Monrovia

The capital of Liberia, and the whole of Harry’s 48 hours. He arrives with a name and no contact, and leaves having spent two days with Joshua Blahi.

Red Light Market

Described to Harry by his hotel receptionist as the roughest market in Liberia, and as the place where somebody would know how to reach Blahi. She was right on the second count.

• A traditional West African market, and Harry’s own assessment going in is that a white man with a camera in an African market is a recipe for chaos, and that the answer is to kill them with kindness.
• Everything on the stalls comes from China, which he says is what makes it possible for anyone to start a business at all — one man is selling a thousand toothbrushes.
• The arguments are recreational. He walks into what looks like a fight and finds four separate ones running, all about which Liberian county is the most developed, all entirely good-humoured.
• Asking for a warlord by name works. A man in the market names the street — named after Blahi’s alias — and explains that motorcycle riders there will take you straight to the house.
• What people think of him: not hated. The reason given is that he never went back to war, so he is regarded as a peaceful citizen now.

The safety technique Harry uses and states out loud: keep walking. If you stop, he says, you make yourself a target. He is confronted twice — men who object to the camera — and both times deals with it by staying calm, saying he is filming himself rather than them, and moving on.

Central Monrovia

Blahi shows him the ground he controlled during the war, and is recognised everywhere.

• The base, a building Harry is shown from the outside. Blahi says thousands died in it and that it stands derelict while everything around it is developed because people believe it is haunted.
• The waterfront, from which, on Blahi’s account, diamonds were taken out to ships in international waters and traded for arms, ammunition and drugs.

West Point

The largest slum in Liberia, visited with a man named Wendell who runs a charity there, and deliberately included by Harry as the other side of the country.

• Between 80,000 and 90,000 people live in it.
• Informal housing — nobody owns the land and none of it is regulated.
• The government does very little, so the charity has provided clean water for every person in the settlement.
• Drugs are trivially easy to get near the beach, and the mood changes noticeably when they walk into that part. Harry sees teenagers nodding off in the street and deliberately doesn’t film them, on the grounds that they didn’t consent and it would be cruel.
• The beach is the livelihood — everyone fishes — and it is badly polluted. Harry notes they have bigger problems than litter.
• Sanitation is nearly absent, to the point that people use the beach.
• A free school runs there, mostly for children whose parents are addicted and who have never been to school. The next goal is to feed them through the year.
• A water pump costs $1,800, and Harry donates that amount on camera.

Harry’s tips

• Ask at the market. In a country with no infrastructure for visitors, the roughest market in the city was where he got a working answer within minutes.
• Keep moving. Standing still is what makes you a target.
• Say you’re filming yourself, and mean it. Twice it defused a confrontation.
• Don’t film people who can’t consent. His own line about the teenagers on the beach.
• Kill them with kindness. His stated approach to walking in with a camera.

Source

• 48 Hours with West Africa’s Most Notorious Warlord 🇱🇷 — https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MUrLV0JpPbg