“You’re from Liberia, so you have a disease”. When Shoana Solomon’s nine-year-old daughter came home from her American school and told her mother what her classmates were saying, Solomon knew there was trouble ahead.
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The next day, Solomon received a phonecall from her sister, who lives in the US.

“Her daughter was in school and sneezed a couple of times. They took her temperature and placed her alone in a room, called my sister and said, given the situation...”

Solomon’s sister was asked to temporarily remove her daughter from school: a girl who has never been to Liberia, and has not had contact with anyone returning from Liberia for two years.

Solomon’s family are not alone. All over the US, Liberians are painfully experiencing what it means to come from a country so closely associated with the current Ebola outbreak. Late last week, a town hall meeting held in Staten Island, New York, brought together Liberians to denounce the stigmatising of their community. The Staten Island neighbourhood of Little Liberia is home to the largest population of Liberians outside Africa.