Wednesday, November 16, 2005

The Worst Place on Earth to Be a Woman                                                                                     Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf, president-elect A breathtaking piece by Helene Cooper in the NYTimes on the women in Liberia whose solid majority last week elected the first female head of state on a continent that has seen more than its share of thugs as rulers. In Liberia, when their sons were kidnapped and drugged to fight for rebel factions, and when their husbands came home from brothels and infected them with H.I.V., and when government soldiers invaded their houses and raped them in front of their teenage sons, these were the women who picked themselves up and kept going. They kept selling fish, cassava and kola nuts so they could feed their families. They gave birth to the children of their rapists in the forests and carried the children on their backs as they balanced jugs of water on their heads. These are the women who went to the polls in Liberia last week. -RH 6:18:50 PM    comment []

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