MONTSERRADO,
LIBERIA—
Huddled together in the bedroom of their mud-brick home in
rural Liberia, Marthaline Sweet's children stare at her hungrily as she picks
up her 1-month-old baby.
Sweet, an Ebola survivor and mother of five, chokes back
tears as she recalls contemplating an abortion after the virus killed her
husband -- leaving her alone to fend for their children.
"We don't have a good home, we have no food and we must
beg other people for help," Sweet said, gazing at the railroad that runs
past her village in Liberia's central Grand Bassa County. "We are really
suffering – we are slowly dying," said the 39-year-old, gently rocking her
baby girl back and forth.Sweet is one of thousands of women in Liberia mourning the
loss of their loved ones to the world's worst Ebola outbreak, which has
infected 28,000 people and killed 11,300 in Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone
since December 2013.
Hardest-hit nation
Liberia, the hardest-hit nation with 4,800 deaths, was
declared Ebola-free for a third time last month. As the West African country begins to recover from the
crisis, many women like Sweet are struggling to face a future without their
husbands or fathers – the main breadwinners in their families. About half of Liberia's 6,000 Ebola survivors are women.
Besides financial hardships, many must also endure rejection from their
friends, families and communities. Survivor and social worker Vivian Kekula dropped out of
university and stopped going to work because her peers and colleagues refused
to talk to her after she caught the virus. "People stopped drawing water from our well, and didn't
let their children come near me or my house," Kekula said.
Training for women
Recognizing the need to rebuild the Ebola-stricken lives of
women across Liberia, a host of nongovernmental groups have launched programs
to provide vocational training and grants. "It is not sufficient to only supply Ebola survivors
with food and aid," said Abel Thomas of the Forum for African Women
Educationalists (FAWE). "We want these women to have skills that they can
survive on for the rest of their lives." Women in Liberia tend to work in agriculture, and have
traditionally been expected to collect crops and care for animals, said Jafar
Eqbal from the Liberian office of BRAC, the world's largest non-governmental
development organization.
Yet more and more women have branched out in the wake of the
Ebola epidemic to take on other activities - from rearing animals to selling
livestock at markets, he said. "We are getting an increasing number of
success stories ... many women have transformed from farmers to
entrepreneurs." Other groups like FAWE are training women who survived or
were widowed by Ebola in skills like pastry and soap-making.
"Before I had nothing, but now I make soap and sell it
at the market," said Ebola survivor Fatu Knuckles, 32, who lost nine
relatives to the virus, including her father and brothers.
Sexual violence
In addition to stigma, abuse and loss of income, the threat
of violence and rape also hangs over women in Liberia, a country with one of
the world's highest rates of sexual violence, women's rights advocates say.Liberian President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf last month said the
nation must enact laws to protect women and girls from violence. "Regrettably, the inhumanity of rape is still being perpetrated ... this
wickedness must be brought to an end," Sirleaf said in her annual state of
the nation address. Rape is the most frequently reported crime in Liberia, and
one in four women and girls have been raped by a stranger, according to a 2013
study by the Overseas Development Institute think-tank.
There was a rise in rape, early marriages and teenage pregnancies
at the height of the Ebola outbreak, and women and girls – especially widows
and orphans – are now even more vulnerable to gender-based violence than
before, activists say.
"Prevention and response services have been affected
and poverty is increasing sexual violence, exploitation and abuse," said
Catherine Klirodotakou from Womankind Worldwide.
Pacing around her home's makeshift kitchen, the cawing and
chirping of birds audible through the smoke-stained tarpaulin roof, Sweet is
forlorn as she talks about her family's future."We are not receiving the kind of help people say we
are getting from the government or local and international NGOs," she
said, tightly gripping the shoulders of 9-year-old Mercy. "All we can do
is try our best to survive."
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