Wilmington Friends School prioritizes the creation of global connections. Through exchange programs, service trips, and clubs, Friends students strive to become exceptional global citizens. We also embrace opportunities to view world events through the prism of these connections. A recent interview with Lower School teacher, Sia Willie, casts perspective on the news of the Ebola crisis in Africa by sharing her own insight as a Liberian-born member of the Friends community.

Q: What prompted your family’s hasty escape from Liberia? 

Mrs. Willie: “There was a war that started in Liberia and my parents worked for the government. It really became unsafe. We went to school with the president’s kids and the president was the target, so it was definitely time for us to leave.” At twelve years old, Willie was faced with the plan for the children to travel ahead to Guinea to stay with their grandmother. “It was very scary, because I had been to other parts of Africa and my grandmother lived with us when we were younger so we were very close, but leaving and knowing I was leaving my parents in a war zone and going to a country that spoke French when I didn’t know as much French as I’d like . . . I just wanted to be able to survive, especially traveling with my two younger brothers who were eight and four at the time.”

Q: How did your parent get out of Liberia and meet up with you? 

Mrs. Willie: “I remember being in Guinea, behind the house, and the security guard saying, ‘Your mother’s here’. We went out to see her, and we all asked, ‘Where’s Daddy?’, and she said, ‘We couldn’t find him’. We were like, ‘What do you mean you didn’t find him?? You need to find him and bring him back here,’ but she just replied, ‘I couldn’t find him’. I remember thinking, ‘What does that mean?’ We had heard stories of people being killed, so I was wondering if something happened to him. Where we lived there were soldiers’ barracks not too far, so I was wondering what in the world happened to my father.” Eventually, they received word that her father was bound for Guyana by boat when the boat sank, and soon after her father had found his way to his relatives’ home in Minnesota. What she remembers most of their family reunion after the year of separation was the extreme cold of her first day in New York. “I was wearing white and purple polka dot shorts and a shirt, and it was in the middle of winter. I just remember thinking, ‘it is so cold’, and my uncle – we met him in New York – put his jacket over me and I kept thinking ‘it’s just so cold.’ No one told me it would be so cold!”

Q: What inspired you to become a teacher?

Mrs. Willie: “ I just feel like teaching is running through my veins. I even think of my grandmother right now in Liberia, and she is looking for French books to teach kids French, because they can’t go to school amidst all the craziness that is going on.”

Q: What is it like to see your relatives who still live in Liberia, especially amidst the ebola crisis?

Mrs. Willie: “First, we’re very social people who love to embrace each other, so instead of the hugs and five thousand kisses we usually give each other, now we do foot taps. I have some family members that are within the quarantined area, so they don’t have access to food. Some marketplaces are closed, so it’s hard to get the supplies that they need. There are grocery stories which are few and far between and those prices are high, so bleach may not be the typical few dollars, instead it may be ten or twenty dollars. So everyone’s being affected. Schools are closed throughout Libera right now.”

We then discussed the precautions that her relatives take to protect themselves from the disease. “The first thing is just making sure everyone stays sanitary. My aunt mentioned that she does not greet her family members. She goes straight to the bathroom and takes her clothes off in the shower. She sanitizes herself, takes a bath, they stay away from each other for a few hours, then she rejoins. So those are a few precautions they are trying to take. If they do have a gathering, my cousin was actually saying they will wipe down their drink bottles with sanitizer. A lot of people aren’t shopping at market places, so they are getting their food from supermarkets which is a little on the expensive side, so that is affecting things too.”

Q: In what ways do people in Liberia view the ebola crisis differently than the international community? 

Sia Willie: “It’s tricky, because when Ebola first broke out, people were wondering if Liberia was just crying because they wanted financial help. ‘Is this real?’ And then there were people who were thinking ‘you are poisoning us so you can get assistance.’ So you had all these people with their conspiracy theories. My uncle was telling me that they heard about it really early on but they thought, ‘Oh, it’s all the way in the villages right now so it will never reach us in the city.’ So it was devastating when they realized how much and how rapidly it was spreading. My cousin who is actually leaving today to go back, he’s been here for three months, said it hit him when our uncle, Samuel Brisbane, who was the chief medical doctor at JFK Hospital, died. His friend said, ‘listen, you’ve got the means to go to America. You’ve got to go and tell our story. Somebody’s gotta survive.’ So he came and he’s been here for three months and he wants to go back and help. . . . I can’t even wrap my head around it. Even though we’ve been hearing stories about it and talking to family members and sending money to them to make sure they’re getting care, it’s still really hard for me to wrap my head around it.”

Q: What are ways you think Wilmington Friends students should understand Liberia as we continue our efforts to be good global citizens?

Sia Willie: “The first thing you need in order to be an effective global citizen is to know yourself, so when you reach out to join or explore the rest of the world and engage in different things, you are grounded in who you are and you know where you stand. Know the lens that you see the world through, so you’re ready to receive it back. My grandmother worked with the World Health Organization, so we traveled a lot around Africa and by being grounded in ‘I’m Liberian, and this is who I am!’,  going around to other people, I didn’t feel ashamed, and even though my country has struggled so much, I am proud of who I am. Even here it’s like, ‘Yeah, I’m a Liberian living in America’, but I’m excited about me, and I’m not going to deny who I am, but I want to learn about other people, and I want my own children to learn about other people, and I want them to celebrate other people. It’s important to explore other cultures by finding the similarities, the things that brings us together, because the bottom line is that we are people. We all have our needs and our wants. We all have our things that guide us and our things that inspire us. I think the last part is just being open and respecting. Even if you don’t understand why people do certain things, being open to other cultures and beliefs is the most important.”