In the L.I.B.

The air in Monrovia is thick and muggy and smells vaguely of coal fire. On the road to Robertsport Field, the main airport, the moon glimmers in lieu of electricity. Bombed out and abandoned buildings line the main thoroughfares. On UN Drive, homes and offices are hidden behind high walls and heaps of barbed wire. The Women's Campaign International office -- where New Narratives is set up -- is a ramshackle old house haphazardly decorated with odd pieces of office furniture, with a paint-chipped wraparound porch covered in purple flowers and facing the ocean. A security guard is permanently stationed out front. The New Narratives fellows -- there are five now -- come to the workshops we are holding between university classes and full-time jobs at the city's main newspaper, Front Page Africa, and a number of radio stations. Their frequent tardiness or absence is treated as inexcusable but is excused anyway because they have French exams and children and angry bosses. One fellow was a refugee in Ivory Coast during the war, while another was sent to school in Nigeria by a wealthy relative whose half-brother was the former Liberian President Charles Taylor, now on trial in the Hague for allegedly trading weapons for raw diamonds with the rebels in Sierra Leone. Each fellow has her own story informing her desire to become a journalist, stemming from a 14-year conflict that left Liberia burned, raped, shot and illiterate.

We went to interview a potential new fellow today, a newscaster named Fabine at Radio Veritas, supported by the Catholic Archdiocese. Arriving to see Fabine, we walked past beggars huddled outside the cathedral and up a staircase in a building that looked every bit the part of a dowdy Catholic administration office.  Fabine was preparing scripts for the following day. She pulled off her headphones and drew two plastic chairs. She was excited about the prospect of a meager stipend as part of the New Narratives fellowship, since, she explained, Veritas does not always make money.