Ink Out Loud: Where tears fall like rain
Ink Out Loud
I guess it rains down in Africa — tears — tens of thousands of children’s tears.
Every child in the Liberian village of Joeblow is motherless. Every single child.
UNICEF estimates as many as 10,000 children lost at least one parent to Ebola in Guinea, Sierra Leone and Liberia.
According to an article this week in the Huffington Post, a few grandmothers are caring for all of Joeblow’s children while the village men are working in the fields.
The article stated, “The tragedy in the village of Joeblow began at a traditional funeral for a prominent woman. As is customary, all of the village women bathed in the water used to clean the deceased woman,” ‘Street Child Founder Tom Dannatt explained to HuffPost Live’s Alyona Minkovski on Tuesday.’ “They got Ebola, one by one … and literally the entire [population of] young women of that village were wiped out.”
To add to the devastating trauma of being left motherless, the children’s possessions were burned during the disinfection process.
The word “Ebola” rapidly faded in the U.S. vocabulary as the wheels of the newscycle propelled forward. But motherless children without a single trinket or memento surely won’t forget and neither should we.
“It is such a mysterious place, the land of tears.” ― Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
Mandy Feder is the managing editor of the Tahoe Daily Tribune. She can be reached at mfeder@tahoedailytribune.com or 530-542-8006.
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