letter from Liberia
Building the church in West Africa
James Stileman
In an episode of Come Fly with Me, the BBC’s 2010 satirical fly-on-the-wall documentary set in a fictional UK airport, Ian Foot, the Chief Immigration Officer, challenges a passenger from Liberia for travelling under a forged passport. “The slight giveaway,” says Foot smugly, “is there is no such country as Liberia.”
The affronted passenger, appalled by the officer’s racism, points to Liberia on a map of West Africa and the humiliated Foot lets the visitor through.
letter from Democratic Republic of Congo
DRC: ‘Why is the world looking away?’
James Stileman
‘Those who live in Goma live in fear. They do not know what is next. They ask why the international community has looked the other way.’
Those are the words of someone I saw in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) just a few months ago – and who, with his family, is now out of his home, having being compelled to flee as rebel forces advanced.