On July 21, 2003, I was sitting in the newsroom of the Fort Collins Weekly scanning through images my friend Chris Hondros had filed from the civil war in Liberia. The day before, I’d edited a story he wrote about the combat in Monrovia that was killing scores of civilians daily and which was too hot for most journalists to endure. Chris was among just a handful of foreign reporters and photographers who stayed to see the bloody conflict through to the end. The story was ready; I just needed an image to run with it.

Like many editors who saw those pictures that day, I gasped out loud when I saw the shot — a dreadlocked, bare-chested Liberian government solider suspended in mid-leap, a look of pure joy on his face as he celebrated what must have been a perfect shot with an RPG he’d fired moments before. The photo was instantly famous. Newspapers and magazines from around the world ran it on their front pages and in two-page spreads. It received honors from a Dutch photojournalism organization and was used in posters and on book covers. It was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. It became the iconic image of that conflict and spurred countless conversations about its conflicting message — that there can be beauty and joy in the midst of war, that combat can be both terrifying and invigorating.

Needless to say, that picture has taken up permanent residence in my mind; Chris and I discussed it endlessly in the following years.

Now, in a strange intersection of fate, almost eight years to the day after that picture was taken, I’ll be meeting the man in it.

What many who’ve seen the photo don’t know is that Chris’s involvement with the subject, a man named Joseph Duo, didn’t end after they parted ways on that contested bridge. Two years later, Chris returned to Monrovia to cover Liberia’s election and he found Duo. Because the photo had such a reverberating effect on Chris’s life, he wanted to track him down and get to know him. Not surprisingly, he found Duo’s life to be much like the majority of Liberians’ — impoverished and with few prospects.

Duo first told Chris that he wanted to join the U.S. Marines, and he was disappointed to learn that the Marines probably wouldn’t show much interest in a 5-foot 3-inch former warrior who lives in West Africa. Chris asked him about school, learning a trade. Duo told him he couldn’t afford school and had only completed the 10^th grade, having begun his military service at age 14.

I’ll let Chris pick up the tale from there, from this report he wrote for Digital Journalist:

The next day, I asked Elliot, my driver, about how schools work in Monrovia.

 

"Oh, private schools, they so expensive! So expensive!" he said, as we bounced on the pitted roads around town.

 

"Really? How much for, say, a year's tuition then?" I asked.

 

"A year? Oh, much money, too much money," he said, sadly shaking his head.

 

"How much?"

 

"Four thousand, five thousand Liberian dollars," he said, head still shaking.

 

I squinted as I made the conversion. Then my eyebrows shot up.

 

"Five thousand Liberian dollars is ... wait, that's like seventy-five bucks."

 

"Yes. So expensive ..."

 

"For the whole year? Are you sure?"

 

He was right: one year's tuition and expenses at a private school in Liberia, many of which are associated with one church or another, costs less than $100. So on my last day in Monrovia I found myself touring private schools, carrying a pad to take notes and generally making as much of a fuss as a Manhattan mother touring day schools on the Upper East Side, though with markedly different kinds of questions: "Where is your generator?" "Do you have many former combatants?" "Why haven't you fixed all this shelling damage?"

In the end, Chris paid for Duo’s education. The two kept in sporadic touch over the years so that Chris could keep tabs on his Liberian pupil to be sure he was making the most of his education. Duo would send Chris his report cards. These two unlikely friends reconnected most recently last fall via Facebook. Duo had graduated from high school and is now studying criminal justice at a university in Monrovia. But what he referred to as their “project,” his education, wasn’t finished yet. Duo wanted to continue his studies in America and he hoped that Chris would help him figure out a way to do it.

There’s little question that Chris would have done what he could. But he was killed in Libya two months ago and the waves of grief over his death reached every corner of the globe, including in Liberia. Duo lost not only a friend, but a friend who had completely changed his life. Chris’s generosity provided him with hope and opportunity, two things that are all too often in rare supply in West Africa, and Duo hadn’t squandered them.

In the wake of Chris’s death, I’m picking up the thread with Duo, determined to see that their “project” is completed in whatever way I can manage. As it happens, I’ll be in neighboring Sierra Leone next month and plan to detour to Monrovia to meet the former commander and carry on the work that Chris started many years ago.

I’ve heard from many people who wish to help as well. Once I get a chance to meet Duo and find out what’s needed and appropriate, I’ll report back here. Carrying on a little part of Chris’s legacy is the least I can do.