Press conference in Liberia: Sirleaf and Blair duck questions and leave

Mar 16 2012 under liberia | Leave a comment

On March 7, 2012, Liberian President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf and former British prime minister Tony Blair held a joint press conference in the nation’s capital of Monrovia. Blair was in town for his work with the Africa Governance Initiative.

After reporters had waited more than an hour, the politicians made their opening remarks, pledged their support for the efforts of the other, and then took four questions from a mix of Liberian and international reporters.

The first question was about gay rights in Liberia and was put to Sirleaf. She responded: “We have been trying to focus our work on the substantive things that drive our development agenda. Liberia will continue to preserve its traditional values.”

The second question was about gay rights in Liberia and was put to Blair. He said a lot of things, but nothing about gay rights.

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Scribbles from the way back

Feb 1 2012 under malawi | Leave a comment

A rare personal note.

Ya, I jumped in the pool. Among expats in Blantyre, it’s sort of becoming something of a tradition. On your last night in Malawi, you set everybody up to meet at Doogles, get good and drunk, and at the end of the night, it’s your turn to jump in the pool.

I think it was Katie Lin that started it. She’s another Canadian journalist, now on her way to South America. And then there was Jayne, and maybe another after her. So I’m the third or the fourth.

Sketching this out, I’m on my way to Canada, writing on a bus travelling from Blantyre to Lilongwe. The first leg of a long journey for a quick trip back before leaving again. This time to Monrovia, Liberia.

I’m feeling nostalgic and listening to the Rolling Stones. “You Got to Move,” “Sweet Virginia,” “Thru and Thru,” “How Can I Stop.” The songs that I’ve always kept with me. The right numbers for the sort of fatigue that’s brought on by the feelings that come with leaving another home. I am tired.

Late home from the bar last night, I was packing my bags and took a minute to flip through my passport. It’s 14 months old and I’m on page 27. That sort of thing will make you tired.

This job is everything that I want. Well, a lot of what I want. That’s what the jump in the pool was all about. Another adventure complete. Celebrating one more day. A second taken to remind myself that there is a reason to continue and keep on moving.

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Time to breathe

Dec 13 2011 under malawi | 1 Comment

This past couple of weeks haven’t been much fun.

A moderate bout of malaria pretty-much floored me for a while. And now we’re coming up on the end of our time here in Malawi, which, for me, means regrets and endless dwellings on everything I could have accomplished, had I just had a little more time in this country.

There’s the uranium mine up in the north I wanted to visit, the refugee camp in the central region that I tried and failed (temporarily put-off) negotiating access to, the story on women with children in prison that I never got around to writing… Today, I think the list is something like 30-points long.

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Through the cracks of Malawi’s porous social safety nets

Nov 6 2011 under malawi | Leave a comment

This is an excerpt from a feature article that was originally published at Inter Press Service on November 4, 2011. It was coauthored with Archibald Kasakura.

In Mbedza village, a remote rural community in southern Malawi, Fedson Feston beams an infant’s awkward smile and swings his tiny arms up towards the face of his mother. Four months old, Fedson is too young to know how lucky he is to be alive.

When his mother, Manes, went into labour, she and her husband were far from the nearest hospital. The couple found a bush on the side of the road, and that’s where Fedson and two siblings – triplets, it turned out – were born.

One, a boy named Ezera, died in a hospital the next day. Shortly after, Fedson and his sister, Mandaliza, were discharged.

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Freelancing is… by Richard Morgan

Oct 20 2011 under caught online | Leave a comment

I’ll be travelling for the next week or so and will mostly be away from the internet.

I’ll leave you with an excerpt from Richard Morgan’s “Seven Years as a Freelance Writer, or, How To Make Vitamin Soup,” which was originally published at The Awl. Read the whole essay there.

Freelancing is pitching two ideas to a new editor at the Times, after having written for the publication for five years, and being told (quoting exactly here): “I think you’d have better luck pitching your stories elsewhere.”

It’s paying your own way to Boston after securing an interview with a famous, millionaire recluse, only to have the story live in limbo until the day you read the latest issue of the publication and see, oh!, they have a feature about the very phenomenon you were writing about—which means, at least, that your editor hadn’t mentioned your story to anybody.

Freelancing means walking from the West Village to the Upper East Side and back because you don’t have enough money for the subway. Freelancing means being so poor and so hungry for so long that you “eat” a bowl of soup that’s just hot water, crushed-up multivitamins and half your spice rack (mostly garlic salt).

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Halfway gone

Sep 27 2011 under malawi | Leave a comment

I can’t believe that I’ve been in Malawi for three months.

Like malaria pills go down the throat, the days drop off the calendar.

I’ll be travelling and offline for a week or so.

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Malawi’s economic crunch hits the media hard

Sep 2 2011 under malawi | Leave a comment

This article was originally published at Canada’s Toronto Star on September 2, 2011.

“Dear brethren,” Leonard Chikadya, managing director of Blantyre Printing and Publishing, began the conclusion of a speech to staff on Aug. 30. “With a lot of pain in my heart, I have swallowed my pride and, reluctantly, decided that I am going to reduce our head count. I am going to reduce the number of colleagues that we have by 44.”

Speaking for the leadership of the largest publishing house in Malawi, Chikadya’s words soon reverberated throughout the media environment of the entire country.

And they were not the only ones.

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Looking back on the move from Bhutan to Malawi

Aug 31 2011 under malawi | 1 Comment

This article was originally published in Bhutan’s The Journalist on August 14, 2011.

A recent visitor to Bhutan comes face to face with an African reality

I didn’t wake up until the two of them were inside my bedroom. They were young men who had broken through my front door and then stood next to where I slept. They turned on the light, and I was shocked awake. They started shouting.

“Give us your money, give us your money or we will kill you,” one screamed.

I’d only been conscious for maybe a tenth of a second. But that’s about when I realized that I was no longer in Thimphu…

Let me step back.

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Ten days training in Toronto, then on to Malawi

Jun 26 2011 under canada | Leave a comment

I left Bhutan on June 8. A few days in Kathmandu, Nepal. Then it was back to Vancouver. A week or so there. Then, June 18, Toronto. June 28, we leave for Blantyre, Malawi.

I’m in Toronto with Journalists for Human Rights, an international ngo that promotes human rights through media development. They’re sending me to Blantyre—Malawi’s second-largest city—to work with a newspaper called the Daily Times. I’ll be in Malawi right through until the end of December.

Malawi is one of the world’s “least developed countries”. The United Nations Human Development Index ranks it 156 out of 170 listed nations. But on the Institute for Economics and Peace’s Global Peace Index, Malawi places just 39 from the top —higher than any other African nation save Botswana.

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Procrastinating in Kathmandu

Jun 11 2011 under nepal | 1 Comment

I had four days in Kathmandu, Nepal. It was an extended layover, really. On my way from Thimphu, Bhutan, to Vancouver, Canada.

And I had a lot to do in those four days.

I had three or four hours of interviews to transcribe before meeting with an editor for a Nepali magazine I was working with; I had to tie up whatever loose ends I still could with the magazine back in Bhutan; an NGO I’m increasingly involved with was keeping me busy with online modules and a demanding volume of emails; and I still had to book flights out of Nepal and back to Vancouver.

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