Unemployment rates in the U.S. and Canada are approaching double digits, but these figures pale to those in Liberia, where the official unemployment rate stands at 85 percent. A Worldfocus contributing blogger in Monrovia describes how Liberians get by, even if they are not formally employed.

Some of the biggest victims of Liberia's 14-year civil war were young women who were taken prisoner and forced to fight, or made into sex slaves. Many of them are now struggling to recover and struggling to forget.

Liberia's Decoration Day is a national holiday that mourns the losses or celebrates the lives of lost loved ones. Liberians bring parties to cemeteries to clean and decorate gravestones, eat and dance.

For a 14-year period ending in 2003, Liberia struggled with a brutal civil war, a crippled economy and not much hope. That was until a women's movement started to take hold -- a movement that helped to drive a dictator from power and gave women the kind of opportunities they could never have dreamed of.

Linda Thomas-Greenfield, U.S. ambassador to Liberia, discusses the positive example set by Liberian President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf and some of the challenges faced by a country rebuilding since the aftermath of its second civil war.