"We are working for Liberia"

We traveled across bustling, beat down Monrovia, past curbside markets where women sold potato greens and bottled water.  We went through the Barcalounger Laz-Z-boy district. Couches and chairs lined the road. Men were wiping them down to keep them shining and attractive to potential customers. These were roadside sales.  They must have had to haul them back to a warehouse at the end of the shopping day.

 We passed the impressive new Chinese embassy compound. It is about the only new building we have seen so far in Monrovia and it reveals the extent of their presence. They are building roads while getting access to Liberian resources.
 We also passed the abandoned presidents executive mansion. The damage from an electrical fire is the ostensible reason it hasn't been rebuilt, but some people also think it is haunted. It clearly has a bad reputation for many Liberians. Samuel Doe executed President William Tolbert there and later kept prisoners there.  Some of his hit squads operated from the building. President Sirleaf chooses not to live there.

We met with some young women who getting basic education and vocational training with support from a Liberian non-profit. THINK started working with girls who were combatants during the war.  As that population aged, they shifted their efforts to young girls caught up in cycles of sexual abuse and sex trafficking. The young women, a few of them mothers themselves, greeted us with a song with the chorus, "we are working for Liberia.
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