Troubleshooter Brings Big Heart, Cool Head
By Lane HartillThe Prince wasn't happy.
And as the Liberian rebel leader stood in the road, his finger caressing the trigger of an AK-47, two grenades dangling from his chest, Jacques knew the Prince was the last person he wanted to meet that afternoon.
Jacques Montouroy, a CRS employee for 39 years, coaches and supports, with his own money, youth soccer in Freetown, Sierra Leone. Photo by Lane Hartill/CRS
Jacques Montouroy, Catholic Relief Services' only staffer in Liberia at the time, was on a first-name basis with Prince Yormie Johnson. Johnson had recently broken away from Liberian rebel leader Charles Taylor's armed movement, which had invaded Liberia on Christmas Eve 1989.
Johnson and Jacques had chatted like old friends at the port in Liberia's capital, Monrovia, only a few days earlier. At the time, Johnson's faction controlled the port and he helped himself to rice stocks—owned by Firestone, the big rubber company—to feed his men. The discussion centered on delivering food and logistics. It was cordial, if a little awkward. At one point Johnson aimed a rocket-propelled grenade at a tugboat armed with Exocet missiles; he didn't like where it was docked.
So when Jacques met a drunk and trigger-happy Johnson on the street that day, he knew things could quickly sour. Johnson's temper was legendary. Johnny Walker breakfasts and Budweiser dinners oiled Johnson's lethal side. His men summarily executed opposition soldiers and he was accused of ghastly human rights violations. His fame swelled after he captured former Liberian president Samuel Doe and relieved him of his ears in the course of torturing him to death. (He was hoping to get Doe to reveal where he'd stashed the money he looted during his tenure in office.)
Humanitarian Coaches Sierra Leone Soccer Greats
Wherever he is stationed for Catholic Relief Services, Jacques Montouroy coaches soccer. His current youth team—he is the only coach in Freetown who works with 12-year-olds—routinely beats older and bigger boys. Most Sierra Leone coaches, Jacques says, are only interested in the older boys who could be profitable. The coaches groom them for sale to other teams.
Jacque's been coaching young Sierra Leoneans for a decade and he's a respected figure in the city. That came in handy during the country's civil war. Jacques had coached members of the rebel group, the Revolutionary United Front, and many of their sons.
Jacques also coaches the Sierra Leone under-17 soccer team, the best in the country. They have traveled to Gambia, Senegal and Niger. All of this is paid for by Jacques, who also supplies his boys with practice shoes, cleats and balls and, at one point, was paying school fees.
Six players he coached are currently on the Sierra Leone national team. He estimates that between 20 and 25 players from Sierra Leone are now playing at various levels in Europe. Overall, since he's been in Africa, around 40 players he has coached have gone on to Europe. "Growing football players is like raising chickens," Jacques says. "At a certain point, you have to let them go."
On a recent afternoon drive through Freetown, Sierra Leone's capital, Jacques spots one of his charges.
"That's the goalie for the national team," he says.
Jacques says he's cat-quick between the posts, and it's clear the young man has his eyes on a career in Europe. He's already trimmed with trappings of fame: the body-hugging Armani shirt that shows off his biceps, the tight cornrows, the Nikes. But around Jacques there's no swagger. He seems to know he wouldn't be here without Jacques.
There's talk he may go to play in Cyprus soon. "African players are like rough diamonds," Jacques says. "When they are polished, they are the best."
Fame was on Johnson's mind when he met Jacques. Taylor was stealing all the headlines in the Liberian and international media. Johnson, who was leading a faction of his own, couldn't stand it.
"What better way to get talked about than kidnapping some poor white man," Jacques says. "Unfortunately that poor white man was me."
Jacques was riding with a man sympathetic to Johnson's movement. There's nothing to worry about, the man said as the truck came to a stop. But Jacques was skeptical. They got out of the truck. Johnson's men handcuffed them together. And then the yelling started.
You're stealing my rice! Johnson thundered, referring to Jacques distributing the Firestone rice to Monrovia's needy. Without warning, Johnson pointed his AK-47 at Jacques's companion and squeezed the trigger. Then Johnson turned his eyes to Jacques, cuffed to his dying friend, unable to run.
"At that time my mind stopped working," Jacques says. "You just blur your mind. I didn't think about anything." In a situation like that, "don't show defiance. Don't show panic. It will entice them into shooting you."
In the Heat of Disaster
It wasn't the first time his life was threatened. For Jacques, a 39-year veteran of CRS, who goes to crises while they're still hot, it may not be the last.
From Haiti to Angola, Somalia to Burkina Faso, Jacques has seen the unsavory underbelly of Africa and the Caribbean. Former Haitian president Jean-Bertrand Aristide has given him the cold shoulder; the ex-president of Liberia, Samuel Doe, ordered henchmen to execute him; and he defiantly quaffed tea in the middle of a shootout in Somalia.
He's a throwback to another era, when conflicts bled easily across African borders and aid workers charmed their way past glassy-eyed rebels in the morning, then shared toddies with spies and hacks and do-gooders at night. For years, Jacques and a roaming band of humanitarians would arrive in the heat of one disaster before the last one had cooled.
A Man of Action
Jacques never planned to feed Africa's hungry. His first love was sport. First rugby, later soccer.
He spent much of his youth on the rugby pitch, playing with the junior team in the morning and another team in the afternoon. He could run the 50-yard dash in 5.7 seconds. He was built like a fullback. Even today, under his trademark African-print shirt, you can still see the meaty shoulders and bull neck of the former scrum half.
In the late 1960s, Jacques flew to Burkina Faso, then called Upper Volta, for his compulsory French military service. With no rugby to play, he took up soccer and basketball. On one of his teams he met a CRS country representative who was looking for a good bilingual French and English speaker. He offered Jacques the job.
Jacques critiques one of his players after the game against the Sibthorpe Rovers. Photo by David Snyder/CRS
The world of humanitarian aid was different when Jacques started in 1969. These days, some aid workers are liable to find themselves in marathon meetings, talking in acronyms as they gently leaf through baseline studies.
That's not Jacques. He prefers a day wrangling port workers and checking the CRS warehouse to talk of consortiums and strategy. He's a food and logistics guy, an action guy. He knows how to get food to thousands of people in a hurry.
In 1992, CRS called Jacques and asked him to go to Somalia at once. Jacques was on his way in hours, stopping by Nairobi to pick up 130 barrels of fuel. After an icy reception by another aid agency, Jacques set about hiring bodyguards and distributing food in the Somali town of Berdale. He'd stopped to drink a splash of tea when International Red Cross vehicles, along with security guards, arrived at one end of the street. Local militia arrived at the opposite end. The firefight started almost immediately.
"We go, we go, Jacques," Jacques says his guards begged him. "I said no. I'm going to finish my tea. There is nowhere else I could go anyway." So as bullets cracked through the air only a few feet away, Jacques casually sipped his tea.
Getting the Job Done
His reputation for daring extends from the poorest corners of humanitarian outreach to its upper echelons.
CRS president Ken Hackett worked with Jacques in Somalia.
"Jacques has the brilliant ability to get operations going under the worst conditions," he says. "He just sparkled."
Hackett recalls Jacques negotiating with a community that didn't want to cooperate with CRS. Jacques finally asked them what it would take. Someone said, perhaps half-jokingly, he should get rid of the crocodile that had been terrorizing the women when they went to fetch water. It had recently bitten the leg off a little girl. Jacques found a man with a gun. Then he found the crocodile. No more problem.
"With Jacques, there isn't a problem that can't be solved," says Hackett. "You just have to find a way."
But Jacques is also a man of nurture. He leaves work early to coach soccer—the boys, as he calls them. It's not just soccer, either. He talks to them about two vices that have melted the dreams of many young African greats: drugs and sex. They listen to him like a coach, friend and father. Many don't see their own very often and Jacques, with his wit and dash, fills the void nicely.
And for some of the boys, their loyalty to him was cemented during the darkest days of the 11-year civil war.
Daring and Kindness
During the conflict, Nigerian peacekeeping troops fought to control the capital. Some became known for their brutality. Take Evil Spirit, for example. "He was a nut case; even the Nigerians told me that," Jacques says. He killed 89 people in the Sierra Leonean capital of Freetown once, marching those he suspected of links to the rebels to Aberdeen Bridge in their underwear and shooting them one at a time. Then he tipped them over the edge.
Jacques, possibly the last foreigner left in the desolate city, hid four young men in his house for weeks. They were suspected of having links to the rebels. Nobody went out for fear of being shot. People lived off of whatever they could find. Only days earlier, Jacques had received from a neighbor 30 pounds of beef to keep in his freezer. Day after day, they ate nothing but beef. The boys never forgot that. Or Jacques's kindness. One of them is now the captain on one of Jacques's teams. He also helps Jacques coach the youth team.
Alex Mathew, the current country representative for Sierra Leone, has gotten to know Jacques by inviting him to his house and plying him with his wife's chapatti and curry.
"He has a very sharp mind, which he will not so easily reveal," says Mathew. "A man of contradictions?" asks Mathew. "I think not. But more a man who is clear of his likes and dislikes. He is what he is, no pretenses."
It's hard not to like Jacques Montouroy. He shuffles around the office, chatting with staff and sharing stories. For lunch, he eats cassava leaf stew or cold chicken and noodles, like the Sierra Leonean staff. He is the first person at the office in the morning, arriving at 6 a.m. with a stack of newspapers to start his day. He leaves early, rain or shine, to go coach the boys.
Speaking His Mind
He's been reprimanded before for his outspoken manner. In Haiti, during a tense moment in the conflict, a CRS staffer thought Jacques's approach was dangerous. "Don't say that, Jacques; they'll shoot you," she said. "I don't care," Jacques snapped. "I'll say what I want."
So as Africa and the Caribbean convulsed in the '80s and '90s—child soldiers spraying forests with gunfire in Liberia, thousands huddling and starving in the forest outside Freetown, Haitian mobs necklacing people and setting them alight—Jacques, the food and logistics guy, the former rugby player, saved hundreds, maybe thousands of lives.
But sitting in his office, surrounded by binders, he'd rather talk about Swiss military trucks CRS received; they can go through anything, he says. He's not interested in dwelling on his glory days. He did it, he says, because nobody else wanted to.
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Back on the road in Monrovia, Jacques waited for the fire in the Prince to cool. He let him rant. He never tried to talk him out of shooting him. The anger slowly drained out of him, and Jacques, once again, quietly walked away from certain death.
Lane Hartill is the West Africa regional information officer for Catholic Relief Services. He is based in Dakar, Senegal.
