SEEKON – Two DayLight reporters narrowly escaped a masked dancer final Wednesday within the Seekon Pellokon Neighborhood Forest in Sinoe County.
By Esau Farr and Carlucci Cooper, with The DayLight
Reporters Esau Farr and Carlucci Cooper have been masking a contract-signing ceremony the following day as a part of an investigation when a masked dancer, generally referred to as “nation satan,” approached.
“It was a terrifying expertise, as we thought we had come to the tip of our journalism careers,” stated Farr, a senior reporter with the newspaper. “My abdomen stirred uncontrollably once I heard the sound of the masked dancer.”
The reporters bumped into a close-by home, however their nightmare was removed from over. A couple of minutes after they arrived, a townsman knocked on the door, calling Farr. The home’s aged proprietor opened the door and started conversing with the person within the Kru language.
The person suggested Farr and Cooper to go away city in 5 minutes or blame themselves. The masked dancer was coming to city to get them. Seekon Pellokon was sad in regards to the investigation Farr had co-authored, Varney Kamara, DayLight’s senior reporter.
That report discovered that the Managing Director of the Forestry Growth Authority, Rudolph Merab, pushed Seekon Pellokon to signal a logging contract with the Liberian Hardwood Corporation, owned by Jihad Akkari, Merab’s buddy.
The investigation reviewed Akkari’s hyperlink to Euro Liberia Logging, the most important energetic logging concession in Liberia, together with its murky possession. The investigation additionally referenced two contracts in neighboring Grand Gedeh, which Akkari had failed, in addition to his debarment from working in Liberia. Akkari, who denies failing any contracts, didn’t touch upon queries relating to his debarment and Euro Logging’s possession.
Farr and Cooper have been accustomed to this historical past and, subsequently, have been unsurprised by the retaliation. Earlier that day, Junior Kumah, certainly one of Seekon Pellokon’s leaders, had recounted a tense interview he had with The DayLight. Kumah had introduced that the newspaper was not allowed to cowl the signing ceremony, although he had no such authority.
Having understood the scenario, the reporters switched their consideration from an investigation to their private security.
As a toddler, Farr remembered in Bong County how masked dancers manhandled “gbolora,” or non-members within the Kpelle or “saykoue deaenayourn” within the Kru language. In a single occasion, a number of males have been pressured to drink the water with which they washed their soiled garments. These reminiscences fueled worry and despair in him.
Again in the home, the reporters’ host, an 80-something-year-old girl, added insult to harm. She had been hospitable to the duo all alongside. Nonetheless, after her dialog with the person who knocked on the door, her physique language all of the sudden modified.
“‘Why did you come right here? Who introduced you right here?”’ The aged girl requested the reporters, her face beaming with disgust, disapproval and disrespect. “The place are you coming from?”
Her grandchildren appeared to have maintained compassionate faces. Nonetheless, whereas the aged girl and the person conversed, reporters overheard the kids’s dialogue in regards to the elders deciding a sure man’s destiny. “Allow them to (elders) await [nightfall] to beat him,” stated certainly one of them. This deepened the reporters’ worry.
Cooper, the youthful of the 2 reporters, was extra terrified. He had learn how masked dancers and their followers dedicated crimes with impunity. In 2020, one brutalized two police officers in a city exterior Ganta. Two years later, one other decide in Bong County brought about the Supreme Courtroom to jail six traditional chiefs for six months.
It was not the primary time a DayLight journalist had such an expertise however this was worse. In 2022, locals in Grand Bassa’s Compound Quantity Two threatened to unleash their masked dancer in opposition to Emmanuel Sherman, DayLight’s editor-at-large. A townsman intervened and spared the then 63-year-old any blushes for masking a group forest assembly.
Escape
Minutes after the person’s dialog with the aged girl, he ordered the reporters out of the city. The stated the masked dancer didn’t need them there and it was in their very own curiosity to go away instantly.
Cooper was troubled by that announcement. Not like Farr, Cooper had not grown up within the hinterland. Nonetheless, he had heard that it was abominable for non-members to go open air.
Farr, then again, believed the person. He had met him on a earlier go to to Seekon Pellokon. So, he satisfied a reluctant Cooper to belief the person.
Within the meantime, the person requested the motorcycle-taxi driver for his key and rolled the car throughout a creek.
The reporters adopted a guardian their host-turned-savior organized for them. The three and the motorcycle-taxi driver sneaked by the again door, handed a number of homes and arrived on the creek to security.
“Within the midst of all these in our hideout, we have been hopeful that we might be freed, so we didn’t surrender,” stated Farr. “It was solely God who intervened on our behalf.”
Regardless of their ordeal, Farr and Cooper continued their investigation into the enlargement of the Seekon Pellokon Neighborhood Forest. Whereas working from neighboring communities the next day, they realized that locals sealed their cope with Liberian Hardwood.
This story was a Neighborhood of Forest and Environmental Journalists of Liberia (CoFEJ) manufacturing. The story first appeared in The DayLight and has been revealed right here as a part of an editorial collaboration.
