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From palava huts to TikTok: How Liberians are preserving their past

From palava huts to TikTok: How Liberians are preserving their past

Monrovia, Liberia – For generations, Liberia’s history lived in the voices of its elders, carried through conversations, ceremonies and community gatherings. Today, those stories are finding new audiences across TikTok, Facebook, YouTube, podcasts and digital archives. Young Liberians are documenting their history, exploring their culture and reaching audiences at home and across the diaspora. Rather than replacing traditional storytellers, they are carrying an age-old tradition into the digital age. Across much of West Africa, griots, or oral historians, preserved history through storytelling, music and oral tradition. Liberia never developed the formal griot tradition found across the Sahel, but its elders fulfilled a similar role, preserving family histories, cultural traditions and the stories that bound communities together. Over time, however, that tradition has come under growing pressure. Among those leading efforts to preserve Liberia’s past is Bilphena Decontee Yahwon, founder of Archive Liberia, a memory and political education project that explores Liberian history through research, archives and public storytelling. “I didn’t originally set out to tell Liberian stories. I wanted to tell my own story,” Yahwon says. “Within my story was also a story of war and migration, one that I felt I could only contextualise by understanding the story of Liberia, who we were before the 1800s, what happened afterwards, and what we became. I realised I was inside a web of stories, and that is ultimately what brought me to the work I do now,” she tells Al Jazeera. Her personal search has become part of a wider movement of young Liberians using digital platforms to reclaim the country’s past and reshape how it is remembered. A history interrupted by war Elders passed down the memories of families, communities, cultural traditions and the events that shaped Liberia for generations, but the country’s civil wars severed that chain. Liberia’s two civil wars, fought between 1989 and 2003, killed an estimated 250,000 people, displaced hundreds of thousands more and disrupted the transmission of history, culture and family memory. “Liberian societies in the forest belt lacked the professional caste of griots that existed in the Sahel. But our elders did their best to transmit historical and cultural knowledge, albeit on an unpaid basis,” says Patrick Burrowes, a Liberian historian and author. “The chain of transmission across generations continued in an unbroken fashion for centuries until the war. That is why we are seeing less and less transmission of accurate historical and cultural knowledge,” Burrowes tells Al Jazeera. The effects of that disruption are still felt today. As Liberia has become more urbanised, many young people have moved away from the communities where oral histories were traditionally shared. According to a 2022 report by the Liberia Institute for Statistics and Geo-Information Services, internal migrants account for 46.7 percent of the urban population, compared with 13.6 percent of the rural population. The places where stories are shared have changed. The need to preserve them has not. The new palava hut For many young Liberians, the new gathering place is online. A historical photograph shared on Facebook, a TikTok video explaining a cultural tradition or a podcast exploring Liberia’s past can now reach audiences far beyond a single community. Stories once shared between elders and younger generations now travel across cities, continents and the Liberian diaspora in seconds. Zuleka Dauda, chief programme officer at the Center for Integrated Solutions, a Liberian-owned research and strategic planning organisation, says the shift reflects evolution rather than loss. “Culture should never stand still,” she tells Al Jazeera. “Young Liberians are consuming culture differently, but it’s still being taught and shared. Instead of gathering around the palava hut, they gather around TikTok, Facebook, podcasts and YouTube. We didn’t lose storytelling. We changed the stage.” For many creators, these platforms have become spaces to document traditions, preserve family histories and challenge narratives about Liberia that have often been shaped from outside the country. Historical photographs, forgotten traditions and family memories are reaching new audiences as Liberians use technology to reconnect with their past. But taking storytelling online has also brought new challenges. Truth and memory Access remains one of the biggest barriers. According to World Bank figures, just over one in three Liberians uses the internet, limiting who can participate in this growing digital archive. There is also the challenge of misinformation. Traditional storytellers learned over many years, with elders responsible for correcting inaccuracies and protecting the knowledge passed between generations. Social media has opened storytelling to everyone, but it has also removed many of those safeguards. Participants in an Archive Liberia oral history project pose for a group photograph [Bilphena Decontee Yahwon/Al Jazeera] “Historically, African griots underwent rigorous training, and the recitation of knowledge by young acolytes was fact-checked by their elders,” says Burrowes. “But social media is a brave new world. Individual users do not undergo training in sifting fact from falsehood. Many users post information without vetting. They often use their platforms to gain followers and influence, without regard to social responsibility.” Limited literacy and restricted access to archives also make it harder for many Liberians to verify historical claims. Government figures estimate literacy among Liberians aged 15 and above at 58.6 percent. For Yahwon, however, the challenge is not only about accuracy but also about who gets to shape Liberia’s historical narrative. “For me, one of the biggest challenges in telling Liberian stories, culture and history is undoing the ahistorical account of our past that has dominated for so long,” she says. “So much of what has been written about Liberia is shaped by narratives that lack an anti-colonial and anti-imperialist perspective.” Who gets to tell Liberia’s story? As more Liberians turn to digital platforms to preserve the past, the challenge is ensuring those stories remain rooted in evidence as well as memory. The Liberia Tourism Authority says it is working with historians, cultural institutions and content creators to improve access to historical resources and help produce accurate, engaging stories about Liberia. Dauda believes the answer is not to discourage young people from telling stories online, but

Firefighters battle fire after fertiliser explosion in England

Firefighters battle fire after fertiliser explosion in England

Firefighters battle industrial farm fire after fertiliser explosion in England NewsFeed A fertiliser explosion at a farm in Essex triggered a major incident. Dozens of firefighters worked to contain the large industrial fire and protect nearby homes. Published On 25 Jul 2026 Adblock test (Why?)

‘The show must go on’: Trump returns to rescheduled White House press gala

‘The show must go on’: Trump returns to rescheduled White House press gala

US president makes jokes, mocks opponents at correspondents’ dinner that was halted by a shooting in April. United States President Donald Trump returned to the White House Correspondents’ Association dinner, three months after a gunman upended the event. “As I said three months ago, the show must go on,” Trump said at the start of his speech on Friday, after a lengthy awards ceremony, during which several journalists, including CNN’s Wolf Blitzer, spoke. Recommended Stories list of 3 items list 1 of 3IOC rejects human rights group’s complaint against Trump ally Infantino list 2 of 3Trump says ‘it’s time’ for Saudi Arabia to normalise ties with Israel list 3 of 3Trump threatens EU will pay ‘big price’ after Brussels fines Google $1bn end of list The annual – and perennially controversial – event had originally been held in April, but it was swiftly derailed after a gunman attempted to storm the proceedings in an alleged effort to assassinate Trump. “Just like my presidency, the second time is always better and the third time will be better yet,” Trump quipped, before raising his hands at the crowd and saying, “I’m only kidding.” The US president is limited to two terms by the Constitution, but Trump has been facetiously floating the idea of running for a third time. The rescheduled dinner took place in the ballroom of the Waldorf Astoria hotel, with a guest list of 700 people, much smaller compared with April’s botched gathering. “It was an assault on our democracy itself; it was a very serious situation,” Trump said of the alleged assassination attempt. He lauded some of his aides, including Pete Hegseth, Steve Miller and Tom Holman, for showing “bravery” during the incident. “They were standing on tables, when most of you were under the tables,” he said. Alleged gunman Cole Tomas Allen had stormed a security gate at the gala venue, the Washington Hilton, armed with guns and knives. He was accused by prosecutors of shooting and injuring a Secret Service officer before he was stopped. Allen is facing federal charges of attempting to assassinate the president. “Many people yelled, ‘Get down. Get down,’ which caused Nicki Minaj to start twerking,” Trump said on Friday. As journalists in attendance forced a muted laugh, Trump added: “She’s the only one who knew what that meant.” Trump later used the event to rebuke political opponents, presenting his attacks as jokes. He called Democratic California Governor Gavin Newsom “newscum”, questioned Congresswoman Ilhan Omar’s intelligence, and pretended that someone in the audience was calling Illinois Governor JB Pritzker a “fat pig” to appear that he was not uttering the insult himself. The US president also called top Democratic Senator Chuck Schumer “Palestinian” as an insult. Earlier in the evening, Trump entered the ballroom to polite applause. “This is the largest gathering of people with Trump derangement syndrome,” he said, referring to journalists. The US president has had a historically caustic relationship with the dinner, but this year, he touted the celebration this year, calling it a “very good thing” and a “HOT ticket”. White House Correspondents’ Association president Weijia Jiang of CBS News, which was acquired by pro-Israel investor David Ellison last year, thanked Trump for his support, and for showing up for the second time in three months. “Tonight our message is this: We are back,” she said. “We will not be intimidated. We refuse to let an act of violence have the final word.” Trump’s enthused attendance represented a sea change from his first term, beginning in 2017, when the newly elected president declared the soiree “dead” and declined to attend over the next four years. Beyond Trump, the White House Correspondents’ Dinner has long been a lightning rod for criticism among media professionals, with some journalists arguing that reporters should not be chummy with the politicians they cover. Calls for the dinner to be abandoned entirely only grew after the April incident. Adblock test (Why?)