They Helped Erase Ebola in Liberia. Now Liberia Is Erasing Them.
Credit Samuel Aranda for The New York Times
MARSHALL,
Liberia — It was around 3 in the afternoon when Sherdrick Koffa
spotted, in neatly written script, the name on the body bag that he was
preparing to set ablaze.
It
was the name of a classmate. The two grew up together, had played
together as children. Now, only a few days into his job burning the Ebola dead, work that had already estranged Mr. Koffa from his family, he was expected to burn the body of his friend.
He
did it. First he sprayed the body with oil to help it catch fire. Then
he carefully laid the body, along with several others, upon the kindling
on the altar of the crematory. He stacked more kindling on top.
Finally, as the kindling was lit with a torch, Mr. Koffa stripped off
his protective gear and stalked off the field, away from the acrid smell
of burning flesh.
He
did not stop walking until he got home, and once there, he opened first
one bottle, then two, of cane juice, the highly potent Liberian
equivalent of moonshine. He drank all night, until he passed out.
Fifteen months later, Mr. Koffa is still drinking heavily.
It
has been more than a year since this deeply religious country embraced
one of its biggest taboos — cremating bodies — to rein in a rampaging Ebola pandemic. In that time, the majority of Liberians have started to move on.
But such is not the case for some 30 young men who were called upon during the height of the crisis last year.
As
bodies were piling up in the streets and global health officials were
warning that the country’s ages-old traditions for funerals and burials
were spreading the disease, these men did what few Liberians had done
before: set fire to the dead. And for four months they did so
repeatedly, burning close to 2,000 bodies.
Villagers
protested near the site, hurling abuse and epithets at the men they
called “those Ebola burners them.” The government deployed police
officers and soldiers along the dirt road to the crematory site in a
field to keep angry locals from the men.
Their
families shunned them as they pursued their grim work. One young man —
Matthew Harmon — who lived not far from the crematory site here, said
his mother refused to see him, telling him never to call again.
“My ma said, ‘You burning body?’ Then I’nt want see you no more around me,” Mr. Harmon said.
The
ostracism darkened what was already an abysmal time for the men, so
much so that now, a full year after the country has ceased the
cremations, their lives remain virtually destroyed.
Their
nights are spent with alcohol or drugs — habits they said they acquired
to get through the mass burnings. One burner, William Togbah, says no
night goes by when he does not dream of seared flesh. Several of the
men, shunted aside by friends and family, now live together, sharing the
same room in a house not far from the crematory site.
“I’m not in a good life now,” Mr. Togbah said.
For the most part, Liberia
has come out of its long national nightmare. Ebola cases flare up
sporadically, with three new infections reported just last month, and
experts warn that the disease may continue to pop up for years to come.
But children are back in school,
crowding sidewalks in their uniforms as they head home in the
afternoon. Football games have resumed, with a packed Antoinette Tubman
Stadium recently hosting 10,000 people to watch their beloved Lone Star
national team take on, and lose to, the African giants from Ivory Coast.
Church pews have filled again, with people grasping one another’s hands
and trading hugs during the “peace be with you” part of services, a
stark change from the no-touching rule many adopted here as the epidemic raged.
Yet
the men continue to be tormented by what they saw and did. Initially,
they used an incinerator to burn the bodies, usually during the night.
But that method left human bones to greet them when they returned in the
morning, grisly remnants of the vibrant people who had lived their
lives in this West African country.
Mr.
Togbah and several others kept using the word “erase,” as in, they
erased the traces of the Ebola dead for their country. In turn, their
country has now erased these young men.
Many
Liberians still blame them for burning the dead. While they received
certificates of appreciation from the Health Ministry, they were not
part of the recognition ceremony held by the president to thank health
care workers for their efforts during the outbreak, an omission the
young men took to heart.
“We missed some people,” President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf
said in an interview, adding that there were too many people to thank,
and that she hoped to hold another event recognizing these men.
Still, they are largely shunned by Liberian society.
To understand how cremation is viewed by Liberians, one must first consider that this is a country with a national holiday — Decoration Day
— meant solely for people to go and clean the graves of their loved
ones. Every year on Decoration Day, Liberians troop to cemeteries and
burial plots across the country with brooms, bleach, soap and water.
Wakes
can go on for days. People with little or no money to spare will beg
and borrow to lay their dead in coffins made of black mahogany wood.
They will build marble tombstones, and buy entire plots of land just to
bury those they love. Many Liberians believe that if the dead are not
properly buried, they will come back to haunt the living.
People
here wash bodies and dress them to make sure they are ushered into the
afterlife in style. A dead body for many Liberians is, in a sense, still
a living thing, to be nurtured, looked after and lovingly sent onward.
“It is just not in our culture to burn people,” said Sampson Sayway, who helped organize the group of men to burn the bodies.
So
when a line of government cars showed up in Marshall last year at the
Indian-run field that is the country’s sole crematory — previously used
only for burning dead Indian nationals — Mr. Sayway, who lives a stone’s
throw away, immediately went out to investigate. It was early August
2014, at the height of the epidemic, and Ms. Johnson Sirleaf’s besieged
government had made a last-minute decision to take the advice of global
health experts who said the bodies of the Ebola dead — the most
infectious carriers of the disease — had to be burned.
Liberian
officials knew the public would revolt. The government stationed police
officers and soldiers along the route to keep villagers away.
Government officials negotiated with Mr. Sayway over what the workers
would be paid, around $250 a week. In a poor country like Liberia, that
was enough money to get roughly 30 young men for the job.
But
“it was no easy thing,” said Fredrick Roberts, one of the burners,
recalling that first night when the trucks came with the first 12
bodies. Terrified of getting too close to the Ebola dead, everyone
scattered into the bush at first, as someone in the truck yelled out via
a megaphone to keep a distance.
“I
had no clue what I was getting into,” said Ciata Bishop, who was tasked
by the president with setting up the crematory operation.
That
first night, the young men wore blue cloth jumpers and plastic gloves,
but government officials later gave them protective clothing, gloves and
boots. Day after day, night after night, the trucks came with the
bodies. The burners unloaded them, sprayed them with oil and piled them
on an altar.
“It
smelled very bad,” Mr. Koffa said. “Like meat, except different.” His
voice caught and he stopped talking, overcome. He and the other burners
had gathered near the crematory field. They are never far away from it
now. The place they hated so much has become a home, of sorts. Nowhere
else will accept them.
“They would bring us 30, 60, 100 bodies a day,” Mr. Koffa said.
Because
the incinerator was unable to turn the bones to ash, the men switched
to burning bodies on pyres set upon two altars in the field. It was more
time-consuming, but at least at the end there were only ashes to deal
with.
One
day, the trucks delivered 137 bodies. “It took two days and a half,”
said Burdgess Willie, another burner. “It smelled so bad, we kept having
to go away and then come back.”
Sometimes
there were explosions, from the combustion of the oil, body bags and
wood. The noise terrified villagers, further adding to their anger at
the burners and the process.
Mr.
Roberts’s landlord put him out of his rented room, and he moved in with
Mr. Harmon, the burner whose mother had shunned him. Soon other young
men, turned out of their homes, were sharing the small room, too.
The
men took to drinking and drugs to get through the nights. Government
officials sent them extra bottles of cane juice, they said.
“When you see 50, 70, 80 bodies like that every day, that the only way you can make it,” Mr. Willie said.
Then
suddenly, just like that, it was over. In December, under intense
public pressure and with the number of Ebola deaths declining, the
government announced that it was ending cremations. A new 25-acre parcel
had been secured, government officials said, to bury the Ebola dead.
For the 30 young men who carried out the task of burning more than 2,000
Ebola dead, the ordeal was over.
Except it wasn’t. “People still mock at us,” Mr. Roberts said. “When they see us, they say ‘that’s Ebola burner them, oh.’ ”
Through
the ordeal, the young men said they thought they would get government
scholarships when it was all over. They thought they would be hailed as
heroes, that people would apologize for shunning them. They are still
waiting.
Mr.
Roberts said that a few days ago, almost a year since the government
ended the cremations, he tried to get into a taxi. One of the passengers
spotted him and quickly turned to the driver. “He said, ‘this man
worked in the fence, that Ebola burner, oh,’ ” Mr. Roberts recalled.
The response came quickly.
“Get down from the car,” the taxi driver insisted.
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