Perspectives

 Our experiences give us a certain world view of life. I've always felt that part of my childhood was growing up poor. Now that I have seen and felt a different experience, I had to shift my entire world view because I realize I never grew up poor. Despite whatever difficult times my family had with money, we always had access to running water, electricity, sewers, and laundry facilities - whether a machine at home or a laundry mat. I hauled milk in a wagon from a neighbor's house, but never the daily water to wash, drink, and cook with. My friends buy water and haul it into their homes everyday in Accra and all across West Africa.

Image from Science Photo Library

Perspective different from United States

I had an interesting assignment looking for discrimination to religious communities with Covid restrictions. I found some amazing things:

1 "Local sources report that starvations constitutes a bigger and more realistic threat for households than the virus. *   

2. "Not all the population is complying to this measure because masks are too expensive for poor households." *

3. "As the experience in West Africa has shown, it is argued, the active involvement of religious actors in the formulations of public health measures many not only help to provide safe comfort in the midst of a profoundly alienating experience but significantly reduce the spread of the virus." ^  

Why?

Because of the harsh, devastating realities of Eboli a few years ago.

"The cooperation of local religious leaders was identified as critical to sanctioning public health advice and changing burial practices - for instance, when an Imam via radio broadcast permitted burial without washing (Allen et al. 2015). Such cooperation with affected communities and their religious leaders was widely recognized as a key factor in halting the Ebola epidemic. As David Nabarro, UN Special Envoy on Ebola put it,

[t]he local community organizations, neighborhood watch committees, churches, mosques, and other groups, they are really, really important [...] if they are part of the response, if they own the response, then everything is okay. If they are not part of the response, then we get problems (Feig 2015)." ^

I fell into a rabbit hole of information about the Ebola effects and horrible experiences that happened here in West Africa. One source said that in the 30,000 people who contracted Eboli, 10,000 died. People were fearful of putting their relatives in a hospital (if they could find a hospital with a bed) because they would never be seen again and all their belongings were burned. Since just touching a body with Ebola was contagious, strong methods of containment had to be followed. 

Because religion and religious leaders are so important to the people in West Africa, they were the source of light and enlightenment. Scientists and doctors were killed trying to implement health measures until the counsels that included religious leaders to find effective answers were used. Officials came in PPE equipment, took the bodies and burned all their belongs causing great consternation and anger. Including the religious leaders in finding ways of burial without contact was the key.

Ebola was stopped in its tracks and when Covid-19 came along, there were already systems of information, help, and publicity at hand. Most churches voluntarily closed in March of 2020 but many were open again in July and August with safety measures in place. There were some that never shut down at all. They viewed themselves as necessary and vital.

A little different perspective to Covid-19 than happened in the United States.