[URBAN NOTE] "In Little Liberia, expats nervously eye those returning from Africa to NYC"

[rfmcdonald]

Amel Ahmed's Al Jazeera America feature about how Little Liberia, an immigrant enclave on New York City's Staten Island, is coping with the Ebola epidemic makes for disturbing reading. Fear is everywhere.

In Little Liberia, some 4,500 miles from where Ebola has ravaged parts of West Africa, the disease is still taking a toll. As fear and rumors spread around this enclave in New York’s Staten Island — home to the largest concentration of Liberians outside Africa — so, too, have stories of lost relatives and fracturing communities.

“I told my mom to stay away from that lady,” said Assie Jalloh, gesturing toward an apartment building near where she was picking up groceries on Targee Street in the Clifton area of the borough.

The object of her concern was a woman who recently returned from West Africa, said Jalloh, a nurse and a Sierra Leonean expat. She favors a mandatory 21-day isolation period for all travelers arriving from the affected countries.

In Little Liberia, Jalloh is not alone in her concern. Many Liberian-Americans share her fears. Momo Fully, a father of four, lost his cousin to Ebola in August. He worries the disease, which has killed more than 3,000 people in West Africa, could take hold in the United States.

“People go back and forth all the time. There’s always the possibly of Ebola coming to America and spreading,” he said.

[. . .]

“This is the sad reality. If my own brother came from Africa, I wouldn’t be comfortable meeting him," Fully said.

He faces another burden. Since the death of his cousin, he and his wife have been providing financial help for the man’s wife and children. “We are all they have now. We have to support them,” he said.