Meet The World's Bravest Undertakers - Liberia's Ebola Burial Squad

In calmer times in Liberia, before the fear of Ebola became as feverish as the onset of the disease itself, Cecilia Johnson’s funeral could have been a dignified affair.

 

 

 

But when she died of an unspecified illness on Thursday, her family in St Paul's Bridge, a slum district of the capital, Monrovia, ignored government edicts to hand her body over for cremation.

Instead, fearing the prospect of being quarantined themselves if they reported it, they sneaked it to the cemetery in neighbouring Tyre Shop Community for burial the following morning.

The problem was that nobody wanted it there. Halfway through the burial, they were confronted by an angry crowd of Tyre Shop residents, demanding to know why a potentially-infected corpse was going in "their" cemetery. A scuffle ensued, and eight hours later, Ms Johnson's corpse lay parked by the roadside in a rusting, mud-spattered wheelbarrow, covered by a piece of carpet and still seeking a final resting place.

For the two distressed relatives who remained by her side, standing drenched in a tropical storm, it was a case of Not in My Backyard, and Not in My Graveyard either.




Source: Telegraph