It’s late afternoon in Todee, a village in rural Liberia, and the sun is starting to drop. Mae Azango settles into a taxi for the three-hour drive back to Monrovia, the capital.
But this long day hasn’t been quite long enough. Ms. Azango, a journalist, needs to come back on Monday to finish reporting a story about midwives for her newspaper, Front Page Africa.
In the taxi, her phone rings. She’s been ignoring it all morning – she’s been working – but now she can answer. She listens quietly, and then she bursts into a belly laugh.
This is not a good sign.
Azango laughs all the time – but often not out of joy. She laughs out of disbelief, or disgust, or sheer frustration. For her, laughter is an indictment or a protest – a sign not that she feels carefree, but that something around her is terribly wrong.
The sudden guffaw in the back of the taxi, though, ends as quickly as it began.