African Woman and Child Feature Service

I used to be a fan of former footballer George Weah. Tall, handsome and moneyed, are qualities that only added to my being his great supporter.

When he indicated that he was vying for presidency, I said to myself, there goes my vote.

Then I had not heard of Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, the woman who went ahead and defeated Weah in the first post war elections of Liberia.

However, the other day, I was forced to shift goals posts and my loyalty to Ellen Johnson Sirleaf.

I recently met Sirleaf during her tour of the United States. At that same time, I was also a visiting fellow at the Communications Consortium Media Centre (CCMC) in the same city.

Our colleague at CCMC Andrea Sybinsky had organised for me and my colleague Florence Sipalla from African Woman and Child Features Service attend a function organised by the Centre for Global Development where Sirleaf was going to give a public lecture.

I was a bit sceptical of this meeting. My experience in Kenya was that functions where a visiting President was attending would be full of secret service and the presidential security detail. These are the people who will easily hound you out of a room or place without giving a second thought in the name of the president’s security.

We left the office at CCMC early to ensure that we arrived at the DuPont Circle Hotel on time so we would not be locked out. In Kenya, they do not allow you into a room with the President if you come after him. This happens even if he was speaking in open grounds. One is most likely to be turned away.

On arrival, we just walked into the room where Sirleaf was going to speak on the topic: Emerging Africa and the Private Sector: A Liberian Perspective.

We just walked into the room and picked our vantage position, just next to the aisle and behind the reserved seats.

The President was running late, so said a representative of Centre for Global Development.

However, soon she arrived and walked into the room. Not very tall, as I had imagined. May be she stood at less than 5: 5.

Soon she was talking about how far her country has come since Charles Taylor, the man who wrecked Liberia and fled.

Speaking to the number gathered here, Sirleaf said she had a speech prepared for her but she was not going to read it because she just wanted to have a dialogue with the audience.

Sirleaf was categorical of how far Liberia had come and she could not ignore the fact that they would not have made it without international support.

I was keenly listening to how she had raised Liberia from the ashes of impunity to where it stands today. For me, Sirleaf stood out as the iron lady. That is until I shook her hands. Do you belief it? Shaking the president’s hand? And Ellen Johnson Sirleaf for that matter?

I could not believe it myself. She was looking at me straight in the eye as I tried to tell her how much I admired her. I was at loss of words. I tried to mumble something like I really like your speech but I was so mesmerised by the presence of this woman that I just held on to her hand as she stared into my eyes.

There were no security men around her to keep people off. At least they were not outrightly visible. She was just like any other mother — soft at times but very hard at the same time.

Did I tell you about how soft her hands were? She gave me the impression of the iron lady with a soft touch.

She made jokes about our tape recorders at the podium. She equally made jokes about her time at the house on the hill. She had just come from meeting US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton at Capitol Hill.

She gave her time to everybody even as one of her minders kept saying that the President’s time was up and she had to go to another meeting. She posed for pictures with everybody who wanted to.

My colleague Florence missed the photo session as she shook the President’s hand and held her camera at the same time. That must have been the biggest blunder of her life.

By the time Sirleaf was getting into her car, I realised that there was actually a battalion of secret service surrounded the hotel.

As she left in her bulletproof limousine, I looked at my hands once gain and wondered whether I would ever wash them. I wanted to hold onto that touch from the iron lady and hope it would stay with me forever.