Going without food for two or three days is “like being in hell”, says Dauda Fullah, 25, who has been left to look after eight children and young adults since his parents died of Ebola.
“It’s been tough. It’s not easy with me because of financial problems, solving all the problems of the family and at the same time hoping to go back to college,” Fullah says. “I have been looking for a job in health for two years now. Even if you are qualified, it is hard to get a job, it’s not easy.”
He is one of about 12,000 young people orphaned by Ebola in Sierra Leone who face the prospect of a life of hardship because they cannot to go to school or get jobs.
Fullah had been earning about $100 a month with the British charity Street Child, who identified him as in need in August 2014 when five members of his family died in an Ebola ward in Kenema. First, his lab technician father, then his stepmother, his grandmother, two-year-old brother and 13-year-old sister.
After becoming a worldwide face of Ebola in October 2014 when seen on British and US television news, the past 12 months have been a struggle emotionally and economically.
“We’ve been trying. Things are not so easy at the moment, even when I was working with Street Child. The kind of burden that I have is very hard, the salary needs to be enough for the whole household,” he says.
When his father died, Fullah inherited his responsibilities, which include feeding out-of-work uncles and cousins as well as his four siblings, Richard, 14, Aminata, 19, Mahawa, 16, Peter, seven, and Umaru, five.
“It is very sad to see young adults having to end their own education, to feed, let alone educate, their younger siblings”
Tom Dannatt, Street Child
He has qualified as a laboratory technician, but in an unforeseen consequence of the Ebola crisis, he has found himself squeezed out of the job market with the government now demanding a degree for work in aid-assisted health initiatives. That would cost him about $2,500 per annum in tuition fees over four years.
“Sometimes I think of selling things at home to turn my situation around, to sell the TV. The hard thing is how can I do such a thing, the younger ones might need them,” he says.
His voice occasionally falters as the memories of last August flood back, but Fullah remains positive. He wants help so that he can support his family and, in turn, Sierra Leone, where the economy is expected to contract by 21.5% in 2015 after 4.6% growth in 2014.
“I want to be a great man and help my family and be of service,” Fullah says.
He recently found one month’s employment with the Irish charity Goal, which is researching long-term side-effects of Ebola including loss of sight. He is working on an eye care project for Ebola survivors affected by uveitis, an inflammation caused by the disease.
“I have dreams of being a scientist and lab technician specialising in haematology and if there is anyone who can help me, they can help Sierra Leone, because I know whatever I learn in college, I will extend that knowledge to the people and be of service to the people,” says Fullah.
Most of those orphaned from Ebola are from poorer backgrounds so Fullah, as the son of a health worker, is exceptional in some ways.
But the financial struggles are similar for all victims of Ebola.
Last October, Zainab Kamara, 21, and her four siblings, aged four to 13, lost both parents to Ebola. She was in shock and not out of quarantine when interviewed by the Guardian, but again hope was not in short supply. She was looking forward to returning to school, where she was studying commerce.
But when schools reopened in the spring, Kamara found it impossible to attend. Not only did she drop out but so did her siblings, consigning a generation of the family to a vicious cycle of illiteracy and poverty.
“I am not feeling fine, I miss my mother and my father. I have nobody,” Kamara says one year on.
Her grief has been compounded by stigmatisation. Although her village of Morambie lost 87 people, the community has not pulled together for their survivors. She lost the house she lived in with her parents because of fear of Ebola and she now feels isolated in the single room she shares with her siblings.
“Nobody visits me because of Ebola,” she says. “They think we have Ebola, they accuse me and the younger ones of having the virus. My family are so lonely all the time.”
The only assistance she currently receives is a monthly bag of rice, beans and oil, from the World Food Programme (WFP).
“It is very sad to see teenagers and young adults having to end their own education, to feed, let alone educate, their younger siblings,” says Tom Dannatt, founder of Street Child. “We think the numbers are in their thousands not hundreds.”
He says families headed by children “are the sharp end of a bigger, wider issue”. Even orphans who might be absorbed into a wider family, are in reality receiving very little support, he says.
One of the issues is the myth of free education promised by the government. State schools may not charge fees, but the cost of uniforms and stationary is prohibitive, even at around $5 a month. Figures show that of the country’s 8,000 early years and primary schools only 1,200 are run by the government. The remainder are private or owned by missions.
When children reach secondary school age they sometimes also hit financial barriers because of corruption.
“Teachers will ask you to pay for school books, pamphlets and ask you to come in on Saturday for extra lessons and if you don’t they will fail you,” explains Moses Kamara, a spokesman for Street Child in Freetown. “My fear is they have reached the stage where schooling becomes very expensive.”
Zainab Kamara has slipped through the net in the panic that engulfed the country last year. When the burial team arrived to take her parents’ corpses away, no one documented the children left behind. Childcare and education were not considered a priority.
Standing beside her mattress, Kamara outlines the cost of education – $11 a week for school fees, an outlay of $4 for the four-year-old’s uniform and $6 for the 12-year-old’s. Then there is stationary and the cost of getting to school, a 45-minutewalk away. A four-year-old, she points out, cannot walk that far and back each day.
Figures from the UN children’s agency, Unicef, show more than 230,000 children were not attending school prior to Ebola and there are now fears that many more are missing out.
“Having around a quarter of children out of school will have a huge impact on their life chances, on their own future children, and on the country as a whole in the coming decades. These are the nurses, doctors, teachers and leaders of tomorrow,” says Geoff Wiffin, head of Unicef in Sierra Leone.
Source: The Gaurdian
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