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- Music and Mayhem in Mali
It’s been two weeks since I left for Mali and time I started writing more of this down.
I spend most of my days looking for stories in Bamako, and have yet to leave the capital. With any luck, I will be traveling soon.
Saturday night, I had the chance to listen to a Malian music, Baba Salah at a bar in Bamako. This year, all major music festivals were cancelled because of the conflict, including the famed Festival in the Desert. Some of the best-known music here internationally is often called Desert Blues, something of a fusion between traditional music of the Sahel Desert, and the electric guitar influence of western rock-and-roll. A colleague of mine told me these bands found their way to the musicians by cassettes smuggled into the desert, the most prolific being Jimi Hendrix, Bob Marley, and Dire Straits.
Bamako is a very pleasant, if not dusty, city. However, from what I’ve heard, it is now a shadow of its former self. People who visited here a few years ago tell me about live music playing in every bar, restaurants filled with people, craft markets bustling with buyers and sellers, and a country-wide tourism industry that fueled a significant portion of the country’s economy. Today, this all seems to be on hold while the country deals with a conflict that is both international, and deeply local.
French and other African forces are holding towns and conducting strikes at Islamist Militants in the desert. But soon, the French plan to pull out their soldiers and leave it to regional troops - or what is now looking more likely to be a UN Peacekeeping force. The Malian army itself has been fighting amongst itself, punctuated by a gun battle close to downtown Bamako between troops loyal to the former president, and those with the 2012 coup leaders.
Me and a couple other journalists got closer to this mayhem that was probably wise. The gun shots sounded uncomfortably close enough for us to duck into somebody’s house.
Bamako has been good to me, but the decision now is settling on where to go next. North would be an obvious answer, but at this point the choice is not as easy as it seems.
- Hello Damon, I hope this finds you well. My name is Valerie and I'm a journalist from Columbia University and have been covering the conflict in Mali. I found you on Twitter and saw your blog post about heading to Mali- I think you just arrived? I would love to get your perspective on the situation there. Will you be travelling to the north at any point? How are you travelling throughout the country? Do you have any recommendations on drivers and fixers? Thanks! Valerie
Hi Valarie, Yes, I arrived a few days ago. Bamako is very calm and life appears to be going on quite normally. I haven’t left Bamako yet but plan to tomorrow. I will get as far north as Sevare by bus, then try to join a convoy in a rented car. Another journalist I am going with has set up a fixer, and he says he is great, but I haven’t worked with him yet so I can’t give a recommendation just yet.
- En Route to Mali
Tomorrow, I land in Bamako to work as a freelance journalist in Mali to report during the most prominent crisis the region has experienced in years. This is not a new plan. After living in Sierra Leone for close to a year and a half both as a reporter and a journalism trainer, I set my sights on Mali for my next working destination.
People have asked me why I would chose this landlocked West African country as a place to freelance, and to be honest, I have had to re-ask myself the same question on a daily basis.
Here’s what I came up with:
- I am familiar with the region. Though the political situation is very different from that in Sierra Leone and Liberia, having some knowledge of West African politics certainly can’t hurt. There is also some cultural crossover, like the Fulani who live in both Sierra Leone and Mali.
- It is officially Francophone. As a former French colony, the government and some of the citizens speak the former colonial language. Though my language skills are not perfect, I am fairly fluent and feel I should cash in on all those lessons I have taken over the years. Besides, what better place to immerse yourself in a language than a desert war zone?
- There is an appetite for story front Mali in every major international media outlet. Until a couple of weeks ago, many people didn’t even know Mali existed and had perhaps heard of Timbuktu in the literary sense of “a faraway place.” Today, the French military intervention is a recurring top story.
- Everyone I speak with that has visited Mali is enamoured with the country. The history, the geography and the culture make it one of the most fascinating places in the world and I want to see first-hand, the resilience of a people who have lived through so much both resent and long-standing turmoil.
Still, there are times when I can’t help but wonder whether showing up there now to freelance for two months might be a bit of a harebrained scheme.
When I planned this trip, I had a few stories lined up, including covering the annual music caravan, Festival in the Desert. Now, the festival is being postponed at least until September, and all bets are off when it comes to my other planned stories.
I’ll be on my own, in Bamako, in the midst of a war, with no immediate stories lined up. The country is, from what I’ve heard, fairly saturated with journalists from all the major outlets. So that will make it tough to drum up work, at least initially.
But I’ll be there , and it will be interesting, though perhaps not in ways I can easily imagine from here.
Ten years after the end of its civil war, Sierra Leone is continuing its struggle to lift itself from near the bottom of the UN’s Human Development Index. Poverty is endemic and it mostly hits the country’s most vulnerable members, including children. However, there have been signs that Sierra Leone is moving beyond the effects of its devastating, decade-long conflict. A few days ago, competitors from around the world gathered for the country’s first marathon, to raise money for a charity that helps children living on the streets.
By Damon Van Der Linde The coastal fishing industry was once a big source of income for West African countries like Sierra Leone. But it has fallen prey to trawlers from the world’s largest and most modern fishing fleets, and the result has been devastating for those countries’ economies and environment. Things are slowly starting to improve for local fishing communities, but governments face huge challenges defending their countries’ waters from illegal, unreported and unregulated fishing.
Concert pianist Panos Karan has played to a sold-out Carnegie Hall three times. He’s played in villages along the Amazon River twice and for communities hit by last year’s tsunami in Japan. On his most recent tour in Sierra Leone, he faced one of his toughest crowds yet – a maximum-security prison. By Damon van der Linde, Freetown
Well, it’s been seven months since I started working at Cotton Tree News through Journalists for Human Rights. My contract is up and I’ve now started my career as a full-time freelancer in Freetown. I’ve been privileged to work with some of the most talented radio reporters in Sierra Leone and I will miss being a part of the team. I hope to keep working with CTN - even if only casually - and as long as I am in Freetown, the station and its journalists will never be far away. I look forward to seeing them at the press scrum.
- Influence of Nova Scotia immigrants still felt in Sierra Leone community they founded
By Damon van der Linde and Mustapha Dumbuya
Sierra Leone is instituting major reforms to its education system after the country reported some of the poorest academic results in West Africa.
Credit:Damon van der Linde/IPS
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FREETOWN, Mar 20, 2012 (IPS) - Sierra Leone is instituting major reforms to its education system after the country reported some of the poorest academic results in West Africa. It will start with adding an extra year to the end of secondary school beginning in 2013, and nearly doubling daily classroom hours.- PR for the RUF – A Conversation with the Rebel’s Former Spokesperson
For many people, the Revolutionary United Front’s (RUF’s) legacy will be that a cruel and brutal fighting force during Sierra Leone’s eleven year civil war. The RUF became notorious for the use of “blood diamonds” to fuel their campaigns and terrorising of the civilian population through looting, rape, and the only known use of mass amputation being as a tool for warfare in recent history.
Eldred Collins was the official spokesperson for the RUF during the Sierra Leonean civil war. He is now the interim leader and Chair of the Revolutionary United Front Party, which has aspirations to enter government as a legitimate political party.
The RUFP has been opening offices across the country in the hopes of increasing their political representation after the elections in November, 2012.
I spoke with him at the recently acquired party headquarters in Freetown about what it was like doing PR for the infamous rebel group and why he thinks the people of Sierra Leone would ever accept the RUFP as peaceful political representatives.
Damon van der Linde: How can you defend the RUF’s actions during the civil war – like targeting civilians, mass amputations and looting?
Eldred Collins: If you had conscience, you would have seen what was happening in this country. It came to a time inSierra Leone where you couldn’t even buy a shoe. People were lining up for rice. The economy was in bad shape. Only those with money or in power could educate their children, the infrastructure, everything was down. Corruption was rampant.
The system in this country was so bad, was so ugly, was so deplorable. Some of us left this country for greener pastures. But with the mind of thinking that this system is supposed to be changed. But this system could not have been changed by words or the pen, because the powers that be were full of violence. Look at the background of this country, politically before the war. Look at the education sector before the war. Look at the health sector before the war. There was a recipe for war. People were crying: “if we don’t fight, it won’t get better!”
Don’t forget that there is no war fought in the war that does not have looting. We too did some looting, but it was food, medicine, that is the truth. We did not allow any combatant at that time to loot things like video, radios, bags of money. You leave the money. All we wanted was food. Those were the things we took from the war.
Most of those things that were said about us were mere fabrications because we had no defence out there to counter those allegations.
DV: Many of those allegations have been heavily reported over the years. How can you say they were fabrications?
EC: RUF members were never soldiers, they were freedom fighters. The propaganda machine against the RUF was so strong that we never had any sort of PR system in the outside that can defend the allegations made against us during the war. That is why the truth never came out.
There was only one side of the story. You have journalists on the other side just writing about people saying “the rebels did this to me, they did that to me.” If you are on the rebel side you will never see the government side during the war, so how can they receive information about us? It was impossible.
I remember one time I was talking to [RUF leader] Foday [Sankoh] and I said, “look, I’ve been hearing some news that people are saying things about us that are not correct,” and he said, “at the appropriate time it will happen,” and we only continued with our armed struggle. I thought it was very dangerous, and our image was destroyed.
I knew these things would happen. Strange tales will be told about us. That is what I am trying to clean now; to make the world know the truth.
The truth of the war and how the war has been fought has not yet come out. There are a whole lot of fabrications, statements made about the way. We are writing a book, the true story of how the war was fought, and that will be published the later part of next year.
DV: Do you think some people might be worried the RUFP might instigate violence in the future?
EC: Now the war is over and we have been disarmed. I can tell you with confidence and definity that the RUF will have no hand in violence in this country again. The RUFP is now a political party. We have been fighting to be recognized and to be a political party; to take part in the political process.I have the onus and responsibility of building the RUFP to be a very viable political party inSierra Leonenot only as an opposition, but in the years to come to take state power in our country.
An article written by me and Mustapha Dumbuya for Inter Press Service that was picked up by the Guardian.
By Damon Van Der Linde
Sierra Leone awaits the arrival of its first high-speed fibre optic internet cable. With it comes hope of economic and social development in a post-conflict nation with a heavy reliance on foreign aid.
- 2011 Liberian Elections - An Interview with CDC Leader Winston Tubman
Monrovia - Liberians are heading to the polls today in their second since Liberia emerged from its fourteen year civil war which virtually destroyed the country’s economy.
Winston Tubman in the leader of the Congress for Democratic Change, one of the two parties favoured in the polls along side incumbent Ellen Johnson Sirleaf’s Unity Party. He’s running alongside former international soccer star George Weah, who ran and lost against Sirleaf in the 2005 elections.
Tubman has been one of the most vocal critics of Sirleaf’s recent Nobel Peace Prize, claiming she is responsible for supporting the war for her support of Charles Taylor, who is currently on trial for war crimes and crimes against humanity.
He has also accused the Sirleaf administration of corruption and warns that if his party is not in power after the ballots are counted, there is no doubt the elections had been fixed. If he believes this is the case he says he will certainly take action, but insists that it will be non-violent. The question is whether or not he will step down or accept any election results other than those in his favour.
I spoke with him in the garden outside his home a day before the elections, the morning after a largely peaceful campaigning period came to a close.
Damon van der Linde: How do you feel now that the campaigning is over?
Winston Tubman: I feel we have the numbers up there. If angels came and conducted the elections we would win by a landslide. But since angels won’t come and more likely devils will come, cheating is a possibility. There is no way anybody else could win the election other than us.
DV: How do you see that?
WT: I see that from the show of support we’ve been getting all around the country. What you saw here in Monrovia is what we’ve seen everywhere we’ve gone. So if all those people are supporting us in the way that they are doing, in the numbers with commitment, with the passion, then who is left to vote against us in such a way that person could win? The evidence is there and it’s not just one place, it’s everywhere.
Of course we can’t say we’ve won already because we haven’t won. If Sirleaf was not involved in the elections and they were free and fair, then I would not worry because then we would have the numbers. Already the evidence is coming out that this is being attempted.
DV: Can you give me examples of this evidence?
There is evidence that ballot boxes have been stuffed – ballots with her name. Right now we’re worried about winning the elections, not investigating fraud. That shouldn’t be arising. It is arising now because we have the numbers, they don’t have the numbers. They’re trying to do manipulation that will distort the reality out there. Do you think they can rule the country against the huge majority out there that are supporting us? They cannot. The country will be ungovernable.
If the international community is going to look at all this and say “that’s what the reports have shown,” we’ll have a sort of [Former President of Côte d’Ivoire Laurent] Gbagbo thing on us.
DV: Have you seen polls that prove this?
WT: Our own polls show this, but we don’t have a system of polling here that is found elsewhere so we can look at it accurately but so far as it is, there was a poll from the Carter Center Recently that favoured us.
DV: What if it turns out that the Unity Party is elected into office? What actions will you take?
WT: We will never resort to violence but we will not accept cheating. We will call on our people to react to it in a manner that is fully lawful and peaceful.
DV: Do you have any specific plans? You’re obviously very prepared for such a thing to happen.
WT: I wasn’t prepared until recently. Even if I wasn’t prepared, my people are not going to accept it, I can tell you. I know how they think, I know how they feel.
The international community are giving her the Nobel Peace Prize right at that juncture. The Liberian people feel let down that this is happening. Somebody’s trying to impose something on us.
DV: Do you think there is any collusion?
WT: I don’t know, but I think it is strange that it is happening. This woman doesn’t deserve the Nobel Peace Prize and that she should be getting it now on the eve of when the Liberian people want to throw her out of office. We are not planning anything against her. She’s brought harm, she’s brought weapons, she’s done the most odious things. And for the first woman president to be doing this and for the Oslo committee to be giving her the Nobel Peace Prize, this is not hidden. Didn’t they do any effort to investigate?
It is like someone saying they would give Hitler the Nobel Peace Prize because he built the Autobahn. The Autobahn is good. It’s still being used and appreciated. But you don’t give Hitler the Nobel Peace Prize because of that. You have to look at the totality of his record. And the totality of her record is not hidden.
DV: Some of the more vocal opponents are unemployed young adults. Do you see this as being a problem?
WT: Of course it’s a serious problem. This government has not focused on that. We will be concerned about bringing stability first. We want to bring that under control and unite the people and make them feel happy in their own country. Make them feel safe and then jobs will be brought in. Our country is resource-rich.
People are coming with investment; jobs will be found. But it won’t happen under this regime.
DV: Can you tell me about any of your specific plans to bring jobs to Liberia?
WT: I don’t have any specific plans because my specific plans now relate to winning the election. Those are my specific plans and we don’t daydream saying “we’ll do this, we’ll do that,” because if we don’t win the election, the chances then that these people continue will be the reality and our people will not have any better situation under the continuation of what we have now.
DV: Why do you think you have so much support from the unemployed young people?
WT: Because they see us and they know we identify with them. They know we were never involved with the war and bringing mercenaries and giving guns and drugs to the kids. They know George Weah never did that, I’m someone who was invited to join them in what they did but I refused. We’re to build this country, not break it down. That’s what they’ve been doing.
DV: If Unity does win the election and these young people are very upset, what is your message to them in terms of how they should react?
WT: My message is that we will stay lawful and peaceful. I will not tell them to break the law, go out there and burn buildings down. Mrs. Sirleaf told the people when the war was going on that they should burn down the Executive Mansion. People who had been vandalizing the country, killing people, coming down the countryside causing havoc – she called on them to go further and burn down the mansion where the president lived. Who were the people she called to do that. She identified with them, and asked them to do more. This is the woman they’ve given the Nobel Peace Prize to?
DV: Do you see any human rights issues that have been lacking in the current administration?
WT: They have not focused on anything other than themselves. Human rights is nothing they pay attention to. They have been responsible for the death of 300,000 plus. You think any real human rights leanings can be found in such people. I don’t see the evidence of it.
DV: What plans do you have for any specific human rights issue?
WT: Our specific plans are to first of all get into power, appoint people who are committed to this problem and that will be able to bring the passion the honesty and the energy to solve them. Our plans don’t go beyond that because as of now, our plans deal with coming to power and winning the election.
DV: So how do the people know why they should vote for your party? Are there any issues that you think need to be addressed?
WT: The people that know why they should vote for us are the people we have seen in the tens of thousands. The few people that are not joining the majority of Liberians, we are still appealing to them. But if they are susceptible to taking bribes and being fools or being scared, we’ll still work with them and try to persuade them that that’s not the future of this country. They are on the wrong side of history if they are there. And I cannot believe that knowing all this stuff the international community does not see where the plight of the Liberian people is and what is going to help them rather than what is going to hurt them.
DV: Why do you think the international community has shown support for Sirleaf.
WT: She has a huge PR effort out there. When we come to power, I would like to find out how much of state funds they have used to do this. They have used a lot of government money to project themselves. Also, if the international community had seen and read about the horrors that went on, but what they seek to ignore is that Mrs. Sirleaf was behind that and now she suddenly comes out and she’s this knight in armour slaying the dragon. What is perplexing to me is that the evidence is not hard to find. Anybody looking at this country and what has happened in the past to decades will see, and they will see who did it.
DV: Do you have any final messages for Liberians on election day?
WT: My final message is that those who are supporting CDC are doing the right thing. We will not let them down. We will do everything to ensure that the votes they have given will not be stolen and will be counted in our favour.
We who are their leaders continue to insist that nothing violent is done. It’s the other side who are the purveyors of violence and they are the ones they are giving the Nobel Peace prize to. It’s an irony.
DV: But regardless of outcome, are you going to work to ensure peace and stability?
WT: Yes, regardless of the outcome. If we don’t go that way we’ll further destroy the country. You see how everything is damaged and ruined here. The best thing we have is the talent and commitment of our young people so we want to channel that away from destruction and violence. We want to channel that towards unification and working together, opening up and working together positively. The young people are open and innocent, wanting to reach out and improve their lives. There is nothing sinister or vicious about them.
I’ve heard an idea proposed, I’ve no idea how seriously, to account for the sensation of vertigo. It’s an idea that I instinctively like and it goes like this. The dizzy sensation we experience when standing in high places is not simply a fear of falling. It’s often the case that the only thing likely to make us fall is the actual dizziness itself, so it is, at best, an extremely irrational, even self-fulfilling fear. However, in the distant past of our evolutionary journey toward our current state, we lived in trees. We leapt from tree to tree. There are even those who speculate that we may have something birdlike in our ancestral line. In which case, there may be some part of our mind that, when confronted with a void, expects to be able to leap out into it and even urges us to do so. So what you end up with is a conflict between a primitive, atavistic part of your mind which is saying “Jump!” and the more modern, rational part of your mind which is saying, “For Christ’s sake, don’t!” In fact, vertigo is explained by some not as the fear of falling, but as the temptation to jump!
“Last Chance to See” by Douglas Adams
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Portfolio
Writing
Optimism Drives Tuareg Two-Time Refugee - Deutsche Welle
Mali's Sexual Violence Victims Left to Themselves - Deutsche Welle
Poaching Threatens Sierra Leone's Small Scale Fishermen - Radio Netherlands Worldwide
Settlers' Legacy Lingers in Sierra Leone - The Halifax Chronicle Herald
Sierra Leone Launches Online Mining Database to Increase Transparency - the Guardian
When Clean Coal is King - Coal Investing News
Putting an End to Conflict Minerals in the Congo - Tantalum Investing News
13 Amazing Facts About Green Roofs - The Daily Green
America's Most Wanted - The Montreal Mirror
Broadcast
Far from Home: Mali's Displaced People - CBC's The World This Weekend
The Rape Crisis in Mali - Deutsche Welle's WorldLink
Sierra Leone Campaign Upbeat - Radio France Internationale
World-Class Pianists Unlocks Rhythm at Freetown Jail - Radio Netherlands Worldwide
Once a Victim, Now a Paralympic Hero - Radio Netherlands Worldwide
For Victims in Sierra Leone, Taylor's Verdict Brings Relief - CNN
The Mosque that Gadhafi Built - CBC Dispatches
Sierra Leone - A Mixed Reaction to Kadhafi's Death - Radio France Internationale
Can Liberia Survive its Election? - Radio France Internationale
Sierra Leone Discovers the Web - Radio France Internationale
The Price of Water in Zambia - Breeze FM / Journalists for Human Rights
Totally Gnarly - Discovery Channel Canada
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Photos
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Curriculum Vitae
- Curriculum VitaeSeptember 2011 - PresentFreelance Journalist - Sierra Leone, Liberia, Mali & Burkina FasoCNN, Radio France Internationale, Deutsche Welle, France 24, ARD-TV, CBC, Radio Netherlands Worldwide, Deutsche Presse-AgenturSeptember - October 2012Field Producer - Girl Rising
September 2011 - PresentRadio Media Rights Trainer - Sierra LeoneJournalists for Human Rights / Cotton Tree News
September 2010 - August 2011
Senior Reporter
Resource Investing News
July 2008 - February 2009
Radio Media Rights Trainer - Zambia
Journalists for Human Rights / Breeze FM
May - July 2008
Research Intern
Discovery Channel Canada's Daily Planet
September 2005 - November 2007
Features Editor
The Link NewspaperEducation2012Surviving Hostile Regions Training CourseMajor in Journalism, Minor in GeographyConcordia University, Montreal
Languages
English and French
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About Me
- My name is Damon van der Linde and I am a journalist based in Montreal, Canada. This site tries to show a small part of the stories, photos and experiences from my work and travel. Feel free to contact me for more information. Thanks for visiting.DamonVDL[at]yahoo.com514-835-8861
Montreal, QCCanada
