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Dearest Readers,

We are looking for any and all Friends of JANE (that's FOJ's) who live in or around Halifax, Nova Scotia, to reach out to for research purposes and to meet up with when our web editors come up there to live it up and then write about it.

New York Area JANE Readers:

A JANE editor is going on a network weekend talk show to discuss online dating, and we're looking to invite a few guests who are frequent online daters. We are particularly looking for quick-to-the-date daters (a wink, an email, a date type of thing) who are willing to talk about their experiences. Gay, straight, single or attached: We want to hear from you. Our shoot will be on May 16th here at the JANE office in New York.

Also, if there's anyone who would be willing to have our camera crew follow them along on a date with a camera, let us know. Otherwise, just a simple interview will suffice.

Anyone who is interested should email me (Heather_Catania@condenast.com) with a few photos and a few details, like name/age/location/and a few sentences about their online dating habits.

Thanks!

Dearest Readers,
We are looking for any and all Friends of JANE (that's FOJ's) who may live in or around any of the following cities to reach out to for research purposes and to meet up with while we live it up.

BAND ON TOUR--
Steph and Joshua will follow the Blood Brothers on tour and sightsee during soundchecks.
Region: Northeast: Boston 3/31, Providence 4/1, NYC 4/2, Philly 4/3, DC 4/4, Charlotesville, NC 4/5
Dates: 3/31-4/05

CHEAP SPA TREATMENTS including pools, rivers, hot springs, state parks, mudbaths
Drivers: Catherine/Katy
Region: Southwest: Santa Fe 3/24, Gallup, 3/25, Sedona 3/26, Phoenix 3/28, Tucson 3/29
Dates: 3/24-3/31

MAKE-OUT BARS and the boys who frequent them
Drivers: Brekke/Celia
MAKE-OUT BARS (yes, bars where you can pick up dudes and smooch 'em right there).
Region: Midwest: Minneapolis/St. Paul Mon 4/2, Madison, Wisconsin Tues 4/3, Cedar Rapids, IA Wed 4/5, St. Louis, MO Thurs 4/6
Dates: 4/2-4/6

LOCAL EATS cheese, wineries, farmer's markets, factory tours, fried pork rinds (aka a mix of high and low)
Drivers: Annemarie/Shelly
Region: Northwest: San Francisco 3/27 to Portland 3/31
Dates: 3/27-4/1

One of the women at the IRC-granted dressmaking shop.

Photo by Rebecca Hankin

An hour and a half out side of Ganta we arrive at a barren dusty settlement where the IRC runs several programs. We're visiting more businesses started with grant money from them, like the piggery.

I'm at the Productive Guest Salon. The businesses in Liberia have descriptive names and grandiose paint jobs. There's the lean-to in town that's called Big Jim's Best-Ever Business Center or the Help for All Mankind Help Center and Pharmacy that resides in a 10x10 ft. stall made from plywood and corrugated metal, the raw materials that are the building blocks of Liberia.

At the salon I meet the four women who have banded together to braid hair in a tiny pole and canvas shed. They charge 250 Liberian dollars for a full braid ($4 US). The rebels abducted one of the women, Maretta, in her 20s, during the war. She was supposed to do labor for them and saw many people killed. Next we go to a tailor's shop where we meet two women who have been trained by the IRC and who also have been given a grant, to start a small dressmaking shop. The last stop is at tie-dye business that was started last year. The four women here have been through hell but are now making beautiful fabric that they sell for $10 us each. They can now support their families, none of husbands.

Henrietta, 29 her name has been changed.
"They raped me in front of my four-month-old. I came from Monrovia with my mother to seek refuge. I have a four-month-old baby. We all had to walk in a single line along the road and there were hundreds of us. At one point the rebels came to us and made my mother and me separate. They took me to a house that had a dead body on the bed. They put my baby next to the dead body and one rebel raped me on the floor while the other stood outside the door. I was scared for my baby and was screaming, so they beat me and left me there. Then I developed an infection. I lost the baby because I passed the infection on to the infant through my breast milk. A few months later in Ganta, I met another man and was engaged to be married. The rebels came and killed my fiancé in front of me. They shot him in the head. Then, they raped me. Since then, I have had nightmares and migraines. The rebel who had done all this kidnapped me and forced me to have sex with him for a year. Finally when the war ended, I was free and now I make tie-dyes and sell them in town."

Etta, 29
"I was captured by the rebels and couldn't escape. In 2003 the rebels abducted me and forced me to work for them. I carried large bags of rice on 20-hour-a-day walks for months. It was scary because if you did anything they didn't like they would kill you. When they killed someone they would tie their hands and elbows behind their back and slaughter them like a goat by cutting your throat. When they did this, they forced everyone to watch. If you turned your head, you would be beaten or killed. After the war, I was set free and learned about the tie-dye center and the IRC through my church. "

Mamie with her pig John


Photo by Rebecca Hankin

Welcome to the United Women Empowerment Piggery run by the very able Mamie D. Luogon. This eight-pig operation was started with feed money from the IRC as part of their Economic Opportunities Program. After the civil war in 2003, the IRC gave women who lost husbands in the war or were abducted by rebels $150 to begin the business. Mamie, after losing her husband and hiding for months in the bush and hunting at night to feed her children, wrote to the IRC, who granted her and four other women the money to buy two pigs. One year later, they have eight pigs, which they sell at market or slaughter.

"When the rebels were here, so many people were killed, and we had to hide from them in the bush and hunt for food at night. After the war I was a sick person. Now I get a little flesh," which means she started to put on weight.

Today she is negotiating for drainage pipes with Amigo, from the IRC, and she seems to get what she wants. She's tough with the pigs, children and Amigo. The four other women who make up United Women Empowerment Piggery all lost their husbands in the war and now are able to support their children. For Liberia, it's a good business. One pig gets 3,000 Liberian dollars, or between $400-500 US dollars. With six pigs sold at market a year, that's a hearty earning considering civil servants like police and teachers are made the equivalent of $20-30 in one month. That's living on a dollar a day or less, and things are not cheap here. For example, one big bag of rice (enough to last a family one month) costs $25. That leaves $5 for everything else for the entire month, living only on rice. So Mamie and her piggery are an excellent example of what the IRC and the EOP can do to help women get out of the cycle of poverty.

So this is bizarre and a bit scary: This morning when I woke up there were a few thuggish men sitting outside my room. They told me they worked for a man whose name I remember from reading something in connection to Liberia's second civil war (1999 to 2003). I called the Jane office in NYC and asked them to Google him (I'm in a tiny town with no electricity, flushing toilets or hot water, so there's definitely no Internet).

Turns out, he is the guy I thought he was and he's staying in the room next to mine at the hotel/shack. I won't tell you his name, because he is so dangerous that it is not safe for me to write about him while I am here. During the war, he was known for eating parts of his enemies in order to gain strength—a tribal holdover. And he didn't just murder people, he cut them up while they were still alive and ate parts of their bodies in front of them as a warm-up before actually killing them. Terrifying.

After a day in the field, I come back to my hotel and meet him. He's totally charming and warm, but I wonder when I shake his hand how many people he's killed.

When I ask Liberians about the war crimes he committed, they say, "Oh, but that was during the war. Now he's a good man and a good leader." Such forgiveness, or forgetfulness is typical. In May 2005, shortly before Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf was elected president, a countrywide Truth and Reconciliation Commission was established. It asked Liberians to excuse some of the atrocities that occurred between 1979 and 2003 so that the country could move ahead with rebuilding, and that request seems to have been accepted. When I talk to some of the women who experienced rape or beatings by rebels, their eyes glaze over and they speak with a resigned acceptance. Maybe it's a psychological way of dealing with the human tragedy that occurred here. I have to coax stories out of these women. They say, "Oh yes, I was raped. Twice. But that was during the war."

So many horrible things happened to so many people that perhaps there is nothing special about their woes. Who wants to talk about such things? And the tales are not unique—women were raped and their husbands killed, over and over again. In my interviews, women return to more hopeful topics as soon as possible, like how they want to learn a skill or send their children to school.

And so this man at my hotel who killed thousands of people in a time of war is the lucky beneficiary of a public's collective amnesia now that there is peace. He is also an example of the stubborn but also inspiring optimism here. I just hope it lasts. It's probably a good thing that these women have a desire to forget about the past and move on. The job now is to make sure history doesn't repeat itself.

Kids in Chocolate City gather at the water pump.

Photo by Rebecca Hankin