11
according to the World Health Organization, 2,484 people have reportedly died from Ebola in Liberia alone, and there have been 4,262 confirmed infected cases there. Government offices, including the Executive Mansion, are closed. The Liberian Ministry of Health and Social Welfare is the only government office currently functioning. It is the local authority responsible for eradicating the Ebola virus.
Life is far from normal during the crisis, yet the streets remain choked with heavy traffic. Old vehicles with smoke blowing from their exhausts maneuver around giant potholes and deep puddles, a result of the West African rainy season. Barefoot children in shorts race up to cars at intersections, hawking assorted items such as candy, chewing gum, cream biscuits, plastic bags of water and windshield wiper blades, while everybody seems to ignore traffic laws.
The Ebola virus has hit hard in the New Kru Town section of Monrovia. Burial crews in protective suits are so overwhelmed that bodies of people who have succumbed to Ebola often lie on the ground for long periods of time, even at the doorsteps of Redemption Hospital. The hospital, which is now closed to daily health concerns, is used as a holding and transfer facility for suspected and confirmed Ebola patients. When it is full, those who show up frequently wait outside, lying on the ground or sitting for hours in an ambulance, where they often eventually die. No one can approach or touch the bodies without protective gear. Health professionals say that the Ebola virus is most contagious when the host has died. Subsequently, bodies lie for hours before teams wearing protective suits can retrieve them.
In the capital, Monrovia, those who die from Ebola are cremated. But in the far outer counties, burial is still the only way. Health workers bury the dead inside plastic body bags. They lower the body, using simple strips of white cloth; then, leaning over the grave, a couple feet down, they have no choice but to simply drop the body down the rest of the way into the 6-by-4-by-6 hole — no coffin, no ceremony, no family or friends. The authorities have decreed this method to prevent the virus’s spread through burials.
In West Point, a bustling Monrovia slum with a population of 70,000, an ordinary afternoon can seem like a chaotic dance, with shacks, stalls, shops and houses all indistinguishable from one other. Startlingly, one day I watched from the front seat of our vehicle as people lined up for food handouts from the United Nations World Food Program, body-to-body, blatantly ignoring the call from authorities not to
touch for fear of spreading the Ebola virus from close contact.
Irony is no stranger to West Point. When a Liberian magisterial judge tried to arraign a man and woman accused of grand theft, the man vomited while handcuffed to the woman in the small courtroom. Suddenly, the place was cleared and the couple isolated as an ambulance was called. After spraying down the area and the two accused thieves with chlorine solution, health workers dashed off with them in an ambulance to Redemption Hospital. As the vehicle arrived with its siren blaring outside the treatment facility, the doors opened for the two, who immediately took flight, running down the street, escaping their earlier fate of a Liberian jailhouse.
Monrovia is on the Atlantic Ocean, on Africa’s west coast. During the rainy season, which locals joke lasts six months of the year, the sky is gray, day and night. The nights are pitch-black, leaving visitors to ask, “Where is the moon?”
From high points in the city, I captured magnificent images of the ocean, the postcard-worthy sunset. It’s an image of a city in crisis and moving forward as if things were normal, hoping for dignity.
A 17-year-old boy was in a room for two days before a team of Liberian health workers could retrieve his body.
Courtesy of The Washington Post