Correction: This story has been updated to correct an inaccurate assertion that

Josephine Dolley worked for a month without pay in an Ebola education program
overseen by the aid group Mercy Corps. Dolley now acknowIedges that she left the job
after six days; the humanitarian organization says she never returned to seek
compensation. The article also failed to seek and include fuller information from Mercy
Corps and its Liberian partner on salaries. Mercy Corps says its partner organization in
Monrovia offered Dolley positions paying $50 per month and $130 per month, rather
than $25 and $100, as Dolley said. Mercy Corps says the local partner also paid Dolley
$25 for transportation. A video that ran with the story, and a photo caption, have been
amended to reflect the changes.
In MONROVIA, Liberia
The disease had left her with almost nothing, but when she heard that the Americans
were hiring, Josephine Dolley pulled out her best blue jeans.
She let her long braided hair down. She put on a freshly ironed maroon blouse instead
of the stained cotton shirt she wore in the slum. And the hope of New Kru Town a
31-year-old woman who was just two semesters from a college degree set out
through this vast shantytown in search of that rarest of prizes in todays Liberia.
A job.
A year after the World Health Organization declared an Ebola outbreak in West Africa,
it is fading. But the disease has cut a deep gash through neighborhoods such as this one
in Monrovia. More than 4,200 Liberians are dead. The economy is barely sputtering
back to life following months in which panicked investors fled and residents deserted
fields and factories, fearing the insidious disease.
Nine months ago, Dolley was making $720 a month as a music instructor and secretary,
well above the median income. It was enough to pay her tuition and to buy an acre of
land near the beach to build a house.
She had a path laid out for herself, and she had given that path a name: the Score of
Life.

Before Ebola struck, Dolley was

scoring well. She had two children
and a kind, broad-shouldered
husband named Joshua. She was an
icon in New Kru Town, a member of
the countrys striving postwar
generation, so successful and selfpossessed
that
the
whole
neighborhood started calling her
Mommy when she was in her 20s.
Then the illness erupted. It swept
through the home where Dolley
lived with her extended family. They
died one after the other. Her
husband. Her two young sons. The
22-year-old neighbor she had taken
in, Emmanuel. Every single person
died 29 relatives in all. Everyone
except her.
No one else went through what Josephine went through, said George Caulde, one of
her neighbors.
Now, Dolley was walking into a small church where an American aid group was
welcoming potential employees. Paper posters of Jesus hung on the bright blue walls.
Dolley beamed with remembered confidence as she settled into a plastic chair near the
back of the room.
She had heard that Mercy Corps was paying people to carry out some kind of public
survey. The job would last only a few months, but it was a reliable salary.
Well see how far this goes, she whispered.

The six children Josephine Dolley took in all orphans because of Ebola play with others
outside their house in Monrovia. Dolley lost 29 relatives, including her husband and children,
to the disease.

Work had always given Dolley not only money but a sense of purpose. Now she could
feel herself falling apart.
Just a few days earlier, she sat under a mango tree next to her old house, staring at her
cellphone. It had been three months and 13 days since Emmanuel died. She knew the
date because she sent herself a text message after his body was carried away.
Eman died Saturday 24th. Wednesday at 2 in d morning.
On this warm January evening, she read the text message again, as though trying to
conjure Emmanuel from the few lines she had typed as a kind of obituary. But where he
and her two boys had once played, there were now six other children. Dolley had
brought them back from the Ebola treatment unit when she was discharged about three
months earlier. They had recovered, but their parents had died.
This was her new family: six little strangers, ages 2 to 14. Makeshift households of
survivors had sprouted in other neighborhoods, too. Ebola may have receded, but
relatives still feared taking in orphans who had had the disease. I will take them,
Dolley told the clinic. It didnt occur to her that, as an Ebola survivor, she would face
the stigma, too, making it difficult to get a job.
Beyond Ebola: Building a family of strangers
Dolley was good at math and had earned all As in high school. After the civil war ended
in 2003, she and thousands of other Liberians set their sights on college. Her major was
accounting.
Now, these were the numbers she was juggling. Rent would cost 30 U.S. dollars a
month for one room in her old house. School would cost about $40 a year for each
child. The women who sold scrawny three-inch fish door-to-door were getting tired of
giving Dolley handouts, and soon she would have to start paying them, too.
The demands came from all sides.
I want Josephine to buy a house so I can live in it, said her mother, who had stayed
outside Monrovia during the epidemic.
Im hungry, said her cousin.
I need 350 [Liberian] dollars to register for school, said Angeline, the oldest of her
new children, an amount equivalent to about four U.S. dollars.
Dolley sat under the mango tree, her back to the children. She knew that even as her
family members leaned on her, they worried during moments like this, when she
recoiled into herself.
They think Im going to kill myself, she said.
The next morning, though, she awoke with new determination.

Since she had returned from the Ebola center, Dolley had been sleeping, along with her
mother and the six children, on the floor of a neighbors house. It was the kind of
generosity that has prevented Ebola survivors from dying of hunger or living on the
street. But Dolley knew it wouldnt last.
Her old six-room house had faded blue walls and boarded-up windows. UNICEF was
scrawled in chalk above the door, from the days when the relief organization brought
assistance.
For months, she had walked by the house quickly, averting her eyes.
But on this Wednesday morning, she walked up the four steps that led to a dark hallway.
Thats where my aunt lived, she said, peering into one room.
Eight people died here, she said in front of another. Her brothers, cousins and uncles
had been in other rooms.
The room at the end of the hall was locked.
That was ours, she said.
The idea of moving back made her shiver. But it was the cheapest rent in New Kru
Town.
After Dolley went back out and sat down under the mango tree, a man approached her
selling pillows. With six orphans sleeping on the floor, pillows were on her wish list.
She looked at the salesman.
Nah, Im broke, she said.
So, it seemed, was everyone in New Kru Town. Nearby, Nintos Roberts, the
neighborhoods most recent Ebola survivor, huddled in a one-room hut. The disease had
left him withered and hopeless.
Weve got enough to eat once a day. Thats it, said Roberts, 38, standing next to his
three young children.
The World Bank put it this way recently: The socio-economic impacts of Ebola in
Liberia and Sierra Leone are far-reaching and persistent.
Dolley put it this way: I was doing real well, and now Ive got nothing.
But the next afternoon, she received a tip. Mercy Corps was hiring.
The session at Rock Community Church started with a round of icebreakers. Everyone
had to choose a word that began with the same letter as their first name.
Dolley stood up.

Im Joy Josephine, she told the room with a wide smile.

As she watched the Mercy Corps presentation, though, doubts crept into her mind.
Nearly $1 billion in aid had poured into Liberia, but Dolley worried that much of it was
being diverted into the wrong hands.
Youve got to be careful because a lot of the people involved in this are crooks, she
whispered in the back of the room.
Still, Dolley stayed for the free lunch. No one had mentioned the salary yet.
When she returned to New Kru Town, she gave her adopted 6-year-old son asthma
medication that cost about $1 and bought mosquito spray for $2. Her elderly neighbor
was sitting outside her old house, getting drunk. She was rail-thin and wild-eyed, with
matted gray hair.
She does this every night, Dolley said. Soon shell start to cry.
And then she did, a soft weeping. Dolley had listened to it constantlysince the womans
son had died of Ebola.
Dolley mulled over the possible job. She had spent the day at a meeting about raising
awareness of Ebola. Experts considered this a key part of keeping the disease from
flaring up again. But she thought the effort should have begun six months earlier, before
her aunt came back to the crowded family home after attending a traditional burial,
showing symptoms.
Im just not sure about it, Dolley said before going to sleep on the floor.
The next day, the Mercy Corps employees handed out new smartphones for
prospective employees to file data as they conducted their surveys. People started taking
selfies with them. There was a buffet of free rice and beans. Dolley piled the food on her
plate.
Then the participants were sent out to conduct a trial survey. Dolley and three others
walked to a small house where two women were sitting outside. They took out their
cellphones and began reading questions from the screens.
How would you describe your financial status? Dolley asked stiffly.
Average, one of the women said.
How many sick people did you know in your community?
The woman shook her head.
I cant count anymore.
The women were clearly annoyed by the questions. Dolley understood that fatigue.

People had been coming to her house, too, asking questions.

But we havent gotten any benefits, so we stopped answering, Dolley said, walking
back to the church. Nongovernmental organizations, or NGOs, conducted such surveys
to gauge behaviors and the level of awareness about Ebola. But Dolley saw little impact.
A few hours later, she was back in New Kru Town. Some of the kids were bathing by
splattering themselves from a bucket of water in the dirt. The youngest orphan, 2-yearold Constance, waddled up to Dolley in a red dress.
Constance, youre looking fine, Dolley exclaimed, happily.
Dolley couldnt bear to tell the children about the job. She could hardly believe it
herself. But that afternoon, one of the women who had recruited her for the position had
told Dolley what she would be paid: only $25 a month, she later recounted. She could
make more selling fish.
The contracts were managed by local organizations, like the one that had recruited
Dolley, and not Mercy Corps, said Laura Keenan, a spokeswoman for the group, based
in Portland, Ore. Mercy Corps officials later told The Post that the position paid $50 and
that Dolley had received $25 for transportation to the training sessions.
As Dolley stood near the mango tree, another group of local aid workers with clipboards
walked by, waving. They were on their own Ebola awareness campaign, with their own
questions, and like everyone else in New Kru Town, they knew her story.
Dolley stared at them.
They dont dare come over here, she muttered angrily.
On Sunday morning, Dolley and her six children put on their church clothes,
secondhand dresses and button-down shirts.
The church helps us all get through this, she said.
She had always dreamed of being a singer. At the Ebola treatment unit, or ETU, she
wrote songs while her family members died.
When youre in the ETU, what saves you is your mind, she said.
Now, singing with the choir at the front of the cinder-block church, she waved her arms
above her head.
The spirit takes control, she crooned.
Every setback you have can be taken care of if you submit yourself to God, the Rev.
John Fefegula, the pastor of Faith Temple, said when it came time for his sermon.
Behind him, Dolley nodded.

The previous night, she had moved back into the room where she and her family had
fallen ill. She found the old key and opened the lock. She swept the floor. She tried to
make the room look as normal as she could a mosquito net draped from the ceiling, a
carpet on the floor. As she expected, the landlord came by, asking for money.
Im working on it, Dolley said, and she was allowed to stay.
The next day, the landlord, Margaret Brown, came by again. She was a large woman
with a round face and was once a friend of the family. But she wasnt offering Dolley a
break.
Were all hurting here, Brown said.
Dolley decided she would reach out to distant family members. Public schools were
reopening, and she needed cash for uniforms and fees.
Ill go door by door, she told her mother, sitting under the mango tree.
Thats not what were gonna do, her mother responded. We cant ask them.
The two argued. Eventually Dolley decided that she couldnt invite judgment upon her
family.
Well find another way, she said hopelessly.
It felt as though all of New Kru Town was in despair.
The previous night, Roberts, the Ebola survivor, had tried to kill himself, swallowing a
pile of pills.
Now, the old woman next door had started drinking and crying gain. A young man
chased a young woman and threw a picture frame in front of Dolleys front step,
shattering the glass.
What are yall doing? Dolley screamed.
She got up from under the mango tree and started walking the hundred yards to the
beach. A man, visibly drunk, trailed her.
The NGOs mark our houses, but we dont get a goddamn thing, he said.
About a week later, Dolley got a call from the group that had hired her for the Mercy
Corps program. She was told they could pay her $100 a month, she said. (Mercy Corps
said the salary was actually $130). It was more than enough to make her change her
mind.
The job did not end well.
Dolley initially said she worked for a month and was not paid. She later acknowledged
that she worked only for six days, carrying out surveys, before leaving to attend a

memorial service for her husband in northern Liberia. When she came back to the
capital, she said, she quarreled with a colleague and didnt return to the job.
Officials at the partner groups office in Monrovia said they had not been contacted by
Dolley about any payment issues. Mercy Corps said it was willing to pay Dolley for the
six days she had worked but was unable to do so because she had not provided details
about her whereabouts.
In early March, while taking a break under the mango tree, Dolley heard the news from
her neighbors: Liberia was down to zero Ebola cases.
The epidemic that had terrified the world was ending, or at least it felt that way (another
case would later emerge). But one year later, it had robbed Liberians of their children,
their jobs and the lives they had plotted for themselves.
Weve got nothing, Dolley said.