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Liberia Cautiously Marks End of Ebola with 4,700 Deaths

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In this photo taken on Friday, May 8, 2015, Mercy Kennedy, left, sits with her caregiver  Martu Weefor, right, after school at her home in Monrovia, Liberia. On the day Mercy Kennedy lost her mother to Ebola, it was hard to imagine a time Liberia would be free of one of the world’s deadliest viruses. It had swept through the 9-year-old’s neighborhood, killing people house by house. Now seven months later, Liberia on Saturday officially marked the end of the epidemic that claimed more than 4,700 lives here, and Mercy is thriving in the care of a family friend not far from where she used to live. (AP Photo/ Abbas Dulleh)

In this photo taken on Friday, May 8, 2015, Mercy Kennedy, left, sits with her caregiver Martu Weefor, right, after school at her home in Monrovia, Liberia. (AP Photo/ Abbas Dulleh)

Jonathan Paye-Layleh and Krista Larson, ASSOCIATED PRESS

 
MONROVIA, Liberia (AP) — On the day Mercy Kennedy lost her mother to Ebola, it was hard to imagine a time when Liberia would be free from one of the world’s deadliest viruses. It had swept through the 9-year-old’s neighborhood, killing people house by house.

Neighbors were so fearful that Mercy, too, might be sick that no one would touch her to comfort her as tears streamed down her face. She had only a tree to lean on as she wept.

Now seven months later, Liberia on Saturday officially marked the end of the epidemic that claimed more than 4,700 lives here, and Mercy is thriving in the care of a family friend not far from where she used to live.

“What we went through here was terrifying,” said Martu Weefor, 39, who is now raising Mercy alongside her three biological children and Mercy’s older brother. “Nobody wanted to pass on our road or have anything to do with us, everybody was afraid of the community. I thank God that Liberia is free from Ebola.”

Saturday marks 42 days since Liberia’s last Ebola case — the benchmark used to declare the outbreak over because it represents two incubation periods of 21 days for new cases to emerge. The World Health Organization on Saturday called the milestone a “monumental achievement for a country that reported the highest number of deaths in the largest, longest, and most complex outbreak since Ebola first emerged in 1976.”

The statistics of loss, though, are enormous in Liberia: 189 health workers dead. Some 3,290 children lost one or both parents to the disease, though most have been placed with other relatives or in foster care.

While praising the international community’s help in getting Liberia to zero cases, Liberian President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf on Saturday criticized the slow initial response to the epidemic in West Africa that cost many lives.

“This Ebola outbreak is a scar on the conscious of the world. For some the pain and grief will take a generation to heal,” she said. “Therefore, let today’s announcement be a call to arms that we will build a better world for those Ebola could not reach … It is the least the memories of our dearly departed deserve.”

Elsewhere in West Africa, new cases were still being reported this week in both Sierra Leone and in Guinea, where five of the new victims were only diagnosed after death. The fact they had never even sought treatment for Ebola means health officials lost critical time to track their relatives and other contacts.

“It’s important to remember the next case is only a canoe ride away across the river or across a forest path, so we still have an element of risk here and we all need to be very conscious of that,” said Sheldon Yett, UNICEF’s Representative in Liberia, who emphasized that the recovery needs also remain enormous.

At the height of the crisis back in August and September, Saturday’s milestone seemed far from reach. Liberia had between 300 and 400 new cases every week. People pushed victims in wheelbarrows down the streets of Monrovia, with only cheap plastic bags to protect their sandaled feet from possible exposure to Ebola. Scores of people too sick to stand waited outside Ebola treatment centers with the hope that enough people had died overnight so there would be beds for them and a chance at life.

The disastrous epidemic in Monrovia and the capitals of Guinea and Sierra Leone marked the first time the Ebola virus had infiltrated major urban areas where it could spread quickly through densely populated, impoverished neighborhoods. The outbreak caused its first deaths in December 2013 but only made headlines in March 2014 in Guinea before soon spreading to Liberia and Sierra Leone.

Worldwide panic heightened in late September when a man from Liberia tested positive for Ebola in the United States while visiting relatives in Texas. The disease also broke out in Senegal, Mali and Nigeria where officials managed to quickly isolate and quash their Ebola cases but the virus became deeply entrenched particularly in Liberia’s capital. Ultimately, social mobilization helped turn the tide.

“Communities here did the right thing: They isolated people who were sick, they reported people who were sick. Every street corner had stations for washing hands, and this made a difference,” Yett said.

Many of the treatment centers built with help from the United States finished construction after the height of the epidemic — some of the tarp and wood constructed facilities will be repurposed but many will be taken down. Communities scarred by the looming threat of death can’t imagine visiting them even months later, even if the clinics never treated a single Ebola case, experts say.

“Even today (when) we hear an ambulance siren, we have to shake a little bit, seeing if this normal or are we facing something again,” Liberia’s president said recently at an event marking the end of an American-built Ebola treatment center for exposed health workers.

There are also concerns about the long-term effects on survivors, including questions about how long the virus remains present in the body. On Friday, WHO updated advice and testing guidelines for male survivors of Ebola because of the “strong possibility” that the virus could be spread through sex months later.

And medical study this week found Ebola inside the eye of a patient months after the virus was gone from his blood. Tears and tissue around the outside of the eye, though, did not. That suggests it poses little public health risk, experts said.

It’s been nearly a year since Korlia Bonarwolo helped care for a co-worker at Redemption Hospital who later died from Ebola. The physician’s assistant had no protective suit and no special gloves.

The 26-year-old ultimately got treatment in the country’s first Ebola treatment center and now leads a network of more than 800 survivors across Liberia. He too was marking Saturday cautiously.

“We should instead be happy in our hearts,” said Bonarwolo, “and pray for the other countries to be freed.”

___

Larson reported from Dakar, Senegal.
Copyright 2015 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

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Activism

Louis Brody, the “Exotic” German

Born M’bebe Mpessa in the German colony of Cameroon, Louis Brody (1892–1951) won over audiences during the early twentieth century as a prominent actor and musician. He appeared in over 30 films and eventually became the highest-paid Black actor within the German filmmaking industry.

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Brody’s ability to survive during the Nazi era was considered “astonishing.” He was able to escape treatment common to non-Germans at that time: deportation, sterilization, mob lynching, and concentration camps.
Brody’s ability to survive during the Nazi era was considered “astonishing.” He was able to escape treatment common to non-Germans at that time: deportation, sterilization, mob lynching, and concentration camps.

Born M’bebe Mpessa in the German colony of Cameroon, Louis Brody (1892–1951) won over audiences during the early twentieth century as a prominent actor and musician. He appeared in over 30 films and eventually became the highest-paid Black actor within the German filmmaking industry.

Brody’s ability to survive during the Nazi era was considered “astonishing.” He was able to escape treatment common to non-Germans at that time: deportation, sterilization, mob lynching, and concentration camps. When the Nazi government denationalized him through the 1935 Reich Citizenship Law, he avoided persecution by acquiring French citizenship.

Throughout his life, Brody fought to improve the social conditions in Germany. He cofound the African Relief Organization (1918) in Hamburg. As spokesman, he decried racial discrimination and the violence and mistreatment of Blacks.

His expressed views and opinions during the fight for racial equality led him to the German Section of the League for Defense of the Negro Race. Brody also protested the propaganda unleashed against French colonial soldiers stationed in the Rhineland after World War I. Still, he needed to support himself.

Brody played parts in several German propaganda films throughout the war period: African chiefs and stereotypical roles such as servants, porters, and sailors. During World War II, he starred in 14 films including two that, according to Brody’s critics, “advanced Nazi propaganda and were inherently anti-Semitic.” Yet Brody was a skilled and versatile actor.

In several films, he impersonated Arabs, Malays, Indians, Moroccans, and Chinese. In fact, his calling card read: “Performer of all exotic roles on the stage and in film.”

While performing as a musician and wrestler, photos of Brody “exuded the energy of exoticism and racism seen in his film career.” According to German publications, Brody “couldn’t simply be an actor, musician, or wrestler; he had to be a Black actor, musician, and wrestler.” His career as an actor therefore faced significant obstacles, specifically with the subsequent rise of Hitler and the Nazi regime.

Little has been recorded about his early life in Cameroon (then Kamerun). He attended the German colonial school in Douala, where he learned to speak German. It is believed that he arrived in Berlin sometime between 1907 and 1914. He reportedly worked at several odd and low-paying jobs before landing an acting role. What motivated him to relocate there remains unknown.

As the German film industry expanded post-war, Brody took on supporting roles, most notably in the 1921 film “The Weary Death.” He also played the villainous Moor in the 1926 colonial film “I Had a Comrade.” By 1930, he had become the most visible Black actor working in German cinema. But the rise of Nazism would curtail his career.

Brody’s career slowed post war. Still, his life of advocacy for Black Germans and fame in cinema paved the way for other Blacks to gather acclaim within German culture.

Read more about Black Germans during the Third Reich in “Other Germans: Black Germans and the Politics of Race, Gender, and Memory in the Third Reich,” by Tina M. Campt.

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Government

VP Harris Unveils $1 Billion African Investment During Historic Continent Visit

Vice President Kamala Harris’ historic trip to Africa continued with the launch of global initiatives on the economic empowerment of women, totaling more than $1 Billion. America’s first Black and female vice president spoke fervently during the trip about how “immensely powerful and moving,” the visit to the Motherland was. She further was moved while visiting Ghana’s Cape Coast Castle, where the vice president reflected on the painful horrors of where heartless slave owners captured their prey.

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Harris and President Joe Biden have made outreach to Africa an important initiative of the administration. In addition to Ghana, the vice president visited Tanzania and Zambia.

By Stacy M. Brown
NNPA Newswire Senior National Correspondent
@StacyBrownMedia

Vice President Kamala Harris’ historic trip to Africa continued with the launch of global initiatives on the economic empowerment of women, totaling more than $1 Billion.

America’s first Black and female vice president spoke fervently during the trip about how “immensely powerful and moving,” the visit to the Motherland was.

She further was moved while visiting Ghana’s Cape Coast Castle, where the vice president reflected on the painful horrors of where heartless slave owners captured their prey.

“The horror of what happened here must always be remembered,” Harris stated. “It cannot be denied. It must be taught. History must be learned.”

Harris and President Joe Biden have made outreach to Africa an important initiative of the administration.

In addition to Ghana, the vice president visited Tanzania and Zambia.

In each country, Harris touted investments that would bring economic and gender equity to Africa.

The vice president convened a roundtable with several African women business owners where the discussion centered on how America and private-sector businesses could form a partnership with African nations that would advance gender equality.

“Promoting gender equity and equality is a cornerstone of U.S. foreign policy in Africa and around the world,” administration officials said in a Fact Sheet.

“Advancing the economic status of women and girls is not only a matter of human rights, justice, and fairness—it is also a strategic imperative that reduces poverty and promotes sustainable economic growth, increases access to education, improves health outcomes, advances political stability, and fosters democracy.”

The digital gender gap undermines women’s full participation in the 21st century economy, officials asserted.

Globally, approximately 260 million more men than women were using the internet in 2022—and this gap has increased by 20 million in the last three years.

The gap is especially acute across Africa, where International Telecommunication Union data show that sixty-six percent of women do not use the internet.

To address this disparity, Harris pledged that the administration would continue to work with other governments, private sector, foundations, and multilateral organizations to help close the digital divide, improve meaningful access to equitable digital finance and other online services, and address social norms that prevent women from participating fully in the digital economy.

More broadly, the Biden-Harris administration would continue to promote the economic empowerment of women, the vice president stated.

In support of those goals, Harris announced a series of investments and initiatives that total $1 billion.

She also made a series of announcements to foster women’s political, economic, and social inclusion in Africa, building upon initiatives launched at the U.S.-Africa Leaders’ Summit in December 2022, including the Digital Transformation with Africa (DTA) Initiative.

Harris made clear that education remains key.

She hammered home that point as a message to Republican governors who continue to ban history in school curriculums.

“All these stories must be told in a way that we take from this place — the pain we all feel, the anguish that reeks from this place,” Harris reflected as she traversed Cape Coast Castle.

“And we then carry the knowledge that we have may gained here toward the work that we do in lifting up all people, in recognizing the struggles of all people, of fighting for, as the walls of this place talk about, justice and freedom for all people, human rights for all people.”

She continued:

“So, that’s what I take from being here.

“The descendants of the people who walked through that door were strong people, proud people, people of deep faith; people who loved their families, their traditions, their culture, and carried that innate being with them through all of these periods; went on to fight for civil rights, fight for justice in the United States of America and around the world.

“And all of us, regardless of your background, have benefited from their struggle and their fight for freedom and for justice.”

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Art

South African Play Explores Impact of Historic Xhosa Prophetess Nongqawuse

Navdeep Jassal, has been traveling in South Africa for the last five months and recently had the opportunity to review a play in Johannesburg. Presented by Africa Creations Production Company, the play reveals the nature of African indigenous spirituality. “The Rise and Fall of the African Gospel: Nongqawuse” was created, written and directed by Mbongeni Moroke who was inspired by the historic events of 1856-7 and the miseducation that followed.

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Nongqawuse. Wikipedia image and Tiyo Soga. Wikipedia image
Nongqawuse. Wikipedia image and Tiyo Soga. Wikipedia image

By Navdeep Jassal
Post News Group Contributor

Navdeep Jassal, has been traveling in South Africa for the last five months and recently had the opportunity to review a play in Johannesburg. Presented by Africa Creations Production Company, the play reveals the nature of African indigenous spirituality.

“The Rise and Fall of the African Gospel: Nongqawuse” was created, written and directed by Mbongeni Moroke who was inspired by the historic events of 1856-7 and the miseducation that followed.

Though performed in the Xhosa language, with a few short excerpts in English for non-Xhosa speakers, I had the opportunity to speak with Moroke — who portrayed Mhlakaza, a sangoma (traditional healer) and father to Nongqawuse. This article is gleaned from our conversations.

The play is about two well-known historical figures for the Xhosa: Their young maiden prophetess, Nongqawuse, and South Africa’s first Black Christian Presbyterian minister, Tiyo Soga.

For background’s sake, it must be understood that according to African indigenous spirituality, cows are slaughtered to summon the ancestors’ protection. In 1856, cattle represented the primary measure of wealth among the Xhosa, and the word to the king from prophetess Nongqawuse that cattle should be killed to hide the wealth from the arriving Christian missionaries was shocking.

The message came in a time when the Xhosa nations’ strength and trust in its leadership had been eroding after a great king had been assassinated by Christian missionaries in the early 1800s following his betrayal by his own counsel and other Xhosa leaders.

That “negative aura persisted around the kings,” making for a continual threat to Xhosa unity, Moroke said.

And unity is key: According to South African spirituality, God the Creator cannot intervene in a divided nation; therefore, after the slaughter, the rising of the ancestors foreseen by Nongqawuse did not happen in the way it was expected.

Enter Tiyo Soga, the son of a chief counselor to the king who had turned away from Xhosa tradition and followed in his Christian mother’s footsteps. He eventually traveled to Scotland to study religion and theology and returned as a Christian evangelist.

By then, Xhosa society was divided like never before. The Christian missions became the sanctuary and refuge for the hordes of hungry, famished people — their grain silos empty, their cattle no more, and their land useless.

While 16-year-old Nongqawuse was labeled a false prophet and scapegoated, Soga and lesser-known Black individuals spread the new religion by white Christian missionaries throughout Xhosa land.

Moroke’s inspiration is a righteous one: The spirit of God the Creator existed before the Bible in

Africa and Moroke speaks from and uses the African indigenous spiritual lens in his work as playwright, director, actor, and musician, demonstrating that spirituality in ancient Africa was powerful.

Through entertainment, Moroke strives to re-educate Black South Africans on the value of their own history, valor and spirituality.

The opening scene takes place on Robben Island more than 100 years before Nelson Rolihlahla Mandela was a political prisoner there. Three broken Xhosa kings shed tears as white Christian missionaries locked them up, thus destroying their ability to provide spiritual guidance to their tribesmen and women.

In his signature style, the first scene becomes the final scene as well, but for nearly two hours, Moroke takes the audience through the events that led to the kings’ capture.

“There are three things which control the world: economics, politics and religion,” said Moroke. “When a nation is ruling well within these three sectors, that nation becomes the most powerful nation in the world. So, white Christian missionaries took charge in Africa in these three sectors and used religion through the Bible to destroy and rule us.

“Every generation has its mandate and the last generation had politics as its mandate,” Moroke said. “As someone representing the current generation, the mandate is to revisit indigenous and spiritual history and go back to the core problems which led to apartheid. I am trying to answer a question of this generation in terms of what went wrong, and why are we here after all the struggles and voting in 1994.”

Although I could not piece it all together due to language barriers and lack of context, as I sat in the audience, I knew what I was watching was very moving and powerful.

There were some audience members crying because the play resonated with their backgrounds as African people. And, for others, the play resonated in terms of family whether it was family disfunction or affection.

Two Xhosa people said that when the ‘king’ was coming onto the stage, they had a vision of that actual king coming. Another sangoma said she learned many things from Moroke’s character about the discipline of a sangoma.

For more information direct message Africa Creations on social media: Facebook Africa-Creations; Instagram @africa_creations; Twitter @Afric_Creations; or email africacreationsmail@gmail.com and watch YouTube videos @africacreations8130.

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