk into the airport. I get in the visitors line. Mamawah returns from the residents line.

"Janey! Come!" She is with an official looking woman. "Give me your passport." I hand it over. She and the lady with the badge around her neck disappear.

I wouldn't normally do this. But as my dad always said, "Trust your gut."

I trusted it, but a minute later I start to worry. "Where are they? I've already been naive and I've just landed. Shit."

Mamawah pokes her head around the corner, "Janey, come here!"

I bend down, under the security line over to the two ladies.

"This is my friend, she works with immigration. She will take care of this for us and make it go faster." We stand by the conveyor belt of rotating luggage with some other officials Mamawah chats with. "We will look for our luggage and she will return with our passports." I smile at the officials, who smile back.

As we stare at the foreign bags, searching for our own, the official returns with our stamped passports.

I eventually see my black bag with the pink ribbon on the handle, and scratch my hand on another. It starts to bleed.

Mamawah has a driver who collects her bags and gets us through the next security check with ease.

Covered in luggage, I scan the greeting crowd outside for the JHR driver Kamara. He looks like a sweet old man. He'd be called Papaye (pron: Papa-yay) - a formal greeting in Liberia for a man over 60.

He has a kind face and is smiling when I approach him. Kamara reaches over the fence and gives me a hug. "Janey, we have been awaiting your arrival, it is good to see you! Welcome to Liberia!"

Relieved and tired, I wait with Mamawah and her driver until Kamara brings the truck around. It has LMC (Liberian Media Center) plastered on the side.

I say goodbye to Mamawah and promise to call her when I get a phone.

Kamara has a soft high pitched voice that smiles when he speaks. We drive along the highway; a two lane road resembling paved country roads in Ontario.

People have their hands out to catch a lift. Layers of dust linger in the fields and as we approach the city, smoke from coal fires mingling with the dusty smog.

The sun almost disappears as more people fill the streets. The only lights from cars and suddenly more, coming from a string of solar panelled lights that stand like statues for a few meters.

"They were put here for a UN conference," Kamara says.

After we pass them, it's lights out for miles.

"You will like Aaron," he says. "He is very friendly."

Aaron is also with JHR and has kindly offered me to stay with him for a week in Monrovia while I get to know Liberia. After that I'm on my own, three hours north in Gbarnga.

Kamara's truck weaves through people and taxis and we stop at the Liberian Media Center to pick up Yeama - a Sierra Leonean who is JHR's workshop facilitator. She greets me in full African dress as we hug by the side of the road. I like her already.

We eventually get to Aaron's apartment. We shake hands and they bring my bags upstairs. We had already talked on the phone and he was ordering Lebanese food. I had a chicken shwarma on its way.

Inside we drink Heinekens with Kamara, Yeama and Jess - an American girl with JHR working at the university. She tells me that some of the journalism professors are former warlords. Now they are promoting human rights. We discuss the irony.

Out on the wrap around balcony that overlooks the city, sit two Americans who are in the country to work with refugees. They are pounding foreign beer and talking about their most embarrassing moments. They invite me out but it's been a long day.

Aaron, who is Canadian from Vancouver, helps me get out a mattress that leaning against a wall.It's as hard as a rock and I long for my pillow top mattress. Then I remind myself where I am. Adjustments must be made.

Lights out.