Archive for the ‘West Africa’ Category
Vexed by the King of Liberia
Glenna Gordon has a fantastic story about trying to take the photo of George Weah, massive soccer star and one-time presidential candidate, whose narrow loss to Ellen Johnson Sirleaf surprised some folks. Weah was in town for the recent senate elections, lending some celebrity to his political party. Here’s an excerpt: “Geogre Weah is the [...]
A look at loving and hating the French in Africa
Kudos to Adam Nossiter, the New York Times’ man in Dakar, for today’s piece on mixed feelings about the French across Francophone Africa. (He even pulled it off without mentioning Rwanda, whose relationship with France is so troubled it skews the curve.) France is often seen as quietly backing, well, the bad guys — Mobutu [...]
"I swear, that is SO legal," or, why the man in charge of fixing Liberia's justice sector "owns" all the laws
A piece of investigative reporting that took Glenna Gordon and I the better part of our month together in Monrovia, and lots of her time before that, is finally in the world. The story is about Philip Banks, by my impression a genial and very smart man, who claims to own the copyright to Liberia’s [...]
Justice and rape in Liberia
Glenna Gordon and I have a couple posts up on the Pulitzer Center blog focused on justice and rape in Liberia. The first gives some background on the difficulties of prosecution here and the second gives two different takes (hers and mine) on how to handle the confidentiality of victims. On confidentiality in genera, here’s [...]
Softly softly catches monkey
This is a Liberian proverb, the meaning of which we’re still not certain of. We learned it on our week-long trip up country, vernacular meaning “way out in the middle of rural nowhere” and a phrase which confused the hell out of my mother. (“Which country were you in? And why is it up?”) I [...]
Libraries in Liberia!
Well, law libraries anyway. Yesterday, Glenna Gordon and I went to what we’re pretty sure is all of them — there are four, actually, which is three to four more than most people seem to think when we tell them this — in search of what should be a pretty standard document. We think it [...]
I am a freelance journalist and multimedia producer who covers human rights, Africa and foreign affairs. [