‘Our Anne-marie is tough’
EBOLA, COVID A TWIN CHALLENGE FOR AID WORKER IN CONGO
Anne- Marie Connor has an impossible job, but just as impossible would be getting her to tell you that herself. She prefers framing impossibilities as problems, and tackling problems, including seemingly insurmountable ones, is a good part of what makes her tick.
So, how is this for a problem: Connor, a Sarnia, Ont., native, is a humanitarian worker working remotely from a townhouse in Kinshasa, the capital of the Democratic Republic of the Congo ( DRC), a country known for, among other things, political corruption, crushing poverty, high infant mortality rates, an alphabet soup of rebel groups committing atrocities against innocent civilians, measles outbreaks, polio outbreaks and, lately, an Ebola outbreak that has claimed 2,200 lives since August 2018, and was within 48 hours of being declared over when two new cases recently popped up.
If all that misery isn’t enough, Connor, the national director of World Vision’s humanitarian mission in DRC, and her staff of 500, now have COVID-19 to contend with, a calamity she describes as a “crisis within a crisis.”
“It is a lot to wrap your head around,” the 40- year- old says. “We felt we were at least going to put Ebola fully behind us before tackling COVID-19.”
In Canada, the federal government has thrown billions at the pandemic. Money that won’t stop the economic bleeding, or save every job, but cash that can at least mitigate some of the hurt. In DRC, the government, such as it is, is widely distrusted by the public. There isn’t any money to bail people out, while an already fragile health- care system counts 65 ventilators in a country of 80 million, an estimated 80 per cent of whom must exit the home each morning to earn enough to feed their families at night.
In other words, the Congolese aren’t stockpiling food and toilet paper and bingeing on Netflix. They are just barely hanging on; social distancing isn’t an option. In early April, Connor was offered a way out, and invited to jump on a flight home organized by the Canadian Embassy.
But she gave up her seat to someone else.
“Anne-marie is like the captain of a ship,” says her mother, Madeleine, in Sarnia. “She couldn’t abandon ship in the middle of a crisis and leave everybody to fend for themselves. People always ask, aren’t you worried about her? But we don’t fret. Our Anne-marie is tough.”
Connor has two older brothers, Martin and Mathieu, who helped with the toughening process, while her parents, Madeleine and Ian, a doctor, travelled widely with their kids, exposing them to the world beyond Canada. As a teenager, Connor saw Stephen Lewis, the Canadian diplomat and one-time United Nations special envoy for HIV/AIDS in Africa, speak at an event in Sarnia.
“I think it made a lasting impression on her,” Madeleine says.
Connor admits it sounds corny, but she believes in “social justice.” She views the world, carved as it is between “haves and have- nots,” as desperately unfair, which is reason enough for her to want to try to change it. Of course, even tough as nails do- gooders have sleepless nights, and Connor is no exception. Lately the worries have been manifold: What if one of her staff gets sick? What if someone gets robbed? How can she secure enough PPES to keep a 500-person team safe on an NGO budget? What if she gets sick?
Typically, she travels two weeks a month, visiting sites around the country. Now she is under virtual house arrest, working from her dining room table and relying on yoga, an English spaniel named Imbwa — that’s Swahili for “dog” — and a husband, Ryan O’reilly, to keep her company as they attempt to socially distance in a city of 11 million people.
DR C has reported close to 400 cases and a handful of deaths from COVID-19, numbers that were calculated with a limited capacity to test for the virus.
“We are absolutely worried about getting sick,” Connor said.
The initial national crisis, Ebola, kills about half of those who contract it. Those afflicted suffer high fevers, diarrhea and bleeding. The virus is transmitted by bodily fluids, often moving from the sick person to the person caring for them or preparing them for burial, once they are dead.
When Connor travels to Ebola-impacted areas, she washes her hands every “five steps.” To help spread the word on good hand hygiene, she and her team forged relationships with local faith leaders, often among the most trusted members in communities. The problem now is, people aren’t supposed to be gathering, including for church, so how to educate them about the new potential killer in their midst?
One strategy has involved creating a COVID- alert on Whatsapp, the mobile messaging application. Cellphone saturation is high in DRC, even if incomes are not. The alert echoes the directives heard in Canada during the early days of the pandemic. Wash your hands for 20 seconds, and stop shaking hands. As an added cultural adaptation, Congolese are being asked to refrain from kissing one another on the cheek three times, as per custom.
“That message has been incredibly hard to push through,” Connor says.
But she hasn’t stopped trying. It is a race, as she sees it, and if COVID-19 wins the suffering exacted upon a country that has already suffered so much could be, well, awful.
Connor and her husband fly home every August, “like clockwork.” With no fixed address, they flit between family and friends, recharging, reconnecting. Among the things she delights in most is watching the sunset over Lake Huron. When she will see one next, she can’t say.
“We’ve been eyeing our August trip anxiously,” Connor says. “But it is looking less and less likely. If we don’t get home, we’ll miss the sunsets — the best in the world.”
SHE COULDN’T ABANDON SHIP IN THE MIDDLE OF A CRISIS.