We weren't trying to sneak out, never mind that it's hard to be anything resembling stealthy in a convoy of SUVs and vans with hazard lights flashing. But from the group of cars carrying us to the airport at 2am it felt a little like we were sneaking out in the dead of night, through a ghostly Kakata empty of anyone living, haunted by memories of a war barely over and staring another lengthy, terrifying struggle in the face. So many people here are terrified. And they don't have the option of leaving.
It's good that Peace Corps is pulling their volunteers back from Guinea, Sierra Leone, and Liberia. I am sure it's the correct choice, even if I wouldn't have been able to make it on my own - I'm leaving too many important people behind. After we did a final check of our house, our neighbor Maryline asked if all the neighbor women could say a prayer with us. So they held Devotion, putting into God's hands the job of carrying me safely to my family in America, though Peace Corps leaving Liberia has deeply frightening significance for them. I stood in the circle with eyes closed as hymns and prayers rose around me and tears fell down my cheeks, Ma Fata's and Lydia's hands grasped too tightly in mine because that is how it works here: people hold on to each other. Even when they are looking for the strength to let go.
This last week has been one of the most physically and emotionally draining times I can remember in my life. I'm totally exhausted from shock, too-short goodbyes, the hurry-up-and-wait logistics of transporting a large group of people, and the battle to find a balance between looking forward and looking back, a way to hold within myself the conflicting emotions of excitement at seeing my American family and the shame, grief, and devastation I feel at leaving my Liberian family and fellow volunteers. I'm numb from travel and from feelings-overload. I haven't slept in three days. I don't know which way is up. This feels like a dream even while I'm living it. And then I read articles from news sources back home reporting on the facts of the situation, but they sound so strange to me, foreign and distant.
Ebola has been everywhere in the news since American missionaries tested positive for the virus. There has been a lot of coverage this week discussing the numbers of this outbreak - the "unprecedented" death toll and catastrophic consequences, cost-benefit analysis of international aid, 90% fatality of patients, how many Americans have become infected, the chances of Ebola spreading beyond the borders of a few tiny, destitute West African nations. It's said that numbers don't lie, but they can tell an incomplete story. Here are my numbers, some of the things I've seen in this outbreak: There has been Ebola in Liberia for over five months, and the very catchy and informative smash hit single "Ebola in Town (Don't Touch Your Friends)" has been making radio waves for almost as long (no, seriously, it's a great song, go check it out!). Truly selfless and miraculous aid workers have been on the ground running isolation wards and distributing supplies since the very beginning of the outbreak.
In the last week I've seen signs posted, hand-washing stations introduced, and huge efforts to educate and protect the public, which gives me hope that the Peace Corps pull-back really will be temporary. Also in the last week, several incidents have precipitated huge international awareness of the situation and put pressure on the government. Many NGO's and other aid groups are pulling their foreign staff out. People are sick and dying. They are terrified to be dropped back into a crisis when most of them still vividly remember the last war their country fought. The last time there was an announcement on UNMIL radio that Peace Corps was sending their volunteers home was 1990. It took 20 years of fighting and rebuilding to bring us back.
My experience of this outbreak (the email the tears in Sonnie's voice as she told me hell was coming again now that the angels were going back, the way I couldn't speak to say goodbye to my principal because neither of us could believe I was going, the ghost-town of the Kakata market when they closed it on Friday to spray it with bleach and disinfectant) is not the only true story. I watched an amazing TED talk in which Chimamanda Adichie, a Nigerian novelist, discussed how damaging it can be to have a single narrative or perspective shape the story of an event, a group, or an individual. It robs them of their agency and dignity and severely limits everyone else's perception of them. So this is my truth, my story about Ebola. It is only one of many stories. All of them are worth telling. All of them are vitally important. Adichie says that the problem with stereotypes is not that they are untrue, but that they are incomplete. Allowing only one story to be the truth about anything robs people of the power to be more than one thing, to feel more than one thing, to express the complex and dynamic nature of their own identity and experience. And having that story be told by people who aren't even participants in it is even more harmful and demeaning. It's only by sharing many perspectives on an event that some of that power and dignity are returned, that we can "regain a kind of paradise."
My experience of this outbreak has a different setting and characters than anyone else's, has a heartbreaking climax that I couldn't have anticipated, and hasn't ended yet. And just like other experiences, it needs to be shared. I want an ending where I get to meet Lydia's baby soon enough that it won't be scared of me, where I can teach Fatu to bake pineapple upside-down cake, where my students learn how to graph a line. I want to go home and continue the important work I have yet to finish. I want to regain my paradise.
