Gyude Bryant was the Chairman of Liberia’s National Transitional Government. He was convicted of economic sabotage and misuse of public funds. The evidence that put him there came from a clerk in the Ministry of Finance named Kofi — a short man with a giant character — who handed it to a World Bank official and asked for nothing in return. Except, later, a phone.
I travelled all over Ethiopia alone, in a Toyota 4Runner, sleeping in local hotels and eating injera in village restaurants. I loved it. This story is about one evening I have never been able to leave behind.
Tugbeh N. Doe was a short, fat man who ran the best bar on the outskirts of Monrovia. He was also the Deputy Finance Minister. One evening, two men came and sat opposite him and said nothing at all. What happened next is something I have never fully explained to myself.
A dust storm, a Land Cruiser, a Japanese colleague who did not understand the desert, and a meal that was not what it appeared to be. A dispatch from the road to nowhere north of Khartoum.
I arrived in Nairobi not knowing I was about to enter a war zone. A week later I was flying an Aero Commander at 600 mph over South Sudan.