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In Kenema, next to the place where Red Cross Ebola Treatment Centre located, is an Ebola cemetery. This is the final resting place of around 265 people who were killed by Ebola. Kadiatu Bangura was treated in the Red Cross Ebola Treatment Centre in September 2014. “They took very good care of me. I’m missing them so much. I will never forget them.” During the outbreak, many remote communities were hard to reach due to the bad condition of jungle roads. Motorbikes and boats were used to deliver help and, if nothing else worked, volunteers went by foot. Mariama Manneh was the first woman to join Red Cross burial teams. She did it because she wanted to maintain the dignity of the women who had died of Ebola. No one asked her to join, it was her own decision. She says that her family were terrified when she told them about her plan. She had to move out of her home and her little daughter was taken away from her. She felt stigmatized and lonely. Other members of the burial team were the only ones she could spend time with. Eric does not like it when people call him “burial boy”. He would like to leave the stigma and traumas of Ebola behind and move forward. He is now going through a reskilling education and after that he hopes to be able to work as a tailor. He would also love to become a musician, a rap artist. He says that he always sings when he sews. Sometimes he makes lyrics out of what he experienced during the Ebola epidemic.


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Ebola Aftermath / Sierra Leone 2016 / for IFRC and FRC

© Saara Mansikkamäki 2020