British Associate Editor Andy Capper’s review of the film: We arrived in Liberia with a small team of three and soon met a local reporter who would be our facilitator and guide. Our first location is the West Point ghetto, home to 80,000 people whose living conditions are redefining suffering. Kilometers of rotting waste surround the slums, which have no sewage system.
Almost everyone — even local government officials — defecates outdoors. Drugs, prostitution and armed robbery are the main industries. We met some West Point residents who told us their stories while snorting heroin and cocaine and begging from us.
Next we visited a local brothel. Women who lived there told us stories of UN soldiers having sex with child prostitutes and beating older women and then leaving without paying.
But perhaps the most enlightening part of our trip to Liberia was meeting the leading warlords of the country’s civil war. Liberian militias have a tradition of adopting extravagant war names. So our subjects are called General Bin Laden, General Rambo, and General Naked Ass. The latter in particular is one of Liberia’s most notorious warlords. He claimed to have personally killed 20,000 people, including babies, and sometimes cannibalized his victims.
Today, General Naked-Ass is named after his real name, Joshua. During our time together, he told us that when the UN leaves next year, Liberia will surely slip back into civil war. But at the same time, Joshua wanted to redeem himself. He showed us the Liberia he wanted to build, and we found him more and more likable. He took us to his church where he reformed child soldiers. We watched him preach in Monrovia one Sunday.
Is it possible that his mission will be successful and another civil war in this desperate country can be avoided? This was one of the many questions we were asked after our safe return from Liberia. Check out our documentary about our time there and see what you think.
