Jonathan Stack’s scary—but funny—experience with being nearly arrested in Guinea leads to a revelation.
Years of making films abroad and still, it’s always exciting to go somewhere new. I have covered child soldiers, rape, a Bob Marley 60th birthday concert celebration, war criminals and malaria but my vasectomy trip to Kenya with Doug is about as unusual as it gets. For Doug, on the other hand, a sea of scrotum is old hat.
Doug also loves wildlife. In fact, sometimes it seems he prefers animals to people, but I think it’s just that, in essence, he’s rooting for the underdog. Thousands of species have already gone extinct because of the impact of human civilization, so I don’t blame him. Though I do keep reminding him that it’s not just about how many people there are, but how much each of us consumes. Hence, one wealthy Floridian with his big car, his air-conditioned home and extravagant speed boat has a carbon footprint at least 100 times that of a farmer in rural Africa. Yet, here we are, pretty near the Olduvai Gorge where Lucy, the oldest known human descendant at three million years old, had taken her first steps. Luckily for her, Doug wasn’t around then.
My first trip to West Africa was for a television series I was producing in 2002 called, World’s Most Dangerous Places. I was there to make an episode about a rebel army, the LURD that was trying to overthrow Charles Taylor, Liberia’s then president and former warlord. Their base was on the border of Guinea so our adventure began in its capital, Conakry.
The plan was to be escorted to Voinjama, a town across the border in Liberia and meet up with the rebels before joining them on an assault on Liberia’s capital city of Monrovia. Not surprisingly, if you’ve ever spent time in Africa, we were delayed and ended up waiting close to a week in an isolated hotel at the end of a long jetty that served as ‘temporary’ headquarters for the rebels.
I was going stir crazy so I decided to check out Conakry’s nightlife. After a lively evening with great music and lots of dancing I was ready to go back to the hotel. It was raining very hard so the driver, lacking both windshield wipers and headlights, drove slowly down the city’s empty streets. He held his head out the window because, apparently, he could see better that way. Then, just a few blocks from the hotel, there was a police checkpoint.
To me, this was no big deal as there were make-shift checkpoints all over the city, but for reasons beyond my comprehension, just as the officer was approaching, we took off as fast as the car could go, which turned out to be not very fast because the police were right behind us. What passed as a high-speed chase with Guinea’s finest in hot pursuit, ended at a dead end road with the driver jumping out of the vehicle and the police officers following by foot. While banging desperately on what I imagined was his front door, the police caught up and proceeded to beat him with their batons.
Then, just as they were getting up to speed, the officers suddenly noticed a rather large sized white man hunched up in the back seat of the taxi. While at that very moment, I was thinking that perhaps the next time, I’d do better not to go out alone at night in Conakry, I’m pretty sure that they were imagining a nice pay day.
Having now lost interest in the driver, who scrambled into his house with this unexpected reprieve, the officers walked decisively towards me. They had the two accessories most associated with policemen in Guinea, 1: Dark sunglasses, even worn at night and 2: an AK 47. The gun, in particular, convinced me that staying in the car was not a good option. After submitting to their prodding and heeding to much gesticulating, I opened my wallet in the hope of buying my way to freedom but realized, to my dismay, that I’d had more fun at the night club than I’d remembered. The few thousand Guinean francs I offered (the equivalent of 2 or 3 dollars) did not do the trick and so they forced me into their car with the word ‘prison’ being spoken with particular emphasis.
As the officers were sorting out what level of pain would yield the greatest financial return, I suddenly remembered every French word and phrase I had ever been taught by my horrible 7th grade French teacher and, I might add, all of the dialogue from Truffaut’s many films that I love so dearly. My new found fluency, combined with what I had learned over the last few days while laying on my bed in the hotel watching Guinean TV (which, as chance would have it, included a dubbed version of the American show COPS), and my fear of time in an African prison, provided all the inspiration I needed in that moment to rapidly improvise my escape.
“Monsieur”, I asked politely in my best French, “Do you know the TV show COPS?” “Yes”, they said. “Well, I’m the producer of that show and I’m here as a guest of the President looking for police officers to star in COPS: THE GUINEA EDITION and I think you two would be perfect.” I gave it my all with the best impression of Gerard Depardieu I could muster, and continued, “Would you two consider being on the show?” Seeing that my story was beginning to intrigue them, I forged ahead, bringing to bear all of my skills as a seasoned producer. “The way you beat that man up was extraordinary. Our American police officers are nothing compared to you. I can’t wait to tell the President at tomorrow’s meeting.”
“In fact,” I said, “Let’s go to the hotel so I can get my camera and we’ll go out tonight to get footage to show him.” And just like that we turned around and headed to the hotel.
When I got out of the car I said, “You know what, it’s kind of late, so why don’t we meet up tomorrow?” I asked for their names and numbers and they wrote them down neatly on a piece of paper and politely asked if I might give them that money which they had previously rejected. Having now gained the upper hand, I replied, “Unfortunately, as a journalist, I’m afraid I can’t pay the subjects of my films as it would undermine the credibility of my work.” I imagine they were slightly shocked as I entered the hotel without a backward glance, vowing to myself that I would track down that genius John Langley, the creator of COPS, to thank him personally for having saved my life.
You might say (quite rightly), this has nothing to do with vasectomies or population on the planet, but it does lead me to the question of Doug offering Kenyans $20 to get a vasectomy. He’s quick to point out, it’s not an incentive, let alone a bribe, but simply income replacement for wages lost due to the days of rest following the procedure. Call it what you want, but this path we’re on, is going to get more intense every week. So please stick around. I guarantee it’ll be worth it.
The Vasectomy Project is encouraging men to join forces and take responsibility for family planning. We want to start a new conversation about over-population, over-consumption and the planet’s environmental tipping point, by asking men to take a very personal action to change the world. Please LIKE us on Facebook https://www.facebook.com/
