I believe art can heal in powerful ways when used
affectively.
However, how important is art when a society’s basic needs
have not been met. By basic we mean eating and drinking clean water every day. While
researching this morning I came across an interactive slide show about the
village of Bardeku, in northeast Liberia, on the National Public Radio website.
Effectively, it explains how the Ebola outbreak in Bardeku may have been eradicated,
but the community is traumatized. Some families have been left with one,
or no parent at all, to care for children survivors. Farms have been neglected.
There are many hungry children without parents. Even single parents struggle
to feed their own children. Some members of the community intially shunned the
survivors out of fear of contracting Ebola.
How did the outbreak spread so fast? The people of Bardeku
are Muslim. It is important to carry out rituals such as washing the deceased
before carrying the body to a burial. Many people gathered to bathe the first
Ebola victim. All the bathers contracted the virus. Over one hundred and fifty
people died in Bardeku from contracting Ebola.
In the writing this blog I hope to encourage readers to
inform themselves of the devastation that still exists from the Ebola outbreak in west Africa.
As a country we were fortunate enough to avoid that fate. How important is art
therapy to a village such as Bardeku? Not very important. After basic needs
have been met it could be.
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