AKs and Ostriches:

“These men, the most powerful and feared in all of Liberia, lived in constant fear. Fear of falling out of favor, fear of being betrayed, fear of being held accountable for what they had done. They were afraid of Taylor and afraid of each other. As the ostriches and armed thugs wandered across the lawn, I realized that no matter how terrifying Taylor might be, he was still just a man — and a vulnerable one at that. The guns, smuggled diamonds, and expensive Thai mistresses were all just a house of cards, always near collapse.

Our meeting took the better part of two hours. Taylor concluded the discussion with a smile and a threat: “If your next report contains the same inaccuracies, we will think it was not done in good faith.”

As we were being escorted off the lawn, I turned to the aide who was seeing us out. I had to ask. “What’s the story with the ostriches?”

“The president likes animals,” he replied. “There are three ostriches. There used to be four. One ostrich swallowed a cell phone, and when it rang, the bird went berserk. The bird was so badly injured that he died. The president was very upset.” He told the story as if it were the most normal thing in the world…”

Read the story in its entirety.

This entry was posted on Sunday, April 29th, 2012 at 13:00 and is filed under WTF?. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.