At the end of February 2002 I got a call from a Washington D.C.-based producer/director, asking whether I had a current passport and did I want an assignment that would take me to West Africa.
It was somewhat of a departure from my fashion assignments: I would help him research and write a script chronicling the decades-long unrest throughout the Mano River basin region of Sierra Leone, Liberia and Guinea. My client’s client was the U. S. State Department and our mission was to create a documentary to be shown at the United Nations one month later. The purpose of the video was to assist the Security Council in deciding whether to continue sanctions on Liberian President Charles Taylor.
I have worked for this client before, writing and editing scripts commissioned by non-governmental organizations that usually resulted in humanitarian initiatives in Africa that called for wells to be dug or lead to be removed from gasoline. Though budgets were always tight, each time a project was completed my client would say in his rich accent, “Next time I’m taking you with me.”
For those who listen to public radio, the voice on the other end of my phone was a familiar one. Georges Collinet hosts AfroPop Worldwide, a music show that airs on Public Radio International. Collinet is a native of Cameroon and for the African continent he was a friendly conduit to the outside world on Voice of America radio–to many he will always be Maxi Voom Voom.
I didn’t know it at the time, but in Africa, Collinet is sort of like Michael Jordan, P. Diddy and Nelson Mandela rolled into one. This helped immeasurably during many unpleasant encounters. More than once I watched menacing faces melt like butter when they discovered his identity, a fact I encouraged him to flaunt more freely as the days went on.
Inoculated against an array of exotic diseases, I took my stash of malaria pills and a head crammed with details of West Africa’s troubled history, and off I went, alternately looking forward to an adventure and wondering why someone wasn’t stopping me.
Today most of us know enough about the standoff between Taylor and the international community to make cocktail patter. At one time, eyes glazed over at mention of his name, though he was responsible for the region’s downward spiral since 1989.
I knew about the woes of Sierra Leone. A man named Foday Sankoh, the rebel leader of the Revolutionary United Front, was notorious for ordering mutilations of people that he rationalized had a vague purpose of redress against the current government.
Effect on Sierra Leone
Taylor was Sankoh’s role model and chief arms supplier. He worked behind the scenes, keeping the RUF in weapons and the region in chaos through the illegal mining of the so-called blood diamonds found in Sierra Leone.
It was Taylor who masterminded the method to keep Sierra Leoneans away from the ballot box during the 1996 democratic elections. To the government’s campaign slogan, “The Future Is in Your Hands,” came his gruesome response: the amputation of hands–and fingers, legs, lips and noses.
Upon our arrival, we met with U.S. Embassy officials. Our objectives included building regional government support to isolate Taylor and inform public opinion by demonstrating his aggression. We would hopscotch from Guinea to Sierra Leone and Liberia, getting personal stories of human suffering as well as interviewing high-ranking government officials, including Taylor.
We would have full diplomatic and logistical cooperation–armored SUVs, sometimes by motorcade, UN-supplied helicopters and a peacekeeper escort when necessary.
The short deadline would be challenging, but with enough support we could make it work. Unfortunately, the situation quickly grew muddled, with conflicting messages eventually drowning each other out. A peace accord had just been signed in Rabat, Morocco, and a tenuous calm was in place. The RUF had suddenly re-created itself by adding one letter to its name. The RUFP was now an official party that would participate in the upcoming elections.
Caution had to prevail
The climate for freewheeling opinions was not the best; diplomats feared retaliation. Two further points had been made: We must stay within U.S. policy and our video should contain nothing controversial.
And by the way, when could they expect a script?
President Lasana Conte of Guinea opted out early on. Part of our objective was to call attention to the humanitarian crisis in Guinea as a result of masses of refugees spilling across its borders. Why wouldn’t he talk? We knew that Conte was said to be supporting the Liberians United for Reconciliation and Democracy, a rebel group that continued the bloody campaign to oust Taylor. Because the government of Guinea was co-sponsoring our project it became clear that this came under the “controversial” category. Taylor was changeable in his desire to speak with us. Each morning we awoke waiting to hear whether this would be the day that we would fly into Monrovia to meet him. Many days began instead with mind-numbing meetings with local functionaries–also known as the “grip and grin.”
Tape mysteriously goes bad
We did interview Sierra Leone President Ahmed Tejan Kabbah, who expressed his opinions of Taylor. With excellent footage in our possession the ride back to the hotel was upbeat.When we reviewed the footage that night the first whispers of paranoia set in. Just when Kabbah began to speak openly about Taylor, the tape mysteriously went bad.
Our visits to amputee camps were also unnerving. Even outside them, it was impossible to escape the effect of the mutilations on people who had been ushered, assembly-line fashion, into a surreal future, forever disfigured by a machete’s blow.
Gbessay, our driver, listened to a young man detailing how his limbs were hacked off.
“Do you want short sleeves or long sleeves?” rebel hoodlums had asked him.
As we left, Gbessay quietly disclosed how one night he was among those lined up to be amputated. He said that a rebel recognized him and remembered that Gbessay had once performed an act of kindness toward him. In a crapshoot moment he was spared.
Word finally came that we were free to go to Monrovia, with the warning that we would not be guaranteed permission to leave with the videotape. All bets were off.
It was both a relief and vexing.
Taylor’s paternalistic rhetoric was so delusional that we thought he would have welcomed the opportunity to spin us.In the end, our video told the story through Taylor’s victims. With images such as a man trying to light his cigarette with handless stumps or that of a pretty young woman, supple in her miniskirt and clinging T-shirt, doing her best imitation of being normal even though she had no arms, who needed words?
Sankoh died recently in prison, senseless and mumbling about being God. The RUFP failed to win any seats in the next elections and are now impotent has-beens. Though the UN Security Council approved sanctions last year, Taylor hung on, so far managing to escape the UN war crimes indictment against him for his role in the devastation in Sierra Leone by taking exile in Nigeria. But he first appointed a cohort to run things in his absence, again taking the role of able puppeteer.
I’m not so naive to think our video could have prevented any of the agony we have seen in Liberia since June, but I hope that someday a video camera would capture a nation once more at peace with itself.
