What makes someone risk their lives for a total stranger? In Sierra Leone, the answer for many is an unwavering commitment to community and country.
Kadiatu Kamara is a young woman from Freetown who volunteers her time teaching people about how to protect themselves from Ebola. In a country with over 10,000 confirmed, probable and suspected cases, Sierra Leone is showing signs of hope, but is still struggling to bring the outbreak under control. Volunteers like Kamara are proving to be a vital force in that fight.
“We talk to people about Ebola – like when someone is dead that they shouldn’t wash them,” she says. “We want this disease to pass off.”
Kamara goes into homes to explain prevention and protection, but stays far back from people, avoiding any contact. With no salary, why does she do it?
“It’s my community. It’s my country,” she says. “It’s dedication.”
Augustine Turay works with the Sierra Leone Red Cross Society, going into communities around Freetown to collect suspected Ebola victims and conduct safe and dignified burials – one of the cornerstones of the mandate of the United Nations Mission for Ebola Emergency Response (UNMEER).
“Perhaps we go to four or five houses per day. We wait for the Command Centre to call us with more alerts,” he explains. “We are volunteers. I know it’s very dangerous but we do it because we want to help our country and we love our society as well.”
After Turay’s team collects the body, they bring it to Abdul Rahman Parker, Manager of the King Tom Cemetery in Freetown. Despite being in the job for seven years, Parker says nothing could have prepared him for the current crisis.
“The numbers vary from day to day. There are times we bury up to 70 people a day,” says Parker. “You stay here for the next one hour and there is every possibility that you will shed tears.”
For Parker, however, the number of corpses he sees every day is not even the hardest part. For him, it is the people close to him who turn away out of fear.
“Many Sierra Leoneans actually don’t appreciate us. We are highly stigmatized. As long as you work for the Ebola team, people stigmatize you - your friends, your family, your wife. You just have to take your inner power, your inner strength to just keep you going. But it’s painful. Even your own children they move away from you. Even though it’s spread through contact, they are afraid.”
Parker’s resolve to keep stay in the fight, however, is steady. Why?
“We do it for two things,” he says. “God wants us to be here. Secondly, we are saving our nation.”