埃博拉陰影未褪 利比里亞學校陸續復課

MONROVIA, Liberia — A couple of dozen students sat quietly inside the C.D.B. King Elementary School’s dim and dusty auditorium on their first morning back. Despite the stuffy heat, many of the children wore long sleeves and trousers that covered as much skin as possible.

利比里亞蒙羅維亞——幾十名學生靜靜地坐着在查爾斯金小學(C.D.B. King Elementary School)落滿塵土的昏暗禮堂裏面，這是他們復課的第一天早晨。儘管天氣悶熱，很多孩子仍然穿着長衣長褲，儘可能多地遮蓋皮膚。

A second grader wore pink knit mittens that muffled the sound of his clapping when the teachers introduced themselves. As everyone rose to sing Liberia’s national anthem, he saluted with his left hand, still sheathed in the mitten.

一名二年級學生戴着粉色的針織連指手套，因此老師們做自我介紹的時候，他鼓掌的聲音悶悶的。大家起立唱利比里亞國歌時，他用左手行禮，但仍戴着手套。

“Ebola destroyed and devastated our land,” Venoria Crayton, the vice principal, told her pupils. “It brought us sadness, it brought us pain. Some of your neighbors died, right? Some of your neighbors’ children died, right? But you are here.”

“埃博拉讓我們的土地滿是瘡痍，”副校長維諾利亞·克雷頓(Venoria Crayton)對學生們說。“給我們帶來了悲傷，帶來了痛苦。一些鄰居病逝了，對嗎？鄰居家的一些孩子病逝了，對嗎？但是你活了下來。”

About eight months after governments in the region closed schools to stop the spread of Ebola, uniformed and backpack-carrying schoolchildren have returned to the streets of Monrovia, the capital, perhaps the most visible sign of the epidemic’s ebb.

八個月前，當地政府爲了阻止埃博拉病毒蔓延，關閉了學校。現在，身穿制服、揹着書包的學生們，重新出現在了首都蒙羅維亞街頭。這或許是疫情高峯期已過的最明顯跡象。

But Liberia’s on-again, off-again back-to-school campaign is also a measure of the long shadow cast by Ebola, a disease that affected almost every facet of society in the hardest-hit countries, Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guinea.

但是，利比里亞的復課行動時斷時續，也體現了埃博拉產生的長期影響。在疫情最嚴重的國家利比里亞、塞拉利昂和幾內亞，社會的方方面面幾乎都受到了影響。

Though Ebola cases have all but disappeared in Liberia, with the Health Ministry saying Wednesday that the last patient in treatment had tested negative for the virus, lingering fear and a depressed economy have dampened the turnout at schools. Many have yet to reopen, having failed to meet the minimum requirements put in place to prevent transmission of the virus.

利比里亞衛生部本週三表示，最後一個接受治療的病人，病毒檢測呈陰性。然而，即便該國已經沒有埃博拉病例，揮之不去的恐懼感和經濟不景氣的狀況，也影響了學校的出勤率。因爲無法滿足防止埃博拉病毒傳播的最低要求，很多學校尚未復課。

Many of those that have reopened are struggling. Just as Liberia’s weak health care system collapsed as Ebola began raging across the country, many people here worry that the nation’s schools may be ill equipped to handle even the tail end of the epidemic.

很多已經復課的學校處境也很艱難。就像在埃博拉疫情剛開始肆虐利比里亞時，該國脆弱的衛生保健系統崩潰了一樣，這裏有很多人擔心，即便疫情已經接近尾聲，該國的學校仍然缺乏足夠的資源給予應對。

C.D.B. King, despite being in the center of the capital, lacks electricity and running water, and has only a few toilet stalls for a student population that numbered 1,000 before the outbreak.

查爾斯金小學儘管處於首都的中心地帶，但仍缺乏電力和自來水，並且只有很少幾個廁位供學生使用。疫情爆發前，該校有1000名學生。

Now, the school is trying to overcome those longstanding problems — and the ravages of a disease that has killed more than 9,600 people in the region.

現在，學校正在努力克服這些長期存在的問題——埃博拉在該地區已經導致逾9600人喪生。

Fanning herself with a sheet of paper, Ms. Crayton, the vice principal, rattled off a list of don’ts: Don’t play rough. Don’t exchange pencils. Don’t share food. Don’t spit. Don’t urinate in the courtyard. Don’t hide illness in the family.

副校長克雷頓一邊用一張紙給自己扇風，一邊列舉注意事項：不要粗野打鬧，不要互相交換鉛筆，不要分享食物，不要隨地吐痰，不要在院子裏小便，家中有人生病不要隱瞞。

“If you want to live,” she told the students, “don’t lie about Ebola.”

“如果你想活下去，”她告訴學生，“就不要在埃博拉的問題上撒謊。”

By the end of the first day of class, only about 30 students had showed up.

復課第一天到放學前，只來了大約30名學生。

“People are still afraid, so they are careful with their kids,” said Augustus Seongbae, the principal. “Many of them are watching what happens to the kids who come first.”

“大家還是很擔心，所以他們在自己孩子的事情上很小心，”奧古斯·斯恩貝(Augustus Seongbae)校長說。“很多人都在觀望，想看看那些一早復課的孩子會怎樣。”

Fierce disagreement over whether to resume classes forced the government to change the original start date of Feb. 2 several times before finally deciding to reopen schools on a rolling basis starting on Feb. 16. The government said that with Ebola waning, many children were already playing in their communities, and that potential teaching time in the classroom was being frittered away.

對於是否應該復課，人們產生了激烈的分歧，因此政府原本定於2月2日復課的計劃被迫修改了好幾次，最後決定讓各學校從2月16日起分批次復課。政府表示，隨着埃博拉疫情緩解，很多孩子已經開始在自己的社區裏玩耍，本來可以花在課堂上的教學時間被白白浪費了。

But some lawmakers, education officials and parents argued that children should not go back to school until Liberia is declared free of Ebola, or 42 days after the last case of the disease — which experts say could be months away.

但一些議員、教育官員和家長認爲，孩子們不應該重返校園，除非利比里亞宣佈埃博拉疫情結束，而那應該是在最後一個病例治癒42天之後——專家表示，可能還需要幾個月才能實現。

Tolbert Nyenswah, the Liberian deputy health minister in charge of the Ebola response, said Wednesday that there had been no new confirmed cases of the disease in the country for 12 days, but that officials were still tracking 102 people for possible exposure to the virus.

本週三，負責應對埃博拉疫情的利比里亞衛生部副部長托爾伯特·耶斯瓦(Tolbert Nyenswah)表示，該國已經連續12天沒有新增確診病例，但官員們仍在觀察102個可能接觸過病毒的人。

”We are not out of the woods yet,” he said.

“我們尚未擺脫危險，”他說。

Miatta Fahnbulleh, the mother of the boy with the pink mittens, James Nyema, 9, used to send him to a private school. But because she had been unemployed for months from her job as a kindergarten teacher, she had chosen to send him to C.D.B. King, a public school. Public schools are free, though parents must pay for uniforms and other supplies.

那個戴粉色手套的男孩叫詹姆斯·耶馬(James Nyema)，今年9歲。他的母親米阿塔·法布萊(Miatta Fahnbulleh)以前把他送到私立學校讀書。但是好幾個月前，她丟掉了幼兒園老師的工作，因此決定讓兒子入讀公立的查爾斯金小學。公立學校是免費的，但家長需要繳納制服和其他用品的費用。

She walked her son, known as J.C. because his middle name is Christian, to school in the morning with a blue plastic bag containing his lunch and a water bottle.

她早上步行送兒子去上學時，提着一個藍色塑料袋，裏面裝着孩子的午餐和一瓶水。因爲兒子的中間名是克里斯蒂安(Christian)，大家管他叫JC。

“I told him when he was going, ‘Don’t deal with anybody, don’t drink anybody’s water, don’t touch anybody,’” she said, laughing, as she came to pick up her son after lunch.

她在午飯後接兒子時笑着說，“我告訴他，上學的時候‘不要和任何人來往，不要喝任何人的水，不要碰任何人。’”

She had dressed him in trousers and long sleeves, which he usually wore only during the rainy season — not now, the driest and hottest time of the year. She had bought the mittens at a nearby market, where they had become available during the height of the epidemic last year.

她讓兒子穿上了長褲和長袖上衣，通常他只在雨季這麼穿，但現在不是雨季，而是一年中最幹最熱的時候。連指手套是在附近的集市上買的。這種手套是去年疫情最嚴重時開始賣的。

“What can I do?” she said, laughing again.

她說，“我能怎麼辦呢？”說着，再次笑了起來。

At C.D.B. King, Ms. Crayton arrived at 6:30 a.m. on the second day of class to try to make the school safe against Ebola. No one at the school had received any direct training, so she consulted an instruction pamphlet she had received along with materials from international donors — infrared thermometers, buckets, chlorine, rubber boots and gloves, brushes and soap.

復課的第二天，克雷頓早晨6時30分抵達查爾斯金小學，試圖加強學校預防埃博拉的措施。學校裏沒有人接受過直接培訓，所以她參考了接收國際捐助物資時拿到的指導手冊，那些物資包括紅外體溫計、水桶、氯、橡膠靴子、橡膠手套、刷子和肥皂。

She chased away local petty traders who had stored their goods overnight in the schoolyard. “This is a government school,” she told one woman, who scampered away with her wares on her head.

她趕走了那些把貨物存放在學校操場裏的當地小商販。“這是政府辦的學校，”她告訴一個婦女，後者把貨物頂在頭上迅速離開了。

The school’s lone security guard — who ran at least two side businesses, including renting out the schoolyard for storage and operating a prepaid cellphone card business just outside the school entrance — was put in charge of taking incoming students’ temperature. Hand-washing stations, filled with chlorine and water drawn from the well in the schoolyard, were set up at the entrances to the school and the toilets.

學校唯一的保安至少還兼做着其他兩份副業，包括把校內的操場出租給別人存放東西，以及經營校門外不遠處的一個預付費手機卡攤位。現在由他負責給進校的學生量體溫。學校入口和廁所之間有一些洗手位，裝滿了氯和水。水是從校內操場上的那口井裏打上來的。

A teacher rang a cowbell to call the morning assembly. After the Lord’s Prayer, Ms. Crayton warned her students, “Ebola is still in town, so we just want you to be very, very, very careful.’’

教師用一個牛鈴通知大家早集合。唸誦主禱文後，克雷頓告誡學生們說，“城裏仍有埃博拉病毒，因此你們需要非常、非常、非常小心。”

Over the remainder of the first week, some of the pieces began falling into place at C.D.B. King. Liberia’s red, white and blue flag was hoisted up in the schoolyard. The children seemed to relax, and J.C. even wore shorts by the end of the week. By Friday, about 60 students had showed up.

在復課第一週接下來的時間裏，一些東西開始陸續就位。利比里亞紅白藍三色組成的國旗懸掛在校園裏。孩子們似乎放鬆了下來，JC甚至在第一週結束時穿上了短褲。到週五，來上課的學生達到了60名左右。

The cowbell set the children free. Unable to find an aunt who was supposed to accompany him, J.C. began walking home, lingering in front of stores with toys. Back home, his mother laughed when asked about her son’s short pants and sleeves, with the mittens nowhere in sight.

鈴聲響起，孩子們放學了。本來說好由阿姨來接JC，但JC沒有看到阿姨，就自己開始往家走，中途他在出售玩具的店鋪前磨蹭了一陣。回到家裏，當被問及JC的短褲短袖時，他母親笑起來，那雙手套完全不見了蹤影。

“We’re afraid-o,” she said. “Ebola is still here.”

“我們很害怕的哦，”她說。“這裏還有埃博拉。”