With Sea Prayer, Khaled Hosseini illustrates the human anguish of a refugee crisis

For the Globe and Mail

The fate of Liberia was ensnared by uniquely American pathologies.

By Aaron Leaf

A review of the book American Warlord by Johnny Dwyer.

Al Jazeera America (Feb 3, 2015)

by Aaron Leaf 

October 14, 2014

Al Jazeera America

The worst Ebola epidemic on record has also become a political crisis in Liberia. On Oct. 1, President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf requested a suspension of seven key articles of the constitution as part of the emergency powers meant to further the government’s campaign to contain the virus, which has killed more than 2,000 Liberians and more than 4,000 people so far in this outbreak. She called for, among other measures, the suspension of provisions that stipulate regular and timely elections, protect civil liberties and guard against the appropriation of private property and even one that forbids slavery.

On Oct. 10, the Liberian House of Representatives rejected her request by a vote of 59 to 1, a repudiation of what one lawmaker described as using the Ebola crisis as a cover for a “police state creeping in.” In a joint resolution, the Liberian House and Senate voted unanimously to reject Johnson Sirleaf’s request for indefinite suspension of the midterm senatorial elections scheduled for Oct. 14,insisting that elections be held no later than Dec. 20.

Read the rest at aljazeera.com

by AARON LEAF

Special to The Globe and Mail

Published Friday, Dec. 12 2014

For the three athletic-wear aficionados behind the Facebook group Health Goth, stepping inside Adidas’s North American headquarters in Portland, Ore. recently was like entering a high-tech fantasyland. Inside, the research lab was full of prototypes of the kind of cutting-edge sportswear they covet.

“There was a whole room dedicated to 3-D printers,” says Mike Grabarek, one of the group’s founders. Grabarek along with Chris Cantino and Jeremy Scott (not to be confused with the fashion designer of the same name) had been summoned to Adidas to explain what many people around the world wanted to know: What exactly is Health Goth?

Read the rest at globeandmail.com

Words and Images by Aaron Leaf

July 10, 2012

GOOD Magazine

“The Force Nouvelles will invade the South in the next few days,” Celestine Oundo, an Ivory Coast refugee, told me last February. We were sitting on benches outside his host’s house in the Liberian border town of Buutuo. The sun was setting and mosquitoes buzzed about. It was the spring of 2011, and I was in Africa covering the ongoing tension between the two countries after a civil war in the Ivory Coast sent hundreds of thousands of refugees to Liberia. 

The Ivory Coast conflict began in late 2010, when then-president Laurent Gbagbo refused to accept defeat when opposition leader Alassane Ouattara was elected president, leaving the country in a confused and violent political stalemate. A complex mix of ethnic and colonial identities underlay the deep divide. The Forces Nouvelles de Côte d'Ivoire, a rebel group, controlled the North while Gbagbo rallied his base around the idea that Northerners were not true Ivorians. By the time Gbagbo was captured in April 2011, thousands of people had been killed and many more raped and abused. Countless more fled over the border to Liberia, who welcomed the masses into their small country—reciprocity for the hospitality the Ivorian people showed Liberians during their civil war. 
 

Read the rest at good.is

by AARON LEAF

Oct. 28, 2014

Quartz Ideas

Do you think the Center for Disease Control is not telling Americans the whole truth about Ebola? Maybe, like George Will, you believe the virus is airborne? How much do you know about Ebola’s origins as a weaponized biological agent patented by the US government and tested on unsuspecting patients at a research lab in Sierra Leone?

This summer, as the Ebola outbreak spread across Guinea, Sierra Leone and Liberia, much was written about how rampant conspiracy theories among West Africans were hampering the relief efforts and contributing to the spread of the disease.

Read More Here

words and photo: AARON LEAF

Makeshift Magazine Issue 09, Fall 2014

Ten years ago, a friend told Abraham Quaye about a place in Monrovia’s mangrove swamp where he could build a house. An actual island, with good land, close to the city. The best part, the friend said, was that they’d be the first ones there. This was important to Abraham. The Liberian civil war had just ended. As displaced people returned to Monrovia from camps abroad, space was limited and pressure to find new land enormous.

No bridge connected the island. Just a mess of iron poles, remnants of one of the endless structures destroyed during the war, suggested a rough path through the water. By 2004, Abraham and other pioneers would wade through the mangroves, building materials hoisted over their heads; during high tides, canoeists would help ferry them across. Now 85, Abraham’s extended family surrounds his modest home.

Read more here (Paywall)

Words and Images by Aaron Leaf

Makeshift Magazine Issue 11, Winter 2014

It’s 3 a.m., and the party at the Ghanaian Taxi Driver’s Hall in the Bronx in New York City is still in full swing. Demba Tandia, a Soninke rock star, has been flown in from Paris, and women in the crowd are lined up to ceremoniously shower him with cash, which assistants scoop into large plastic bags. Chiek Fall soon joins from the VIP section, slipping bills to Demba’s assistants.

Read the rest at Makeshift.com (Paywall)

by AARON LEAF

Oct. 28, 2014

Quartz Ideas

Call it a coup or a revolution—Burkina Faso has finally overthrown its longtime strongman Blaise Compaoré. During his 27-year-long rule, Compaoré’s regime was accused of corruption and nepotism and of violently quelling a student and military rebellion in 2011.

Revolutions now happen in real time and Compaoré’s overthrow was no different. This October, protestors, journalists and politicians used the hashtags #Lwili and #Burkina to live-tweet their way through a chain of events that started with massive street protests and ended with a cellphone video of Compaoré fleeing the country with his convoy of SUVs.

Read More Here

By Aaron Leaf

September 3, 2013

The Guardian

In 1951 when muckraking Liberian school-teacher and journalist Albert Porte wrote an open letter to the Liberian president questioning his purchase of a luxury yacht on the nation's dime, William Tubman wrote back, accusing Porte of having an anarchical spirit and inviting him for a cruise.

Porte's status as the conscience of pre-civil war Liberia is rarely disputed. The story goes, he always kept a toothbrush around when reporting, in anticipation of a night in jail. Today he's cited by Liberian journalists as a model to emulate, the grandfather of modern Liberian journalism both figuratively and literally. Kenneth Best and Rodney Sieh, rival publishers of Liberia's two most prominent newspapers are both blood descendants of Porte.

Read more on theguardian.com

By Aaron Leaf

April 28, 2012

Africa is a Country

“Liberians decry ‘mockery of justice’ in Charles Taylor verdict” is a piece by Geoffrey York in Canada’s Globe and Mail that portrays a country outraged by the result of Taylor’s trial. The fact that Charles Taylor is reviled in the West but loved in Liberia is a fun thing to report on. It hints at the idea that Liberians have a very different world view, a mystical one where power is celebrated for its own sake, except it’s not really true.

At the Committee to Protect Journalists headquarters in New York yesterday, Liberian journalist Mae Azango was fetted over lunch for her daring stories detailing the harmful practice of female circumcision. She talked about the difficulties of being a woman in the macho world of Liberian journalism and the nasty backlash against her from traditionalists that caused her to go into hiding.

Read the rest at africasacountry.com

By Aaron Leaf

Africa is a Country July 10, 2014

Read it here

By Aaron Leaf

October 25, 2012

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By Aaron Leaf

August 31, 2012

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By Aaron Leaf

February 13, 2013

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Anthologized in The Best Canadian Essays 2012

By Aaron Leaf

DECEMBER 18, 2014 

Feet in 2 Worlds

On a bustling block of Fulton Street in Bed-Stuy Brooklyn, a small Muslim congregation meets inside a converted second floor apartment above a hair salon. Within earshot of the call to prayer broadcast five times daily from the roof of the much larger At Taqwa Mosque down the street, the meeting place is free of furniture other than wall-to-wall prayer rugs and a few cushions. While At Taqwa announces its presence from a distance, this mosque prefers privacy. With no sign on the door and meetings held mainly at night when its members are off work, it can only be found if you know to ask.

The two Fulton Street mosques offer contrasting faces of Islam in New York, hinting at the many ways Muslim immigrants approach their faith in a country that can, at times, seem hostile to the practice. The two congregations also represent contradictory tendencies in immigrant life, one committed to sustaining religious and cultural practices brought from back home, and another more intent on forging a new Muslim-American identity.

Read more here

by AARON LEAF

Oct. 31, 2014

Quartz Ideas

Zambia has always been one of the least reported-on countries in the international press. There’s something about its lack of conflict, regular elections, and no great examples of easy “Africa rising” narratives that gives the country a low profile.

That is, until Wednesday.

With the death of President Michael Sata, Zambia lost an iconic leader. A man that fused populist politics with economic nationalism—who after decades in opposition—was elected to the post by a largely urban, largely poor base.

Read More Here