Archive for the ‘Sierra Leone’ Category
Can diamonds be a (socially responsible) girl’s best friend again?
Recently, I learned about The Clarity Project, an effort to bring fairly-mined, fairly-sourced diamonds into the jewelry market. Impressed by the venture and the website, I did an email interview with Jesse Finfrock, one of the founders. In addition to making diamond engagement rings a possibility again, The Clarity Project is a fascinating exercise in [...]
Naomi Blood Diamond Campbell?
I’m watching the live feed of the Taylor trial happening in The Hague. I’m sitting at my hotel in Freetown, with a few Sierra Leonean staff, as a defense lawyer drags out what sounds like character assassination against someone I’ve never heard of (and possibly also against Mia Farrow?) in order to un-assassinate Campbell’s character. [...]
In Sierra Leone, things are exactly as normal as they appear
In Freetown recently, I came face to face with something that made me a believer: a trash truck. A believer in what? That depends on what or whom you credit with the appearance of the trash truck. A newly buoyant national government? A streamlined UN better supporting national needs? Aid? Whatever your preferred church of [...]
On wads of crisp, clean West African cash
Today I withdrew cash at a bank in Freetown. A dollar here is worth almost 4,000 leones, and the largest bill they print is 10,000. “Wait until you smell the money,” people always tell me before I come here. It’s true, or it was: money so dirty it had a special scent that rubbed off [...]
What does Africa have tons of that no one knows how to handle?
(Okay, that’s a little bit off, but these blog titles get tweeted now, so they have to be short and perky.) Land, of course! The African continent is freaking huge. Most of its inhabitants subsistence farm that land. Meanwhile, as oil bubbles up on the western coast and foreign-owned agro-farms crop up in the east [...]
Top 10 Sad Things the Palin-Letterman Controversy Says about America
I had a nice little list going, centered on the most outrageous element of all: a form letter for anti-Letterman protestors–egged on, in spirit at the very least, by Sarah Palin and the exeuctive produer of Sarah Palin Radio (“Governor Palin’s own ‘friendly’ media,” according to the site). The sample letter accuses Letterman’s advertisers of [...]
I am a freelance journalist and multimedia producer who covers human rights, Africa and foreign affairs. [