The hardest non-story of my life

It's not every day that I'm arrested by an AK-toting soldier in a country that's just been overthrown in a military coup.

In fact, it's probably safe to assume that Dec. 29, 2008 will be the only day in my life where that occurs.

Last Sunday, after much deliberation and discussion, I left Freetown and set out for a place called Yenga, a small town at the confluence of the Guinean-Liberian-Sierra Leonean border.

Five days after the coup hit Guinea, I was en route to a disputed territory that has been occupied by Guineans since around the end of the Sierra Leonean civil war - even though I wasn't yet entirely sure where that place was, Yenga being too small to merit mention on any of the maps I could find.

If anyone in Sierra Leone was feeling the impact of the Guinean coup, I was convinced it would be the people of Yenga - and I would be the only journalist in miles. Admittedly, I was pretty pleased with myself.

Of course, I was also slightly anxious about what I might encounter. For there to be a story, there would also have to be some tension, maybe even a little instability. Throughout the trip, I again found myself lost in the type of professional daydreaming that I wrote about two posts ago.

After a brief stop in Makeni, Sheik and I loaded ourselves into an overburdened taxi for the five-hour drive to Koidu. As we progressed further east, the landscape grew hillier while the roads grew increasingly rough.

I felt a pang of unease each time we passed the shelled out remnants of a vehicle in the ditch, now just mangled frames of rusting metal, and remembered that the most likely cause of death for a Westerner in Sierra Leone was not a ruthless criminal or warring soldier, but a mundane car accident.

Realistically, these vehicle shells were no more common in the provinces than they had been in Freetown, but something about the remoteness of my current location gave it all a more menacing quality.

Nonetheless, we arrived in Koidu with pleasantly little excitement and it quickly became clear that this trip would give me a better appreciation of the war's legacy. While Freetown was largely sheltered from the civil war until the last couple years, the eastern regions were both the starting point and heart of the conflict, many of the rebels having initially entered from Liberia.

Koidu is the fourth-largest city in Sierra Leone and the biggest in the Kono District, which is the heart of the country's mining operations. The land is rich in diamonds and minerals, and stunning in its beauty. Many houses still bear the scars of war, charred frames not yet rebuilt from the incineration they experienced at rebel hands.

Sheik and I checked into our hotel and, weary from the day's journey, he went straight to bed. I grabbed some dinner and a couple beers over pithy conversation with a pair of middle-aged Americans that claimed to be in the "sunscreen business", but who were undoubtedly among the foreign miners looting the land while leaving precious little of the spoils for the people of Salone.

They told me how boring the town was, and I couldn't help but feel that they'd be laughing at me as soon as I retired to my room, baffled that any journalist would think there was a story of international interest to be gleaned from this sleepy mining district.

The next morning, Sheik and I hired a pair of ocada (motorbike) drivers - one Guinean, one Sierra Leonean - to take us to Yenga. They said it would take about three hours, and I again felt a glimmer of hope, reasoning that three hours was an eternity on these roads and no American miner would likely have known even if there was an all-out war raging at the border.

Anxious to get to Yenga, I didn't even pause for photos as we negotiated yet another beautiful part of the countryside. Tall trees dotted the mountainous landscape as we traversed dirt "roads" that few cars could dream of navigating, the skin on my knuckles quickly grating away as I held tightly to the small metal handle along the bike's rear.

We passed through myriad towns of tiny thatched-roof structures, walls optional. I felt strangely presidential as I waved at small children while we whirred through these hamlets, reactions ranging from stunned silence to gleeful exuberance. My driver, Solo B, explained that they see white people only once or twice a year - usually when something bad has happened or is about to.

Around 1:30, we arrived to a river and Solo B explained that we just needed to cross it and go for another hour or so and we'd be in Yenga.

"Beautiful," I thought. That should leave us about four hours to get the story and we'd be back to our hotel in Koidu, where I'd left my laptop and other heavier belongings stashed under the bed to make the journey less strenuous.

We loaded the bikes into the canoe and made the crossing in a matter of minutes. And that's when things got significantly more complicated.


We were met on the shore by a Guinean soldier, and it quickly dawned on me that the river was also the natural border between Sierra Leone and Guinea. This was a very bare bones, one-man border checkpoint.

As instructions were translated from French to a local Guinean dialect to Krio and finally to English, my rudimentary grade 11 education in Canada's other national language was enough to leave me wondering what was getting lost in translation. Sheik explained that he was a student who had offered to show me the countryside and we were just on our way to see the border.

After a methodical rummaging through of our gear, the soldier, his AK-47 propped against the same tree roots he was sitting on, seemed thoroughly unconvinced - and rightfully so, given the Le 1.1 million, JHR business cards, and recording equipment he'd uncovered in my knapsack.

"What's the real reason you're crossing into Guinea?" came the soldier's translated question, and I looked to Sheik as I walked to the riverbank and sat down. Our Guinean driver took up the cause, to no avail. Five minutes later, I was hurriedly ushered back into the canoe and deposited back in Sierra Leone.

At this point, it was explained to me that the soldier had been convinced, the obvious trappings of a journalist notwithstanding, that I was a mercenary for hire. He'd arrested all four of us, planning to take us to his superiors in Conakry.

I was immediately pleased not to have been privy to this knowledge prior to finding myself safely back on Salone soil, where the image of myself as anything remotely threatening remained thoroughly amusing.

Solo B had quickly offered the soldier a Le 10,000 bribe to allow us to return from whence we came. The fact that a suspected mercenary and three grown men could buy their freedom for less than $4 was not lost on me.

As we debated the looming question of our next move, I learned that to get to Yenga without crossing into Guinea would take us until well after dark. Crossing through Guinea shaved hours off the trek and, while they could probably get Sheik in reasonably simply, my skin colour would preclude my entry without, at the very least, a proper Visa.

"But I have a Visa," I said. "I gave him my passport, with my Guinean Visa in it."

Of course, the soldier was illiterate, a fact that should have occurred to me sooner. This, I was told, changed everything. Solo B knew another crossing we could try and we were back on the bikes in no time.

Having learned from our first experience, we stopped a mile short of the next attempted border crossing and I did something absurdly trusting and, potentially, remarkably stupid. I handed Solo B, a seasoned veteran of this crossing that was sure not to be hassled and a man I had known for about five hours, Le 1 million (about $350) and our recording gear. We agreed that we would pretend not to know him, and he would stop and wait for us a mile past the checkpoint on the Guinean side.

I repeatedly questioned my sanity as I handed over the wad of cash. I also removed the JHR business cards from my wallet and cast them deep into the forest.

We approached the river and went through the standard police checkpoint on the Salone side. It was the third or fourth I'd experienced so far in the journey, and just as painless as the rest. No bribes were necessary, no stories fabricated. We were journalists and we were headed to Yenga, Sheik stated matter-of-factly. No problem.

The head officer offered to be interviewed, and I smiled to myself as I remembered reading three months ago that this was a country that didn't value press freedom and was antagonistic towards journalists.

Instead, my overwhelming experience in the provinces aligned with Sheik's assurance that police and military were terrified of journalists, which, as far as I'm concerned, is a very good sign. It indicated that there is an expectation that journalists will be happy to make their corruption public and there will be repercussions. That's huge.

We began to cross the river, with a word of warning that Guineans weren't as accommodating towards reporters. Solo B had already passed out of sight on the other side.

As we arrived on the bank, we were quickly ushered into a small tent for interrogation. Translation was again an issue, but after about 40 minutes, we were allowed through with only a Le 20,000 bribe, which Sheik negotiated down from the Le 100,000 asking price. We climbed a hill and I hopped onto the waiting bike of Solo B, issuing a silent prayer of thanks that my brazen behaviour had not yet bit me in the ass.

But though we now found ourselves on an arid road, we were not yet out of the proverbial woods. After a half hour on the bikes in Guinea, me casting nervous glances at every soldier or otherwise authoritarian figure we passed, Solo B discovered that his front tire was flat. Fantastic.

I was in Guinea. No one knew I was in Guinea. I had no reception on my cell phone, and I no longer had functioning transportation. I was, for lack of a better term, fucked. And what's worse, it was completely and utterly my own fault, my current predicament the result of my insatiable desire to find this story.

Of course, I'm writing candidly about this less than a week later, so things clearly worked out okay. As it turns out, Solo B is pretty much the best ocada driver ever. He whipped out a toolkit, sealed the flat and had us back on the road in less than a half hour, my internal self-flagellation only outwardly manifesting itself in the occasional worried glance towards Sheik.

And so, caked in the omnipresent red dust of the region, we pulled up to the border crossing to Yenga, our holy grail, around 6:30 p.m.

Funny thing about that: the border closes at 6.

Much discussion ensued, ultimately ending with the payment of another Le 20,000 bribe - Guineans love their bribes, I was quickly learning - and we were back across into Sierra Leone, albeit a portion of SL occupied by Guinea.

As fading light turned to firelight, Sheik and I interviewed Salone police officers, the tribal chief and those affected by the occupation. We went to nearby Koindu and interviewed the Officer-in-Charge for the area.

In the end, Yenga was pretty boring.

The Guinean coup has had no discernible effect on the area. The border was closed for an hour on the day of the coup. Cross-border trade continues unabated.

In fact, throughout the day's epic adventures, it had become increasingly clear that, at least in the east, the Guinean-Salone border is a very fluid one. Often times, these tiny villages have far more interaction with their neighbours across the water than any of their own countrymen and women.

At the point at which we crossed into Guinea, the officer we interviewed explained that only one car a week left the border to visit other towns in Sierra Leone, while many people crossed the river daily to go to market in Guinea. And here too, as in Yenga, relations had been unimpeded by the coup in Conakry.

Of course, ultimately, this is great news. As a human being, I'm thrilled at the seeming pervasive calm where I'd expected something of a powder keg. It gives me real hope that the Guinea situation will not re-ignite regional instability; that maybe the progress being made in West Africa can continue to crawl along.

What it doesn't give me is a story. And so, as a journalist, I'm slightly disappointed.

As the day drew to a close, Sheik and I found a very basic guest house and caught about four hours of sleep, awaking at 2:45 a.m. to begin the long trek back to Koidu (not to be confused with Koindu, which we were leaving).

For the next eight hours, we rode more or less without rest. At 4 a.m., we passed through a town shrouded in darkness, save for a glow of light and the hum of chanting coming from one building. Disturbed by this eerie display, I asked Solo B what was going on and he said they were at church ... at 4 a.m. on a Tuesday.

I remain skeptical. In all likelihood, it was one of the many secret societies in the country, where female genital mutilation is practiced as a rite of passage for young girls.

An hour later, we rolled into Kailahun as the day's first call to prayer rang out from the city's mosque, a few people slowly passing us on their way to the first of five daily prayer rituals, and I internalized just how unfit to be a Muslim I am.

Continuing in the darkness, we sped along paths at times no wider than a couple meters, jungle on both sides of us, and crossed a ferry at sunrise.


Eventually, mercifully, we arrived at the door of our hotel, just after 11 a.m. I'd spent 15 of the last 25 hours on the back of a motorbike. My knuckles were already scabbing over, my hindquarters felt raw, my hips ached, and I could barely walk.

But we weren't done. We grabbed our belongings and hopped aboard an aggravatingly slow taxi to Makeni, smoke escaping from the dash throughout the agonizing seven-hour drive.

Our driver, whose livelihood is based on making this very trip daily, somehow managed to run out of gas 10 miles out of town. Sheik absolutely lost it on the guy, flagged a taxi and insisted that our driver pay the fare to take us into Makeni. He then continued our already 15.5-hour travel day on to Freetown, while I decided Makeni would do for the night and met up with my colleague, Craig.

As I stumbled into a restaurant called Ibrahim's, telling Craig a story that I imagine will quickly establish itself in my personal canon, I realized that I'd subsisted for almost two days on five bananas, an orange (which, oddly, are green here), a piece of bread and a solitary bottle of water.

This might account in part for the fact that I've lost between 10 and 20 pounds over the last 2.5 months, though my paranoid streak insists that a tapeworm is the more plausible explanation.

All in all, it was an eventful three days. I covered five of the country's 12 districts. I went from Sierra Leone's western-most city (Freetown) to its eastern border, and beyond.


And after all this, I had to write an email to the Toronto Star, the paper I was planning to try to pitch to, to inform them there was nothing worth pitching.

I regret nothing.