Monrovia, Liberia: The bodies had been removed from the classrooms. The blood and vomit of Ebola patients had been wiped away.
Now, Tete Johnson needed to decide whether she was ready to send her fourth-grade son to a school that had only recently been used as an Ebola isolation centre.
The government promised to disinfect it. Administrators pledged it would be safe. But like other parents in the sprawling West Point slum, Johnson had seen Nathaniel V. Massaquoi Elementary School at the epidemic’s peak, when it seemed as if the whole building was filled with the disease.
“What if my son drops something on the ground and eats it?” she said. “He could be infected.”
As the Ebola epidemic fades here, with fewer than 10 new cases reported per week, Liberia is beginning the massive challenge of resuming normal life. Many of its public institutions have been shuttered since June. Its economy has been paralysed. More than 3,600 Liberians have died of the disease.
Those who endured the crisis are now grappling with a new set of dilemmas: whether to sleep in the rooms where relatives died, to have babies in hospitals where Ebola patients were treated. In a country where containing Ebola meant persuading people to fear it, the public may remain traumatised for some time to come.
The problem isn’t limited to Liberia. In Sierra Leone, many schools and other public buildings were also converted into Ebola centres. In Guinea, another neighbouring country hit by the outbreak, few children turned up when classes resumed recently. There, schools weren’t even used as Ebola centers. But parents worried about sending their kids into crowded rooms where disease might spread.
Liberia’s schools were due to open on Monday. But, in a sign of the worries surrounding the facilities, authorities on Friday pushed off the start of classes for two more weeks.
Massaquoi Elementary, like the other schools, has become a test of the nation’s capacity to move on.
In August, with the country suffering from a shortage of hospital beds, health officials filled Massaquoi with flimsy mattresses and converted it into a shelter for suspected Ebola victims. The patients were given basic medical care and were tested for the disease. Many died before they could be sent to a proper treatment centre.
Residents grew furious as ambulances showed up at the school, delivering the sick and retrieving the deceased. One night, the neighbours looted the building, throwing away mattresses and driving out 17 patients, who were eventually brought back to the facility.
It became known as ‘the Ebola school’.
“To use a school for Ebola — nobody could be at peace with that,” said M. Glen Johnson, the principal, who is no relation to Tete Johnson. “It will be a serious work to get the students back.”
Although the bodily fluids of Ebola patients are highly infectious, scientists say the virus can’t survive in the open for more than 21 days. But that hasn’t quelled concern in West Point, where many residents now imagine viral matter as an invisible, deadly layer atop everything their children might touch.
“The scars are deep,” said Sheldon Yett, the country director for Unicef.
Liberian authorities are planning to set fire to furniture in once-contaminated facilities to reassure the public. The government has also tried to win over parents with regular radio announcements about the safety of the schools.
“All schools have to get equipped with chlorine water, thermometers, and all have to put in place all measures recommended by the Health Ministry for the prevention of the virus,” says one message, suggesting the schools would indeed make such preparations.
Massaquoi is the only public elementary and middle school in West Point, a massive slum of about 75,000 near the centre of Monrovia. Many people assumed the school would never reopen. Some said it would have to be burnt down. But in early January, a few weeks after the last patient left the one-story schoolhouse, the government announced that it would admit students once again.
“They say they can clean the place, but I’m not satisfied,” said Augustin Kumeh, the father of a fourth-grader. “We saw the ambulances. We saw the bodies leaving in plastic bags.”
Kumeh stood outside of his home, in one of the narrow, unpaved alleys that run between shacks of cinder block and sheet metal in West Point. The slum is one of Liberia’s poorest neighbourhoods. Massaquoi was its heart.
“It’s our only public school,” said Nelly Cooper, the president of a non-profit group called West Point Women for Health and Development. “We have to make the best of what we have.”
Recently, the school’s registrar sat behind a wooden desk outside Massaquoi, next to the parking lot. Parents and students trickled through the front gate to register for classes. Many wore the ubiquitous T-shirts distributed by local and international Ebola response groups.
“Eliminate Ebola from West Point and Liberia,” said one mother’s shirt.
The turnout was proof that at least some parents were willing to trust the government to clean up the school, even though the Ministry of Public Works still had not completed the task.
