Contributed photo Jacob Sendolo (center in yellow) in happier times.

For months, news services around the world have issued reports on the Ebola epidemic that has savaged West Africa. Since March, there have been over 17,000 reported cases of Ebola and more than 6,000 deaths in Guinea, Sierra Leone, and Liberia. Liberia, the worse-hit country of the Ebola outbreak, with more than 3,000 deaths, has fought this deadly virus with a severely strained public health infrastructure weakened by 23 years of a brutal dictatorship and civil war. Schools have been closed, food is in short supply, and many people are unemployed due to the crisis. News reports have typically spoken of the toll Ebola has taken on healthcare workers—doctors and nurses who have died valiantly in the line of duty, but they have not been the only victims of this deadly virus. In the last week of November, Jacob Sendolo, principal, teacher and long-term officer in the Liberian affiliate of the IRA, also died from Ebola.  His death will be felt deeply.

 

I met Mr. Sendolo six years ago in 2009 in Monrovia when he was the principal of a school piloting a new literacy program, “Liberia Reads,” developed by our Florida-based non-profit, the Children’s Reading Center (CRC) in partnership with the Liberian YMCA.  Mr. Sendolo, as principal of a YMCA school, jumped at the chance to have several of his primary grade teachers trained in phonics, phonemic awareness, fluency, and comprehension strategies. He attended all of the training his teachers underwent and agreed to limit the size of his classes in the early grades and keep classroom books and instructional materials secure. In 2011, he became a founding member of the Association of Literacy Educators (ALE), the first IRA affiliate in Liberia. In subsequent years, he became an assistant trainer in the Liberia Reads project, participated in ALE sponsored workshops to instruct teachers in other Monrovia and up-country schools in Liberia Reads literacy strategies. He enjoyed showing teachers how reading strategies could also be applied to math and served as one of the presenters at the first Liberian IRA national conference held in July 2014. During this time, Mr. Sendolo was also pursuing his bachelor’s degree at the University of Liberia.

The best proof of Mr. Sendolo’s dedication to his profession was at his own school. His YMCA school is typical of most schools in Liberia with concrete block walls, a zinc roof, and hand-painted blackboards. Like 95% of Liberian schools, it has no electricity or running water. Six years ago when we first visited the school, classroom walls were bare, students did not have reading texts, and teachers had almost no literacy training. But at an unannounced visit by a CRC consultant in November 2013, it was clear a metamorphosis had occurred. Walls were no longer bare, but covered in student work, word walls, ABCs, and phonics blending ladders. Teachers were on task teaching literacy strategies and all primary students had reading texts and were engaged with instruction. Best of all, norm-referenced assessments indicated that the majority of Mr. Sendolo’s students were learning how to read.

Mr. Sendolo died after contracting Ebola at a traditional funeral for a teacher who everyone had been led to believe died of other causes. Two other Liberia Reads teachers at his school were also exposed. His loss brings home how the damage of Ebola will last long after the disease is eradicated in Liberia. Mr. Sendolo touched many lives through his strong work ethic and his dedication to improving literacy levels in Liberian children. He will be sorely missed.

Geri Melosh is longtime member of the IRA and principal of the Children’s Reading Center Charter School in Palatka, FL. She and her husband served as Peace Corps volunteers in Liberia in the ‘70s. She returns to Liberia regularly to help run literacy programs.