As Liberia’s Ebola crisis eases, children begin returning to school – slowly

A couple of dozen students sat quietly inside the CDB King Elementary School’s dim and dusty auditorium on their first morning back. Despite the heat, many of the children wore long sleeves and trousers that covered as much skin as possible.

A second-grader wore pink knit mittens that muffled the sound of his clapping when the teachers introduced themselves. As everyone rose to sing Liberia’s national anthem, he saluted with his left hand, still sheathed in the mitten.

"Ebola destroyed and devastated our land," Venoria Crayton, the vice-principal, told her pupils. "It brought us sadness, it brought us pain. Some of your neighbours died, right? Some of your neighbours' children died, right? But you are here."

About eight months after governments in the region closed schools to stop the spread of Ebola, uniformed schoolchildren have returned to the streets of Monrovia, the capital, perhaps the most visible sign of the epidemic’s ebb.

But Liberia's on-again, off-again back- to-school campaign is also a measure of the long shadow cast by Ebola, a disease that affected almost every aspect of society in the hardest-hit countries – Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guinea.

Lingering fears

Though cases have all but disappeared in Liberia, with the health ministry saying on Wednesday that the last patient in treatment had tested negative, lingering fear and a depressed economy have dampened the turnout at schools. Many have yet to reopen, having failed to meet the minimum requirements to prevent transmission.

And many of those that have reopened are struggling. Liberia’s weak health care system collapsed as Ebola began raging across the country, and many here worry that the nation’s schools are ill-equipped to handle even the tail end of the epidemic.

CDB King, despite being in the centre of the capital, lacks electricity and running water, and has only a few toilet stalls for a student population that numbered 1,000 before the outbreak. Now the school is trying to overcome those longtime problems – and the ravages of a disease that killed more than 9,600 people in the region.

Fanning herself with a sheet of paper, Crayton rattled off a list of don’ts: Don’t play rough. Don’t exchange pencils. Don’t share food. Don’t spit. Don’t urinate in the courtyard. Don’t hide illness in the family.

“If you want to live,” she told the students, “don’t lie about Ebola.”

Only about 30 students showed up for the first day of class. “People are still afraid, so they are careful with their kids,” said principal Augustus Seongbae. “Many of them are watching what happens to the kids who come first.”

Fierce disagreement over whether to resume classes forced the government to change the original start date several times before finally deciding to reopen schools on a rolling basis beginning on February 16th. With Ebola waning, the government said, children were back outside playing, so potential teaching time was being frittered away.

Some lawmakers, education officials and parents argue that children should not go back to school until Liberia is declared free of Ebola, 42 days after the last case of the disease – which experts say could be months away.

Still tracking

Tolbert Nyenswah, the Liberian deputy health minister in charge of the Ebola response, said on Wednesday that there had been no new confirmed cases of the disease in the country for 12 days, but that officials were still tracking 102 people for possible exposure. “We are not out of the woods yet,” he said.

Even as Ebola wanes, the country and its schools face countless other challenges. Maryland County, in eastern Liberia, is suffering from an outbreak of whooping cough, affecting about 200 children, just as schools are set to reopen there.

Many parents have complained that because of Ebola’s chilling effect on the economy, they needed more time to gather the resources to send their children to school.

Miatta Fahnbulleh, the mother of the boy with the pink mittens, James Nyema (9), used to send him to a private school. But because she had been unemployed for months from her job as a kindergarten teacher, she had to send him to CDB King, a public school. Public schools are free, though parents must pay for uniforms and other supplies.

Fahnbulleh walked her son, known as JC, to school with a blue plastic bag containing his lunch and a water bottle.

“I told him when he was going, ‘Don’t deal with anybody, don’t drink anybody’s water, don’t touch anybody,’” she said, laughing, as she came to pick up her son after lunch.

She had dressed him in trousers and long sleeves, which he usually wore only during the rainy season. She had bought the mittens during the height of the epidemic last year.

“What can I do?” she said, laughing again.

Liberia’s 14-year civil war, which ended in 2003, destroyed schools and left a generation that is less educated than older ones. Since the end of the war, Liberia has focused on expanding access to education; 1.2 million Liberians were in school before Ebola, out of a population of 4.3 million.

But CDB King and many other public schools suffer from lack of resources and crumbling infrastructure. Teachers are often poorly trained and unmotivated.

Most Liberians prefer enrolling their children in private schools. But with many of them now reporting a drop in enrolment because families can’t afford the fees, parents are expected to register their children at already strained public schools in the weeks and months ahead.

At CDB King, vice-principal Crayton arrived at 6.30am on the second day of class to try to make the school safe against Ebola. She consulted an instruction pamphlet she had received along with materials from international donors – infrared thermometers, buckets, chlorine, rubber boots and gloves, brushes and soap.

The school’s lone security guard was put in charge of taking incoming students’ temperature. Handwashing stations, filled with chlorine and water drawn from the well in the schoolyard, were set up at the entrances to the school and the toilets.

Warning to students

A teacher rang a cowbell to call the morning assembly. After the Lord’s Prayer, Crayton warned her students, “Ebola is still in town, so we just want you to be very, very, very careful.’’

The first student to show up that morning, and most mornings that week, was JC, with his pink mittens. Born in a United Nations refugee camp in Ghana, where his mother stayed for several years, JC now lived 15 minutes away from the school, sharing a room with his mother and younger sister.

During the epidemic, JC’s mother never let him outside the home. A creative boy who often talked to himself, JC did pirouettes and seemed to be performing plays in his mind. He had no problem keeping himself occupied, his mother said.

But even JC was getting restless and was eager to be back in school, though perhaps not on the third morning of the first week when he and two classmates were called into the vice-principal’s office. The three boys had drunk from JC’s water bottle, and a girl in the classroom had immediately told on them.

“I threatened to send them home,” Crayton said. “But they begged. They got on the floor. ‘You can beat us,’ they said, ‘but don’t send us home.’”

Over the remainder of the first week, some of the pieces began falling into place at CDB King. Liberia’s red, white and blue flag was hoisted up in the schoolyard. The children seemed to relax, and JC even wore shorts by the end of the week. By Friday, about 60 students had showed up.

The cowbell set the children free. Unable to find an aunt who was supposed to accompany him, JC began walking home, lingering in front of stores with toys.

Back home, his mother laughed when asked about her son’s short pants and sleeves, with the mittens nowhere in sight.

“We’re afraid-o,” she said. “Ebola is still here.” – (New York Times service)