On grave decoration day, Liberia feels losses again
With many Ebola victims cremated, dead can’t be honored
MONROVIA, Liberia — In Liberia, they call it Decoration Day, a time of pain, celebration and memory when people visit graveyards to honor their dead, cleaning the graves, whitewashing them or painting them in bright colors.
But Wednesday, the first Decoration Day since the brunt of the recent Ebola epidemic hit Liberia last year, was heartbreaking, not just because of the loss of 4,117 Liberian lives, but also because in most cases there is no grave to decorate.
Cremation, a practice so alien here as to be almost unthinkable, was widely used during the Ebola epidemic, compounding the grief for many families. In Liberian society, death demands a “decent burial” — and a body is required.
Sianneh Beyan, 28, who is jobless, lost her husband, a driver, after he contracted the virus from a passenger he did not know was sick. She then lost her sister, who had helped to care for Beyan’s dying husband.
She had called an ambulance to take her husband to a treatment center. By the time it came, he was dead.
“He died in the house,” said Beyan, who wore a simple black skirt and a shirt with black pinstripes. She wiped away her tears. “I’m angry that they burn[ed] my husband. They should have buried him like they are burying people now. They got my husband to dust. I’m feeling bad that tomorrow I can’t show my children their father’s grave.”
She still hopes to get her husband’s ashes, but the ashes of victims are mingled.
“I have no grave to decorate on this day. Let the government give me my husband’s dust so I can find a place to put it,” the widow said.
In the latest epidemic, which peaked late last year, about 24,000 people were infected in three West African countries and nearly 10,000 died, with neighboring Guinea and Sierra Leone still struggling to contain the virus.
On Christmas Eve, as the virus waned, Liberia began allowing burials for Ebola victims in Monrovia again. More recently, the government declared the release of the country’s last Ebola patient from treatment.
Early in the crisis, suspicion about cremation led people to hide bodies so they could be buried.
Government officials reported that some Liberians bought fake death certificates on the black market, showing a cause of death other than Ebola. That allowed them to take the bodies of loved ones to funeral parlors for burial.
Authorities turned to cremation in Monrovia, Liberia’s capital and largest city, because people were dying by the hundreds each week at the height of the crisis — and the bodies of Ebola victims are so contagious that handling them is extremely dangerous.
Outside Monrovia, at a crematorium near the airport, dozens of bodies were brought each day to be burned.
The ashes of more than 3,000 people cremated there are contained in 19 drums and are destined for burial in a 25-acre site selected as an Ebola memorial by the government.
For many grieving survivors, it hurts deeply to pass Decoration Day without being able to mark a loved one’s death at a graveside.
Johnson Wleh, 32, a trader, went to the newly designated burial site Wednesday, hoping to find the ashes of his brother, who left Wleh his four children to raise.
Wleh looked disheartened, with his face unshaven, his shoulders sagging. He was shocked to learn that his brother’s ashes were mixed with those of others.
“We are not used to this burning body thing,” he said. “I never thought that my brother was going to end up like this.... This disease has made good people to be buried like animals. It has destroyed lives and broken families.”