While family fights Ebola, Hamilton community leader again feels torn

Every night, Leo Johnson's sister, Yassah Lavelah, calls from Paynesville, Liberia, where she works as a nurse. 

Every night, she unloads the stories of her day working at the country's largest Ebola treatment centre, the ELWA, or Eternal Love Winning Africa, hospital.

The conversations are bleak. Sometimes she needs to debrief the body count for that day. Or the times they had to turn away infected patients for lack of space.

'I'm pretty much torn apart right now. I feel kind of guilty that I can be here, sitting in Canada, when somebody from my family could be gone tomorrow.'- Leo Johnson

Leo Johnson's sister and mother work in healthcare in Liberia amid a massive Ebola outbreak. (Facebook)

Johnson, her big brother here in Hamilton, listens. 

"I'm pretty much torn apart right now," Johnson said. "I feel kind of guilty that i can be here, sitting in Canada, when somebody from my family could be gone tomorrow." 

The turmoil and suffering has motivated him to act, and he is planning a local fundraiser to purchase medical supplies for hospitals there. But he realizes an earlier effort to improve life there – helping build the country's first library, has to wait in the midst of such a crisis.

Johnson lives in Hamilton, and it's not the first time he's felt torn between his work as a community leader here and his family and life in Liberia.

Johnson fled war-torn Liberia as a teenager and lived in refugee camps for years not knowing whether his family was still alive. He and his mother finally learned each other was still alive in 2007. Canada denied his mother's application to come to Canada for a two-month stay, a decision that prompted a frustrated Johnson to consider going back to Liberia last year.  

Once again, his family is in grave danger. His mother, Viola Lavelah, also works as a nurse for maternity patients. Her patient population is multiplying as the hospitals focus on Ebola. And her patients may or may not be contagious -- the initial symptoms of the virus make it difficult to detect.

"She's overwhelmed," Johnson said. "The danger there is you don't know who has Ebola." 

His sister left a program she was planning to start this fall at the University of Notre-Dame to go to Liberia to help. 

"If I stay here, I will be here just in my physical body, but my mind will be there," he said she told him.

'Nobody's going to work, nobody's going to school'

The lethal outbreak affects more than just Johnson's family. He's been raising money here for a library project in Liberia. His partners there are supposed to be meeting now, surveying the land, conducting soil samples and preparing blueprints for the library.

But Paynesville is the "epicentre of the virus right now" in Liberia. The whole country is shut down. It's not exactly the right time to call for a status update on the project.

"Nobody's going to work, nobody's going to school, public gatherings are forbidden," Johnson said. "All activities are halted." 

Johnson said he's not sure how many of the people who've been working on this project might have personally contracted the virus. He's already worried about the ripple effects from a country essentially shutting down for weeks and months.

The potential for a traumatic event to derail the project has always been there, Johnson said. "From the beginning we identified something like this as a challenge," he said. "God forbid the day something happens."

Now that it's here, Johnson is trying to think into the future. 

"Yes, the crisis is here. Hopefully, we will get over this at some point," he said. "The real problem is going to be the devastation that will be left." 

How Canadians can help

Health professionals in Liberia, including doctors at the treatment centre where Johnson's sister works,  have sent lists of protective equipment and supplies they need. Johnson and other local Liberians, organized through the local Key-Action Network nonprofit, are organizing an awareness march and benefit dinner on Oct. 18, hoping to raise $30,000 to purchase the supplies and ship them. 

Johnson said he's skeptical that big international nonprofits are able to effect a sustainable turnaround in the outbreak. Without empowering cultural leaders like elders and chiefs to try to change attitudes and practices around caring for the dead, the disease will continue to spread, he said. 

'My dad shakes too many people's hands'

Johnson also fears how the outbreak will damage Liberia's reputation. Especially for his six-year-old son, who's lived his whole life in Canada.

Some friends of Johnson's were over recently, asking about a planned trip to Liberia in November that likely won't happen now. 

"He got into the conversation and said 'I'm not allowing my dad to go back to Ebola,'" Johnson said. "'My dad shakes too many people's hands.'"

Johnson said it breaks his heart to hear his son, who visited his grandma and family in Liberia when he was 2, talking about the country as a "forbidden place." 

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