New York City – A young girl stood weeping while women danced happily around her. A grand celebration was already underway for the girl’s rite of passage. It would end with her circumcision and the women rejoicing. Against her will, the young girl who they called Ekankama, was knocked to the ground and held down by…
Environment, Climate and Resources Reporting
Going Home the Same Way They Came: Buduburam on My Mind as D-Day Nears
Perched on vast acres of land dotted with concrete buildings marked in colorful chalk, Buduburam Refugee Camp on the outskirts of Accra, Ghana, has always been a place of transit for Liberians. Camp dwellers are like expectant passengers on a flight whose destination is still undetermined. Most of them hope to land in America, or…
Starting Small: Liberia’s Women Entrepreneurs Boost Agriculture Industry
Monrovia — On the outskirts of this capital city, Martha Partor runs what passes for a food processing business in this war-weary west African nation. It’s not high tech or big business. She packages local agricultural items such as pepper sauce, cassava leaf flour and potato greens powder in vacuum bags that are sold at…
Liberia’s Water Woes: Why Clean, Safe Water Is Still Out of Reach for Many Liberians
Monrovia: “Water! Water!” Eugene Seoh shouted from his three-story apartment building on Benson Street, a main avenue in the center of Monrovia. From across the road, water vendor Jerry Worlogar looked up and nodded. Seoh hurried down the stairs. He stood before Worlogar’s hand-drawn cart full of white five-gallon containers. “Thirty-five \[Liberian] dollars for one…
Charles Taylor’s Verdict Proves What Goes Up Must Come Down
by New Narratives Fellow Robtel Neajai Pailey I was in The Hague on April 26 when they convicted Charles Taylor. Appearing like a child being publicly scolded, he stood on seemingly wobbly legs, head bowed, when they pronounced him guilty on 11 counts of crimes against humanity for aiding and abetting rebels during Sierra Leone’s…
Still in Hiding, Azango Welcomes Leaders Decision to End FGC
“The Costs for Girls: Why I Welcome Leaders’ Decision” by Mae Azango The sound of drums and sasa fills the air as little girls and young ladies leave the Sande Bush. They have completed the traditional bush school and sing and dance their way into this town in rural Liberia. Well-wishers from neighboring towns…
Denying Liberia’s Babies: Teen Fathers Speak
By Mae Azango “Some of these young boys are from broken homes. Sometimes it is peer pressure that causes many of the teen fathers to deny pregnancies.” But there are also other factors. – Ali Sylla, Founder and Executive Director of the Center for Counseling and Restorative Dialogue in Monrovia. Nathan became a young dad…
Moving from Open Door to ‘Growth with Development’
During President William Tubman’s Open Door Policy, Liberia was averaging double-digit growth rates. Being open for business, however, did not mean growth was open to all. In the 1960s, it was claimed that we had ‘growth without development’—economic activities from large-scale foreign concessions in iron ore, rubber, palm oil, and timber did not improve the…
From Petty Traders to Entrepreneurs in War-Battered Economy
Clothing designer Geneva Garr supervises several men crouched over sewing machines surrounded by beautifully tailored dresses hanging for customers to see. Starting up with just one sewing machine on her porch, Garr, 37, now makes 72 outfits a week. Garr says she started the business in 2005 in Accra, Ghana and moved to Liberia in…
Female Genital Cutting – Why Liberia Must Join the Rest of the World and Outlaw the Practice
An opinion piece by Tetee Karneh. See original post here. Liberia is a little country of 3.5 million people basking in the mindset that because we, unlike most of the rest of Africa, were never colonized by foreign powers, we were not infected by alien cultures. But that mindset is wrong. Liberia’s openness to strangers…
Tradition of Genital Cutting Threatens Health of Liberian Women
Ma Sabah was only 13 years old when she was taken from Gbatallah in Bong County and forced into the Sande bush for a crime her mother committed in her village in 1976. The Sande bush is where women and girls are sent to be circumcised and groomed into women ready for marriage, as culture and tradition demand. See original story…
Seek Ye First the Economic Kingdom, Woman
First appeared in Liberia’s FrontPage Africa newspaper March 1 Africa’s first post-independence president, Kwame Nkrumah of Ghana, urged colonial Africa to “seek ye first the political kingdom, and all else shall be added onto you.” Nkrumah was alluding to the biblical verse, “Seek ye first the kingdom of God and his righteousness; and all these…
High Number of Teenage Pregnancies Holds Liberia Back Say Experts
Baby Blessed wriggles and wails in discomfort in his young mother’s lap. Winnie pulls out her breast to feed her sick child and quiet his cries. She looks out at the swampy backyard behind her home as if she would rather be any place other than here. By Mae Azango. Originally published in FrontPage Africa…
“I Am Gay” The First Liberian Homosexuals to Talk to the Media Say Life is Hard
Names in this article have been changed to conceal the identities of gay persons mentioned. Jerome, 16, strides like he is a supermodel on a runway. He has a slender body, and his hair is cut short. The fashionable teen is wearing denim jeans. A white polo T-shirt bathed in dragon designs reveals his bare…
NN in the New York Times
Photo by NN photography coach Glenna Gordon MONROVIA, Liberia — Election officials announced on Thursday that Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, Africa’s only female president, had been re-elected by an overwhelming margin this week in a runoff vote that was marred by an opposition boycott. President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, speaking to reporters on Thursday, said she would pursue…
SLAMMING THE GIRL POWER: What Went Wrong for Liberia’s Women at the 2011 Polls?
By FrontPage Africa editor and New Narratives fellow Wade Williams Gloria Musu Scott sits behind her desk at the Capitol Building. The senator from Maryland County is in the process of clearing her office to return to her former life as a lawyer. She is among many women who lost their seats following our country’s…
Despite rain, Liberians turn out in huge numbers to vote
In West Point, a shantytown community on the edge of the Atlantic, dozens of people endured long lines and the pouring rain to vote in this country’s second presidential elections since the end of 14 years of civil war. Frances Roberts, 53, arrived at the polling station at 4 a.m., four hours before voting commenced….
A Picture Is NOT Worth a Thousand Liberian Lives
I squirmed when I saw the photo online of a female protester in her crisp white T-shirt, with ruby red liquid dripping down her neck and face. There were other photos in a series. One man lay on the naked carpet of a room, surrounded by the living, his thin vertical body lifeless. Another man…
Liberia’s Working Women Plagued by Sexual Assault and Harassment
Vera was working for an NGO when a supervisor made sexual advances while the two were in his office. She remembers worrying she would not be strong enough to push him away. “He asked me to stand up and said ‘Kiss me’. I said no, then I tried to get up. He pulled me to…
Obstacles cleared for Liberia’s runoff poll
Liberia is looking anxiously toward the country’s Nov. 8 runoff election between President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf and challenger Winston Tubman. Tubman had threatened to boycott the poll, charging that the director of the National Election Commission had rigged the first-round results in favor of Johnson Sirleaf. A boycott would have created the possibility of instability in…
Workers Protest Broken Promises by Foreign Palm Oil Company
More than two years ago the government of Liberia signed an agreement with Malaysian oil palm giant Sime Darby. As part of the $800 million dollar deal, Sime Darby pledged to build workers housing and hospitals and send their children to school. In a collaboration between New Narratives and Sky FM, Tetee Gebro visited the…