Glenna Beckley’s story

I’m in Sierra Leone for two weeks to help document stories of people who have been affected by JSI’s program. 

Abubakar Kemoki with child health charts from WHO

It’s been very interesting thus far: I got out into a community about 3 hours north of Freetown to meet a clinical training officer who is improving the quality of care in remote health facilities by mentoring nurses and midwives to ensure they’re using the tools we’ve given them, like checklists and charts, to perform their jobs effectively. Many were trained years ago and have had little to no refresher training since.

Mental health nurse, Jennifer Duncan

I’ve also spoken with a mental health nurse, Jennifer, at the big national hospital here in Freetown. With the trauma of Ebola, and disasters like the mudslide last August (let alone 10 years of civil war the country is still recovering from), mental health is a huge concern. Until recently there were almost no mental health professionals in-country and now JSI is supporting their training—particularly as it related to Ebola survivors, but really, for anyone who needs it (because the skills are obviously transferable from one trauma to another). Jennifer was lovely and clearly passionate about the work.

Nothing, however, prepared me for Glenna.

Glenna Beckley is an Ebola survivor now working for an advocacy group that JSI supports (with USAID funding—thank goodness they still are able to fund this kind of work!), the Sierra Leone Association of Ebola Survivors. She is someone who has faced so many obstacles in her life, but is now working to help others. Here’s her story as she told it to me, somehow with a smile on her face.

Glenna telling me her story - somehow without tears

My mother was a nurse. She was working with Ebola patients, but started to feel poorly. So she came back home and got an Ebola test. The test came back negative, so we thought she was fine. The next morning she went back to the hospital—not to work, but to get medical attention—but was sent home because there weren’t enough beds there. My sisters and I took care of her. 

My mother died in my arms. I remember I was sitting on her bed, but my back was to her. She sat up and put her head on my shoulder. She then threw up blood over my shoulder into my hands, and as I turned around, she died. Then my elder sister also got sick, and my younger brother. 

Then I had to take my four-year-old daughter to the hospital. They gave her an Ebola test, but it takes 3 days for the results to come back. My daughter died before we even received those results. She died in my arms, and I was sick myself, so I just lay with her in the hospital bed until they took her body away. I couldn’t cry. I just thought I would die myself and it would all be over.

But I did not die. I was in the Ebola Treatment Unit for 9 days. We lost 5 family members and 4 of us survived. When I got home, I was the only one there and it was so painful. I hadn’t cried at all when everyone was dying. But once I got home, I couldn’t sleep; I would cry all night. I didn’t know what to do.

At times I thought it was all a bad dream and that I would soon wake up…

My job helps me cope. Every day I meet people who actually went through tougher times than I did—my story is small compared with theirs. Some women lost everything—their husbands and all their children. So, I take comfort in helping others.

When I asked Glenna for a specific example of someone she has helped (I am here to write it up, after all), she told me about meeting 5 siblings who had all been orphaned because of Ebola. The eldest had come to her office to register as a survivor (survivors get free health services—a program JSI is also involved with). She followed up with the kids, just as they were being thrown out of their house because they couldn’t pay the rent. The younger children were taken in by relatives, but they didn’t want the oldest girl who was 17 and an Ebola survivor. So Glenna brought the girl to live with her. That was two years ago, and the girl is about to graduate from high school. “I don’t know what she’ll do next, but at least I was able to help her a little bit,” Glenna said.

Coming back to the office this afternoon, my colleague Sam (you can read my interview with Sam here) told me that Glenna had gone to a conference in Guinea last year. Attendees were given a generous allowance to cover their costs and all had funds left over. Most spent that money on themselves. Glenna on the other hand bought things for the girl she was taking care of and spent none of it on herself.

It’s just been one of those days when I wonder at the accident of birth, of life—and what people do to keep going in the face of overwhelming sadness…