My first writing assignment for 2018 will be a short trip to the West African state of Liberia in early January. You may have heard of it recently making news with the election of George Weah, once a global soccer star, as Liberia’s new president. But mostly the only stories emerging about Liberia in the media in recent decades have been of bloody civil war and outbreaks of Ebola. I dislike how so easily African countries like Liberia are tainted for decades after a tragedy w