Bullet Art

Weapons of war fashioned into instruments of peace. The amunition shells were collected from the 14 year long civil war in Liberia and made into peaceful images.

The Knack of Eating Bugs

I am a vegetarian and I eat bugs. I don't eat them on purpose, but I am living in Liberia and you eat what you get. The food for our 400 crew members gets shipped from both the US and Holland in large containers brought by ship. Often there are delays once it reaches the port and the container can sit in Liberia for weeks before we are able to claim it. Unless it is a refrigerated container (dairy and other cold foodstuffs) it is subjected to the heat and humidity of an equatorial country. Things like flour and pasta have bug eggs in them (one of the reasons we never ate raw dough in Kenya) and if presented with the right conditions they will hatch and multiply.When I worked in the galley the first 3 months on board one of our jobs was to sort out the pasta. This entailed opening boxes of lazagna noodles to determine if the pasta was infested with weevils or not and if it was, by how much? The rarest nugget was a bug free box. Most common was a box crawling with bugs that could be shaken relatively free. There were still cocoons as I called them, which remained embedded in the pasta, but were still deemed almost bug free. 

Then there were the boxes we would open that were mostly dust. These were usually crawling and were immediately discarded. Someone discovered you could shake a box before opening it and if dust came out of a corner the chances were pretty high that it was one of the completely infested ones.

The "clean" pasta was placed in large plastic bags that were then tied off and cooked as quickly as possible before the next batch of cocoons hatched.

With all this opening and shaking of boxes there were a lot of bugs everywhere. We stood right beside the garbage bin when we sorted them to try to confine the spread of crawling critters. We would often be wiping our arms free of crawling bugs who were desperate to escape their suddenly exposed worlds by making a beeline up our arms. The sensation of bugs crawling up my arms usually stayed with me for a several hours after these exercises and I kept brushing them away.

For infested rice it was much simpler. Measure out your rice and water and put into the appropriate cooking dish. Stir and sure enough the bugs float to the surface and are easy to scoop out.

Shell pasta was the hardest. We couldn't shake them out so we just cooked up the best looking bags. The black bugs were obvious on the white pasta.
Our cereal varies too. Apparently bugs like Wheatabix and granola, but not Honey Nut Cheerios or Rice Krispies. Unfortunately the bugs and I have the same taste. There are two techniques I use with these; either allow the bugs to float to the surface in your milk and pick them out or just eat it and don't look too closely. I choose the latter most.

Best trick I've learned: dried parsley sprinkled over food adds a speckled appearance that covers bugs and even adds a healthy appearance. Thanks Tyrone for that tip!

For another article on bugs on board click here.

My Art Collection Grows

A while back I wrote about the UNMIL T-shirt company that had sprung up here in Monrovia, Liberia. I really love the signs they have outside and had decided I would like to have one. I took a look at them and all 4 were painted on hard formed plastic from previous signs. It would be awkward to transport it around Morocco, our next destination.

One of the UNMIL T-shirt signs outside the shop.

Then I came up with a brilliant idea. I had brought a stack of canvas rolled up. I would ask if they could paint me one on that, roll it up with my own paintings and then build a frame and restretch it back home. Brilliant, I thought.

My own original UNMIL T-shirt sign.

I thought once people saw what I had they were all going to want their own. Instead I got a lot of, "what are you going to do with that?" or just plain, "I don't get it". I explained that this was an amazing piece of art, very particular to a certain time, place and historical event in history. This was a piece of history.

On a side note, when I asked to have it made the artist said that 2 years ago someone else had come in to also enquire about buying one of the signs. I comfort myself to think that another brilliant mind is out there somewhere!

The Heart of It

One of the patients that I visited on a regular basis had gone home, but came back bi-weekly for dressing changes. He had come back to the wards and was visiting all his friends on this particular day.

In his hand he carried a small clear plastic bag that was filled with cut-out hearts with writing. "Wow", I thought, "a sort of Valentines Day love-thing right in the middle of the summer. Isn't that nice."
Then he handed me one.

Now...I like to think that each heart was not really designated for any particular person, but that they were just handed out randomly and anyone could have ended up with any particular one...

...because mine read: Jesus Christ Will Judge Us.

Well, Happy Valentines Day, folks! I can feel the love in the air...

Liberian Law Sanctions Armed Robbery as Capital Offence

In 2006, The Association of Female Lawyers of Liberia (AFELL) helped draft recent legislation increasing the penalties for rape, including gang rape and assaults of children under the age of 18. With violence on the increase again the following has just made the news:

Monrovia, Liberia (Afrique en ligne), Monrovia - 25/07/2008- President Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf has signed into law an act making armed robbery, terrorism and hijacking capital offences.

The bicameral national legislature passed the controversial act a fortnight ago as daring armed gangs, including persons dressed in police uniforms and using as sault rifles, pistols, cutlasses, knives and other sharp weapons, suddenly escalated night attacks on community after community in Monrovia and its environs.

The act specifies that "following an armed robbery, the penalty for the convict, if death occurs, shall be death by hanging".

Meanwhile, human rights activists have expressed pessimism that the act making armed robbery a capital offence could face stiff challenges in terms of calling for the death penalty.

Liberians welcome UN Peacekeepers in 2003.
Okay, not that related to the story, but I didn't have
any pictures of armed robbery in Liberia(!).

But a statement from President Johnson-Sirleaf's office announcing the signing of the Act, said: "The President is fully cognizant that Liberia as a State Party is a signatory to the UN's Second Optional Protocol aiming at the abolition of death penalty commonly known as the signing of the 'Second Optional protocol'.

"However she shares the view and responded to the appeal of the majority of the people for a robust response to the increasing level of crime involving robberie s that include physical assault, rape and murder by robbers who attack innocent c itizens, thereby creating panic and a confidence crisis in the society."

Nevertheless, the statement said, "the president is committed to revisiting the (armed robbery) Act for possible amendment as soon as the situation is brought fully under control and sustainable peace is assured".

Documentary 2: Sliding Liberia

Surfersvillage Global Surf News, 21 July, 2008 : - - Sliding Liberia is a film that crosses genres. Conceived of by Stanford filmmaker Britton Caillouette and Stanford PhD student Nicholai Lidow, this surf film/social documentary follows a group of young surfers to Liberia in search of more than perfect waves.

As they travel through the West African country, devastated by decades of brutal civil war, they record the stories of people they meet along the way––people like Alfred, a young boy who became Liberia's first surfer after finding a bodyboard while fleeing from rebels.

Besides rediscovering a world-class point break that could be the best-kept secret in the surfing world, the surfers find something much more important––a way to travel responsibly in the 21st century. Featuring Surfers: Dan Malloy, Crystal Thornburg, and Chris Del Moro. Cinematography by: Dave Homcy.


www.slidingliberia.com

Documentary 1: Women of Liberia

Amnesty International welcomes you to the groundbreaking US film launch and tour of Women of Liberia: Fighting for Peace. In this poignant documentary, directed by two time academy award winning Jonathan Stack and commissioned by Amnesty International, Women of Liberia follows the epic journey of five women from the beginning of the war to reintegration into post-conflict society. This is a fate, which many women associated with the fighting forces in Liberia, will never reach.

Jackie Redd, Monrovia (Liberia)
In 1990, when Jackie was just 13 years old, she was abducted and raped by government soldiers. Soon after being captured, she escaped and discovered that her father had been killed by government soldiers – the same group that had raped her.

As a form of revenge and with few other options, she decided to join the National Patriotic Front of Liberia (NPFL) led at the time by the former Liberian President Charles Taylor. Jackie stayed with the NPFL throughout the first war and then joined the Anti Terrorist Unit, the government’s elite force when Charles Taylor came to power in 1997. She stayed with them until 2002, a year before the second war ended. One of her last roles with Charles Taylor was his personal body guard.

After going through the first DDR process in Liberia (1997), Jackie had little trust the second one would be worthwhile and decided not to participate in it. Jackie stays in close touch with many of the women formally under her command, and every chance she gets, she helps them out and advocates on their behalf.

She now works for the international organization, Search for Common Ground, in Liberia as a radio operator. She has feels blessed to have the opportunity to work with them. Jackie is a single mother with a son who is 18 years old.

Florence Ballah, Voinjama (Lofa County)
At the tender age of 14, separated from her family, Florence and six other women were captured by ULIMO soldiers in Lofa County along the Guinea border. Five of the women including Florence were raped and the remaining two were killed because they refused to be raped. Out of fear and with few other opportunities, Florence stayed with ULIMO as a cook and porter until the first war ended in 1997.

After experiencing the levels of violence that she did, Florence made every effort to stay out of Liberia’s second war which lasted from 1997 to 2003. Since then, Florence has participated in a Liberian organization called National Excombatant Peace Initiative (NEPI), which was set up by and for former fighters associated with the fighting forces to help in reintegration efforts. NEPI participated in the second Liberian disbarment process. They have also been engaged in human rights training of men and women formerly associated with the fighting forces.

Since she joined NEPI, she has been a spokesperson on issues related to women in Liberia. Florence is married with two children and her dream is to become a medical doctor.

World Bank Ranks Liberia High In Controlling Corruption

As the Government of Liberia continues its fight against corruption, the World Bank has revealed that the war-wrecked nation has shown the largest improvement than any country globally in controlling corruption over the last two years.

According to Presidential Press Secretary Cyrus Wleh Badio, the statistics was recently released by the World Bank Institute.

Quoting the World Bank Institute’s Worldwide Governance Indicators, Badio said Liberia was ranked 185 out of 206 countries on control of corruption in 2005.

The Presidential Press Secretary made the disclosure Monday at his regular press briefing held at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Monrovia.

According to the data, in 2007, Liberia moved up an additional 32 places to 113 in the world which means that in just two years, the country moved 72 places in the world rankings.

Click here for link

Photo: Presidential Press Secretary Cyrus Wleh Badio

Why Girls in Liberia Need to Stay at School

By Kate Thomas: guardian.co.uk

15-year-old Miranda lowers her eyes every time she passes the village school. "I dropped out three years ago" the former child soldier says with a sigh. "I would have liked to have become a doctor but school was too expensive. Now I sell doughnuts on the street instead."

Miranda is one of a generation of Liberian girls who have spent more time at war than at school. Her country had little hope of meeting the Millennium Development Goal of having equal numbers of girls and boys in school by 2005. Three years ago, the war-weary West African nation was emerging from a brutal 14 year civil war that brought it to its knees, destroying 70% of school buildings and hundreds of thousands of lives.
Almost five years after the end of the conflict, school enrolment rates hover around the 50% mark. The gender gap is stark; only 31% of girls, compared to 54% of boys are enrolled in primary education in Liberia. All too often it is girls who are forced to drop out of school to boost family incomes. Miranda is one of the lucky ones. She sells doughnuts. Other girls are forced to sell their bodies.

Charlotte Kaicora, headmistress of a primary school in the coastal capital Monrovia, says only a small number of female students successfully make the transition from primary to secondary education. "When families have economic difficulties, it is usually girls who are forced to drop out of school. Boys are seen as future breadwinners and most parents are prepared to invest more in their education," she says.
Last year the Liberian government introduced the Free and Compulsory Education Act as an initial step to help meet a Millennium Development Goal to have all primary age children enrolled in school by 2015. Under the new law, all children aged between 5 and 11 are supposed to be able to attend school free of charge.

The reality is somewhat different. The costs of uniforms, stationary and other supplies make education unaffordable for many parents. The cost of kitting out three children in school uniforms is $20 – two weeks' wages for the average Liberian. Despite the new government initiative, some primary schools still ask parents to pay unofficial fees.
Thirteen-year-old Jelila Webbah left school at 11 to help her parents in their traditional restaurant on the outskirts of the sprawling capital Monrovia. Damp, rotting benches skirt the counter and the air is heavy with the sweat of labourers stopping for a chat. "I'd like Jelila to return to school, but the money she brings in for the restaurant pays for school uniforms for my sons," says Jelila's mother Sarah.

Female students like Jelila often drop out of school when puberty hits. Only 22% of public schools in Liberia have seats and only one third have functioning pit latrines or flush toilets, making the onset of menstruation and other growing pains hard to deal with at school.
It is one of the reasons why aid organisations working in Liberia are prioritising school infrastructure. Agencies say they are noticing that female attendance rates drop when school bathroom facilities are not working.
"We need to ensure that girls not only enrol in school, but stay in school after age 11 or 12. We're launching a project to reward the families of girl students with bags of rice and other foodstuffs based on their school attendance rates" says Steve Miller, project coordinator for visions in action, a relief organisation that is working to make education accessible to all Liberians.

The Liberian ministry for education is keen to halt gender inequality in schools but lacks the resources to do so without the support of donor countries such as the UK and US. "Female education is key in this country. If we can boost the number of girls in school, we will reduce the number of girls working on the street and also the number of premature marriages" says Hawa Gol Kotchi, Liberia's deputy education minister.
Click here for the rest of the article...

Mercy Ships' Dr. Gary Parker on BBC Radio

One of the most humble people we have ever met...Dr. Gary Parker, Africa Mercy Chief Medical Officer and maxillofacial surgeon, presented the opening lecture at the British Association of Oral and Maxillo Facial Surgeons annual scientific meeting in Cardiff, Wales, earlier this month.
With 21 years experience in surgery with Mercy Ships Dr. Gary's topic was "The Right to Look Human: Oral and Maxillofacial Surgery for the Poor of Our World."

Previous Doctors on Mercy Ships: (L-R) Leo Cheng, Peter McDermott, Luer Koeper (Germany), Tony Giles, Gary Parker

Dr Gary was also interviewed for the BBC Radio Wales programme "All Things Considered" this week (Sunday 20 July at 8.30am, repeated on Wednesday 23 July at 6.30pm), by Roy Jenkins.

ATC: Gary Parker / Mercy Ships 20 Jul 08
This week, Roy Jenkins’ guest is Dr Gary Parker, a surgeon who works in some of the poorest countries of the world, restoring the faces of those who have been affected by deformity or disease. He talks about his remarkable and challenging work and about the Christian faith which inspires him.
Duration: 28mins | File Size: 13MB

Available until: 7:02pm Wednesday 30th July

Click here to listen with BBC iplayer
or
Podcast

(it is well worth the listen!)

Life in Liberia

People sit around selling things, cooking, and generally visiting.

Everything is hauled on your head. Nigel says that spinals are harder to insert in these cultures since their neck and back muscles are so developed.

An older woman looks my way.

Community life is often centred around the shade under a tree.

I want to do a whole series of pictures of laundry hanging to dry in Liberia.

Hailing a taxi.

The busy streets of Monrovia.

Sunday’s Downpour Renders Liberians Homeless

MONROVIA, 21 July 2008 (IRIN) - Intense and heavy rainfall in the Liberian capital Monrovia on 20 July caused the worst floods on record in Monrovia and forced nearly 1,000 people out of their houses, Liberian authorities told IRIN.

All day Sunday, residents in eastern areas of the city including in Paynesville, Townhalk, King Gray, Fish Market and other communities were seen removing personal belongings like mattresses, clothes and pots from their homes. By the end of the day, flood water had blocked roads to the area, and government rescue workers were using canoes to evacuate the remaining people from the flood areas.

For more pictures click here.

Quote: George Alagiah

"[International schools] still prosper wherever there is a large concentration of expatriates. They are aimed at the foreign parents who like the idea of living somewhere exotic but draw the line at enrolling their children at a school where, heaven forbid, local kids might actually be in the majority. These are the same people who will tell you glibly how they love Africa. What they mean is that they love what Africa stands for in their imaginations, rather than the reality. Like the chattering classes in Western capitals who are right behind the idea of multiculturalism but make sure they live as far away as possible from those parts of the city where the cultures actually mix and, sometimes, clash.

International schools usually make a point of advertising the fact that most of their teachers are trained abroad - a not-so-subtle way of implying that local teachers can't be any good. They are stuffed to the brim with the children of ambassadors, multi-national executives and so-called development experts. And always there is a smattering of pupils from the local elite, who end up developing views and accents that are utterly at odds with the nation they are being groomed to run. These are the people Frantz Fanon wrote about, so tellingly, in Black Skins, White Masks*, his book about the false dawn of decolonisation.

The products of these schools are a part of a new world class - not an upper or lower class, not even middle, but what I like to call the global class. They inhabit a new space outside national boundaries and conventional measures of social standing. Though they may carry the passport of a particular country, their allegiance is more to a way of life, a standard of living. These people are not to be confused with the international jet set, which is made up of those fortunate enough to have come into some serious money. Though comparatively well off, the global class is not necessarily cash-rich."
-George Alagiah, A Passage to Africa, 2001

*Black Skins, White Masks can be read in its entirety on GOOGLE BOOKS.

French Director Shocks UN With Disturbing Film on Child soldiers

UNITED NATIONS (AFP) — French film-maker Jean-Stephane Sauvaire brought the horror of Liberia's civil war to UN headquarters this week with the screening of "Johnny Mad Dog", his brutal portrayal of child soldiering.

Sauvaire's film, which won the Prize of Hope at this year's Cannes film festival, is based on a novel by Congolese writer Emmanuel Dongala about two teens trying to survive civil war in an unnamed African country.

In an interview with AFP, Sauvaire conceded that his film was violent, but said that the gun-toting youngsters in the film, all war veterans, were not traumatized by the experience and rather found acting therapeutic.

He said he wanted audiences to understand what it was like to be a child soldier and to be shocked and moved by the stories in the film.

"How can you do a movie about the war if it's not violent?," he asked.

Tuesday night's screening was sponsored by the office of Radhika Coomaraswamy, the special representative of the UN Secretary General for Children and Armed Conflict, Special Court for Sierra Leone prosecutor Steven Rapp and France's UN Ambassador Jean-Maurice Ripert.

J.K.Rowling Commencement Speech

A friend sent me this link:
"I don't know if you saw this, but I thought it was amusing, and also worth reading. JK Rowling's speech at the 2008 commencement for Harvard students."

PARTS OF THE SPEECH:

On this wonderful day when we are gathered together to celebrate your academic success, I have decided to talk to you about the benefits of failure. And as you stand on the threshold of what is sometimes called ‘real life’, I want to extol the crucial importance of imagination.

These might seem quixotic or paradoxical choices, but please bear with me.

Looking back at the 21-year-old that I was at graduation, is a slightly uncomfortable experience for the 42-year-old that she has become. Half my lifetime ago, I was striking an uneasy balance between the ambition I had for myself, and what those closest to me expected of me.

I was convinced that the only thing I wanted to do, ever, was to write novels. However, my parents, both of whom came from impoverished backgrounds and neither of whom had been to college, took the view that my overactive imagination was an amusing personal quirk that could never pay a mortgage, or secure a pension.

There is an expiry date on blaming your parents for steering you in the wrong direction; the moment you are old enough to take the wheel, responsibility lies with you. What is more, I cannot criticise my parents for hoping that I would never experience poverty. They had been poor themselves, and I have since been poor, and I quite agree with them that it is not an ennobling experience. Poverty entails fear, and stress, and sometimes depression; it means a thousand petty humiliations and hardships. Climbing out of poverty by your own efforts, that is indeed something on which to pride yourself, but poverty itself is romanticised only by fools.

a mere seven years after my graduation day, I had failed on an epic scale. An exceptionally short-lived marriage had imploded, and I was jobless, a lone parent, and as poor as it is possible to be in modern Britain, without being homeless. The fears my parents had had for me, and that I had had for myself, had both come to pass, and by every usual standard, I was the biggest failure I knew.

Now, I am not going to stand here and tell you that failure is fun. That period of my life was a dark one, and I had no idea that there was going to be what the press has since represented as a kind of fairy tale resolution. I had no idea how far the tunnel extended, and for a long time, any light at the end of it was a hope rather than a reality.

Portrait of J.K. Rowling by Stuart Pearson Wright
National Portrait Gallery in London, UK

So why do I talk about the benefits of failure? Simply because failure meant a stripping away of the inessential. I stopped pretending to myself that I was anything other than what I was, and began to direct all my energy into finishing the only work that mattered to me. Had I really succeeded at anything else, I might never have found the determination to succeed in the one arena I believed I truly belonged. I was set free, because my greatest fear had already been realised, and I was still alive, and I still had a daughter whom I adored, and I had an old typewriter and a big idea. And so rock bottom became the solid foundation on which I rebuilt my life.

You might never fail on the scale I did, but some failure in life is inevitable. It is impossible to live without failing at something, unless you live so cautiously that you might as well not have lived at all - in which case, you fail by default.

Failure gave me an inner security that I had never attained by passing examinations. Failure taught me things about myself that I could have learned no other way. I discovered that I had a strong will, and more discipline than I had suspected; I also found out that I had friends whose value was truly above rubies.

The knowledge that you have emerged wiser and stronger from setbacks means that you are, ever after, secure in your ability to survive. You will never truly know yourself, or the strength of your relationships, until both have been tested by adversity. Such knowledge is a true gift, for all that it is painfully won, and it has been worth more to me than any qualification I ever earned.

FOR THE WHOLE SPEECH CLICK HERE.