Motherboard

People in Liberia tend to have pretty shitty Wi-Fi connections–it’s one of the first things to suffer when a country is mauled by poverty and multiple civil wars. Right now, Charles Taylor, the man who led the ‘89 rebellion with Prince Johnson, is in the Hague facing war crime charges, so keeping up to date with the news is important to Liberians. We were in Liberia making a film about war-lords when we found this guy, Alfred Sirleaf, who blogs on behalf of the whole of Monrovia, with chalk.

Vice UK editor and MB contributor Andy Capper produced The Analogue Blogger, which you saw yesterday and are today in love with. To poetically rub in the juxtaposition between Liberia’s browserless wilderness and our reliance to the internet I interviewed Andy on AIM about it, even though he sits JUST OPPOSITE ME. Makes you think, huh?

Vice: Where’d you meet this one-man Reuters
*Andy:" We met this guy on the last day of the trip to Liberia. We’d been there to meet these three warlords called General Rambo, General Bin Laden and General Butt Naked. We’d spent a lot of time with these guys in really dangerous situations and so working with Alfred was a really relaxing shoot to do, as opposed to fleeing a brothel at midnight in the worst slum in Monrovia.

Yeah, he seems very charming. Is he famous round there?
Yeah, he stands on one of the main highways and every morning he updates this Daily News chalkboard with stories. He’s an “analogue blogger”. The things he was talking about at the time were Charles Taylor’s trial at the Hague and whether or not the United Nations’ occupation of Liberia was actually the work of the devil.

He says “the UN are the devil” a lot when he’s explaining. Does he have an agenda?
Liberian people are very religious. They relate a long of things back to the Bible. He’s a Christian reporter and he’s hearing a lot of things that typically happen when the UN set up shop somewhere, i.e. an increase in the sex trade and rampant corruption, so I suppose that informs his news a little.

And everyone trusts him like a preacher or Jon Snow?
Very few people can afford to buy the papers or get on the internet so he’s one of the main news sources in Monrovia. I prefer him to Perez Hilton.

Oh, I don’t know about that.
He’s not as great at reporting celebrity stuff, but he has a better style I think.

MYLES ESTEY