Ambushed

Tonight, I finished reading Ambushed: A War Reporter’s Life on the Line by Ian Stewart. Since learning I’d be going to Sierra Leone, I’ve been devouring literature on the country ravenously. But little has left me as rapt as this one, probably in large part because I can relate more to the perspective of a young Canadian journalist than, say, that of a Sierra Leonean child soldier.

In terms of readily accessible literature on Sierra Leone, the vast majority covers the civil war period of 1991-2002. It almost becomes easy to forget that I’m not going into a war zone.

But wars are a lot sexier from a storytelling perspective than the plodding, years-long path of development work, and so the shelves shall likely remain one-sided in crises’ favour. Stewart’s novel, at least, won’t be held responsible for evening the score.

He took over as the Associated Press bureau chief for West Africa in the late 1990s and this memoir follows Stewart’s time in the region until he is shot in Freetown in January 1999, a bullet slamming into the back of his skull with all the unwelcome force of a 20% chance of survival.

Climax notwithstanding, the story actually doesn’t even spill that high a percentage of its ink on the Sierra Leone conflict; it’s more a tale of foreign correspondence in general. And a must-read for anyone considering that path.

Through the pages of this memoir, Stewart bluntly details the horrors of his time in Africa and his grueling recovery, all proffered to the reader without the slightest hint of self-censorship. More often than not, he paints himself in an unflattering light, shown disdainful of colleagues and generally sapped by his experiences. With an honesty I can’t help but respect, Stewart writes:

I could no longer cope with the endless stream of violence and bloodshed I had confronted in West Africa. I couldn’t maintain my role as the professional observer. I knew I was a bystander who could do nothing to help, nothing to curb the bloodshed. I scorned my earlier naïveté in thinking my stories might change anything. On several occasions I started to write to my supervisors in New York to ask for a transfer to another, more peaceful bureau, but always I decided against it, fearing it would be viewed as an admission that I couldn’t cut it as a war correspondent. In the end, that admission of failure scared me more than having to wade back into another war zone.

I remember a few years back I had a conversation with three colleagues at The Cord, where the question was posed whether or not we’d want to report in a war zone if offered the opportunity by a national newspaper. I had written almost exclusively sports at the time, yet was still the only one that said yes.

Today, I would frankly question more than then whether I’m good enough to cover a war. And, as I continually remind my concerned friends and family, Sierra Leone’s war ended six years ago and I am not going to a war zone.

Yet after reading Stewart’s harrowing account of that lonely, stressful, sordid existence, I almost wish I was. Perverse? Perhaps.