Introduction and Inauguration of Liberia in Pictures

My position in the Scott Family Liberia Fellows program is Special Advisor and Assistant to the Minister of Foreign Affairs. The position is dynamic and offers great insight into the workings of a Foreign Ministry that is looking to rebuild itself after decades of conflict and mismanagement.The breadth of issues covered by the Foreign Ministry ensures that my duties vary greatly. On any given day I could be found in my small three-person office writing letters to heads of state, drafting speeches or devising ways to enhance Ministry efficiency and coordination. On those same days I would surely be trying to find ways to make copies or print in a building with inconsistent generator power and often no ink or paper; challenges to Government come in many forms.On what time I have off I try my best to get out of the office, out of the house, away from the international crowd and into Monrovia’s streets and neighborhoods. I seek out the back roads where I can get an up-close view and hear anecdotes of the extraordinary yet utterly normal problems facing Liberians who struggle to rebuild their lives in a complex and demanding environment.I don’t do this out of a voyeuristic desire to see how hard life can be in Monrovia. That is quite obvious even through a tinted car window. For me this is an education and an opportunity to humanize the development challenges here in a way that compliments my formal position in the Ministry.When in the Ministry and dealing with high-level qualified government officials it is all too easy to forget the texture and magnitude of the challenges that remain in Liberia and those facing the majority of Liberians. From two floors beneath the President, figures such as 70% unemployment and 80% illiteracy become abstractions, as do entire categories of people, such as former combatants or the mentally ill. As an international, it is all too easy to fall into a closeted expatriate life, riding from air-conditioned flats in air-conditioned white jeeps to air-conditioned offices and back again, hardly hearing the sounds of the street. To be sure this is a Liberian reality too given the massive international presence. But this is not a balanced look at Liberia. I constantly push myself out of this comfort zone (and, on weekends, out of the hammock on my balcony). The results are some of the most enjoyable, memorable and educational experiences I’ve had here.What I see isn’t all negative. To the contrary: I am constantly inspired, and frankly surprised, to see how positive many Liberians are. Even in some of the darkest boroughs, where one might expect hope to have dried up decades ago with the last flows of pipe-borne water or electricity, I see people who believe that a better tomorrow is possible. This is both a credit to the Liberian spirit and to the progress made by President Sirleaf.My training as a photojournalist does not allow me to go on these little journeys without toting a camera and I am almost always accepted in the communities and allowed to move and photograph as I wish. This post will inaugurate the Liberia in Pictures section, a regular forum in which I hope to provide vignettes into “normal” Liberian life so as to give a fuller understanding of the context of the work we do here as Scott Fellows while also providing a visual side to the blog.This first posting is a series of images I took during the 2005 Liberian elections, and is, in my opinion, a seminal moment in which hope was reborn. For background, in 2005 Liberians voted peacefully in the first truly free and fair elections in Liberia’s 160-year history. Harvard-trained economist Ellen Johnson Sirleaf defeated former World Footballer of the Year George Manneh Weah by a margin of nearly 20 points in a run-off to become Africa’s first democratically elected female head of state.I was in Liberia at this time working with the United Nations Office for Project Services re-building badly damaged physical infrastructure, mainly roads and bridges. In October and November of that year I had the privilege to serve as an election observer for both rounds of the election. The eight images above capture some of the tension, excitement and hope that marked the historic moment.To see the photos presented with their captions, please visit: http://www.cpoy.org/index.php?s=WinningImages&yr=61&c=28&p=2.0.