For some students going to school is a chore, but not for Alfreda and Success, two school girls getting ready to go back to school on Monday (March 2).
They’ve been at home for over seven months, as Ebola killed many Liberians, and caused schools to shut down in the fight to stop spreading the infection.
Alfreda and Success started their preparations early, as they wanted everything to be ready for their return.
“I am very excited and I want to tell the government thanks for opening school. At least we are going to learn. And I am asking the government that, while we are in school I pray that they will provide all the necessary things that we will be able to use on campus so we can prevent ourselves from contracting Ebola,” said Alfreda Davids, a teenager from Monrovia.
Some schools started reopening in Liberia a month ago, but those schools that weren’t ready got a month reprieve.
The country has lost more than 3,800 people to the disease which decimated Liberia’s economy of diamond mining and crops like coffee and cocoa.
At its peak last summer, Ebola patients were collapsing and sometimes dying outside overflowing public hospitals in the capital but there are now just a handful of cases nation-wide.
Schools were used as Ebola testing or treatment centers, and in the meantime students stayed at home, for their own protection.
“Sitting at home for a good seven months was very boring. Every morning you wake up, do your house work and have nothing else to do. You sit, the sun comes up and pass by, evening falls, night reaches, and it goes on, so it was kind of boring and I was really hoping that we can go back to school and finally God have answer our prayer,” Success Golay said, as excited as her friend Alfreda, to be going back.
Every school will have hand-washing and disinfecting stations, as students will be briefed to avoid touching as much as possible. Temperature controls will also be put in place at start of class.
But most of all, students are mainly excited about the learning.
“I am expecting new things when I get back to school, for one fact, I am entering senior high and will be expecting Chemistry, Physics which of course I haven’t done them before so it will really be strange for me. And more over the teachers will be running with the academy year because we sit too long so they will really run to catch up with time,” Davids said.
(Reuters)
