It”s haunting. Echoes of war all around, but life moves at such a blurring speed it would be easy to not notice.
Yesterday I crossed a bridge where a photograph was made by Chris Hondros during the war. I instantly knew the place because that image had become an icon of the conflict in Liberia. Later it was a Pulitzer finalist. The photographer, Hondros, was killed in Libya in April documenting the conflict there.
The image from the bridge, taken in 2003, of a Liberian militia commander celebrating after firing a rocket-propelled grenade at rebel forces, is hard to forget. His expression, his intensity, his body language. He”s unforgettable. His name is Joseph Duo.
Joseph and Chris met when Hondros returned to cover the elections in 2005. Hondros helped Duo through night school, and Duo wants to start his own organization, in Hondros” name, to help rehabilitate former combatants. We hope to meet with Duo next week and tell his story.
There are stories all around us here. My first day in Monrovia I spent with Nat Bayjay, a reporter and photographer at Front Page Africa. He was recently named the top journalist in Liberia, and he”s sharp, unassuming and committed. I asked Nat how he felt about his job. “I love it. I love it so much!”
As we waited at the Ministry of Justice, Nat told me stories of the war. When it got too dangerous, he and his family left the country and lived as refugees in Ghana and Nigeria. I asked him if he met any journalists during his experience in the camps. No, but he saw many. And he saw little effects from their work. We began to talk about the impact of journalism and what it means for the subjects of photographs and how or if it really affects their lives in a positive way. Then he was called into a press conference with the Minister of Justice.
Later Nat led me across that bridge where Hondros and Duo first met. He took me to his wife”s restaurant, and we feasted on traditional liberian food: rice and meat stew. The meat was everything you can imagine – dried fish, boiled whole fish, and other kinds of intense beef and pork. I ate a lot of fish, had a coke and made some pictures of his 5-year-old daughter.
