In Ebola-ravaged Liberia, churches serve as a last gathering place
By Lenny Bernstein
WashingtonPost.com
September 14, 2014
MONROVIA, Liberia — Deep in the New Kru Town slum, a short walk from the Atlantic Ocean, a handful of people in a tiny, dark room on Sunday sought help with the Ebola epidemic the way the faithful have for millennia: by appealing for divine intervention.
Dressed in their brightly colored Sunday best, they prayed and sang, dancing to the beat of a drum and a few gourds wrapped in beads and shaken in unison.
“Other people are sick and in hospitals!” one woman shouted.
“Yes!” the nine or so other congregants, including a couple of small children, responded.
“We are glad to be alive!”
“Yes!”
“God, we thank you for keeping us alive! God, you are great. Amongst all other gods, you are great, oh Lord!”
If the schools were open in this Ebola-ravaged country, the small room would be part of Kongee Konwroh Community School. But even when the education system is functioning, on Sundays it is the humble Christ Deliverance Chapel of the Original Free Will Baptist Mission Church of Liberia and a source of hope for some of the poorest people in one of the poorest countries in the world.
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