NYT: An Ebola Orphan’s Plea in Africa: ‘Do You Want Me?’ (must read)

[Omaha Steve]

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/12/14/world/africa/an-ebola-orphans-plea-in-africa-do-you-want-me.html?partner=EXCITE&ei=5043




Sweetie Sweetie, center, with other Ebola orphans at a group home in Sierra Leone. She is seen by neighbors as a potential carrier. Credit Daniel Berehulak for The New York Times

By JEFFREY GETTLEMANDEC. 13, 2014

PORT LOKO, Sierra Leone — Sweetie Sweetie had no choice.

Her father had just died of Ebola. So had her sister. Her mother was vomiting blood and fading fast.

When the ambulance arrived and her mother climbed in, Sweetie Sweetie climbed in, too. Ebola had been like a pox on her entire house, and even though the young girl looked fine, with no symptoms, nobody in her village, even relatives, wanted to take her. With nowhere else to go, she followed her mother all the way into the red zone of an Ebola clinic and spent more than two weeks in a biohazard area where the only other healthy people were wearing moon suits.

As her mother grew sicker, Sweetie Sweetie urged her to take her pills. She tried to feed her. She washed her mother’s soiled clothes, not especially well, but nurses said they were moved by the effort. After all, they think Sweetie Sweetie is only 4. Health care workers did not even know her real name, which is why they called her Sweetie Sweetie.

After her mother died, the young girl stood outside the clinic’s gates looking around with enormous brown eyes. There was no one to pick her up. She was put on the back of a motorbike and taken to a group home, whose bare, dim hallways she now wanders alone. Social workers are trying to find someone to adopt her, and Sweetie Sweetie seems to know she is up for grabs.

FULL story at link.

How to Help

Sweetie Sweetie is in a temporary group home for children who have lost parents to Ebola. The home, in Port Loko, Sierra Leone, is sponsored by ChildFund (https://www.childfund.org/) International, a private aid agency. For donors, the contact is Sheku Gbla, supervisor of the group home, [e-mail]. The telephone number is [phone].

Queries may also be sent to [e-mail].

Unicef is also supporting Ebola orphans. For more on its program, see www.supportunicef.org.

[Quantess]

1. Poor kid!

[Omaha Steve]

2. I really thought...

More people would read this.

[Quantess]

4. Ebola is yesterday's news, dude!

Just kidding, sort of.

[jwirr]

3. I assume that it is pretty hard for any family to adopt any child if they have children of their own

since they are not really wealthy.