Posted by Greg Campell on Friday, October 14, 2011
I remember very well the fork in my life that put me on the
road to Kosovo. It was 1996 and I was in my friend’s car sitting outside the departure terminal
at Denver International Airport and he’d said something that kept me in the
seat for a moment as I reached for the handle to get on my way to Bosnia.
“You know you don’t have to go, right?”
There was a quiet sincerity in his voice that brought me up
short. That, and the fact that he was my boss, the editor of a small
alternativ... Continue reading...
Posted by Greg Campell on Monday, September 19, 2011
 Guest post by Michael de Yoanna
If you told me I’d be riding a bicycle through a tropical storm in
order to complete a film this summer, I would have said you were crazy. The
film’s theme involves bicycling and how it helps veterans recover from their
wounds. But attempting to be the director from the saddle of a bike, that’s
another thing.
When my partner Greg Campbell and I began shooting this
yet-to-be-named documentary film in late May, during a week-long veterans’ road
cycle r... Continue reading...
Posted by Greg Campell on Saturday, September 17, 2011
 It’s going to be hard to describe what I’ve been up to for
the past two weeks, as I sit here typing this in the back of a rented van
filled with expensive film gear in the middle of “downtown” Bloomery, West
Virginia. Downtown is literally a wide spot in a long road that winds through
wooded hollows between Maryland and Virginia, consisting of a general store and
a post office. Not surprisingly, there is no cell phone service here and no
Internet, but I managed to pinch some WiFi off ... Continue reading...
Posted by Greg Campell on Wednesday, August 24, 2011
 It was four in the morning, out on the inky black streets of
Kenema in east-central Sierra Leone, when I finally realized that I would not
be making it to Liberia to find former government soldier Joseph Duo. This is
after a week of yo-yoing plans formed and abandoned in Freetown as I tried to
stitch together some combination of boat, bus or plane that could deliver me
just up the coast to Monrovia and get me back in time to make my flight to
France.
That last part was the sticking point,... Continue reading...
Posted by Greg Campell on Tuesday, August 16, 2011
 I am not one to
casually suggest sending money to Africa. With an inbox and spam filter jammed
with faux good news about rich dead relatives who’ve gone belly up in such
locales as Lagos, Nigeria, and Kinshasa, Congo, before they could arrange the
delivery of my multi-million court settlement/lottery winnings/embezzled funds,
I am wise to the ways of 419 scammers. In fact, during my recent visit to
Sierra Leone, a sign behind the counter at one downtown hotel warned guests
about 419 scam...
Posted by Greg Campell on Friday, July 29, 2011
 There were six of
us, three American medical students...
Posted by Greg Campell on Thursday, June 23, 2011
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 rea... Continue reading...
Posted by Greg Campell on Tuesday, June 14, 2011
 About this time next month, I’ll once again be far from home
in the jungles of West Africa. I haven’t been to Sierra Leone since October
2001, a tense time that had me hiding out in a remote coastal compound of
run-down cabanas to avoid a small gang of local criminals who’d pegged me as a
mark for extortion. I had some local muscle on my side, a battle-hardened
veteran of Sierra Leone’s diamond war, and he had negotiated a détente with
their leader. But since those who were haras...
Continue reading...
Posted by Greg Campell on Saturday, May 7, 2011
 My last post here was on March 30, and I think I said something about how I would be offline for a few weeks while I traveled to Libya to do some reporting. I had no idea my hiatus would be for so long, or the reasons why.
As everyone knows by now, my best friend, Chris Hondros was killed in a mortar explosion in Misurata, Libya on April 20, 2011. I last saw him exactly a week before, in the lobby of the Ouzo Hotel in Benghazi, having breakfast with Restrepo director Tim Hetherington, who was ... Continue reading...
Posted by Greg Campell on Friday, March 25, 2011
 I’ve written off a lot of weird business expenses on my income taxes in my time as a freelancer — a top-end sewing machine, a set of lock-picking tools, a bullet-proof vest — but I’m testing the bounds this year. My latest hands-on research involved growing marijuana, and anyone who’s ever done it knows that it’s not an inexpensive undertaking. Of course, you can simply sow some seeds outside by the lilacs and hope they’ll disguise the odor once the cannabis start blooming, but ... Continue reading...
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Notebook
Welcome to my blog, a weekly rumination
on writing, publishing and the topics I'm covering. Check here for lighter fare,
drunken ramblings, tales of derringdo
and other fables and lies.
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