MONROVIA, Liberia — LIBERIANS have begun calling the days between July 27 and Aug. 3 “the dark week” — 173 new Ebola virus cases and 94 new deaths. How much darker things may get is anybody’s guess. In Johnsonville, a swampy town outside Monrovia, three dozen corpses in body bags were dumped in shallow holes…
Wade Williams
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…
NN’s Wade Williams on Liberia’s Entrepreneur Women
MONROVIA, Liberia — 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…
NN’s Breakthrough Reporting Prompts Liberian Leaders to Announce an End To Female Circumcision
Monrovia – Traditional leaders and government ministers have revealed a secret agreement to shut down the activities of Liberia’s secret women’s society, the Sande, for an indefinite period. The deal will see all Sande land turned over to the leaders of the Poro men’s society. A ceremony handing over the land from the women to…
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…
“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…
Liberian President Faces Tough Second Term
By NN fellow and FrontPage Africa editor Wade Williams MONROVIA, Liberia — Liberian President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf will be sworn in for her second term this Monday but the 73-year-old Nobel laureate begins her six-year term under a heavy cloud. An acrimonious election campaign against the main opposition party, Congress for Democratic Change (CDC), was…
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…
Warlord now Kingmaker? Prince Johnson’s support of Ellen angers his own party
All is not well within the National Union For Democratic Progress, Since the endorsement of the Unity Party a move which serves as a catalyst for delivering Vote-Rich Nimba County to Incumbent Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf by the Party’s Standard Bearer Senator Prince Johnson has caused a stir in the party. The man dubbed by many as…
Is former warlord Prince Johnson fit to rule?
Surrounded by bodyguards, Prince Yormie Johnson swaggers with confidence toward a meeting hut in the center of his large Monrovia compound, decorated with brass figurines and farm animals. The Liberian senator and former warlord is among the 16 candidates vying for the presidency in the Oct. 11 general elections. Johnson, 52, already behaves like a…
Nobel Peace Prize winner Johnson Sirleaf runs for re-election
Just days before winning the Nobel Peace Prize, Liberian President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf stood on a makeshift stage at the jam-packed Antoinette Tubman Stadium in Monrovia. She launched into a rousing campaign song. Singing “Ellen’s got the Mansion Key” to cheering supporters, Johnson Sirleaf appeared confident that she would win a second term as Liberia’s…
Despite Stiff Opposition to 2nd Term Bid, Sirleaf Vows To ‘Do it Again’
Standing on a makeshift stage hooked on to two trucks at the jam-packed Antoinette Tubman Stadium in Monrovia, Liberian President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf seems assured by the crowd assembled for her party’s launch that she will win a second term. “Ellen’s got the Mansion Key,” she sings amid cheers from her supporters. Johnson Sirleaf is…
‘No Vote For Ellen In Nimba’: Candidate Prince Johnson Claims Referendum Victory
The flag bearer of the National Union for Democratic Progress, NUDP, Nimba County’s senior Senator Prince Y. Johnson says, he will make sure that President Johnson-Sirleaf does not get any vote from Nimba County. Senator Johnson addressing a number of issues over the weekend said President Sirleaf has lost the confidence of the people of…
Dangerous Pregnancy: Unsafe Abortion a Problem for Liberian Teens
Monrovia – Pale and weak, Pauline Kule was rushed to the James N. Davis Memorial hospital in July because she had been bleeding profusely. The 19-year-old swallowed 15 pills hoping to get rid of an unwanted pregnancy. A ninth-grade student, Kule says she was afraid her father would withdraw his financial support if he found…
Doctors Blame High Number of Child Burns on Parental Ignorance
Two-year-old Rosetta Fokpa lies on her back, left foot raised in the air. A pretty little girl with braids, she cries bitterly. Boiling water scalded her legs, exposing a layer of fresh pink skin. It happened a week ago but the little girl is still in terrible pain. Fokpa’s mother says the child stepped into…
Jumpstarting Liberia’s rubber industry
BUCHANAN, Liberia — The sun is high over the Buchanan Renewables nursery, a green expanse of 400,000 tiny seedlings. Theresa Doe hunches over one seedling, grafting a Malaysian clone that will produce a high-yielding rubber tree. “It’s my living,” she says, her eyes fixed on the plant. Doe and some 500 employees of this Canadian…
‘Dry Bones Cry’ Time to Bury Liberia’s War Dead?
Two white stars painted on the basketball court at the Lutheran Church on 15th Street are all that mark the buried remains of more than 500 people killed in the infamous 1990 massacre here. On that July night, Liberians fleeing for their lives thought they had found a safe haven in the church compound. Surely,…