There are personal stories that move and inspire. And then there are some that are so remarkable that they remind us that hope can rise from ashes and that real-life angels really do walk among us.
“I am the model of International Medical Corps’ mission: turn local people into professionals so they can take their knowledge with them to help people in – and outside – their country,” says Elizabeth Manga from her post as the International Medical Corps program coordinator in Liberia.
A lifelong health worker from Sierra Leone, Elizabeth’s life has been filled with ambition, loss, success, despair, and hope. A survivor of Sierra Leone’s ten-year civil war, Elizabeth has experienced all the evil – and all the good – that mankind can bring on one another. “Working with International Medical Corps has made a u-turn in my life,” she says. “From no hope to unlimited hope, from being powerless to so empowered, from a poor worker to a woman who can send her children to school and buy a house for her family to live in.”
Elizabeth was born in a small village in eastern Sierra Leone. When she was seven years old, her father suddenly fell ill and died, leaving her mother with four young children. A proponent of education, Elizabeth’s mother always spoke about sending her to school when she was old enough to walk the six miles that it took to get to class. Her educational – and professional – calling came early when a female doctor came to visit the district capital for the first time.
“I will always remember what my mother said. ‘You see this girl, she is a replica of myself,’” Elizabeth recalls. “’I will work in the rain and in the sun, day and night, to ensure that she gets educated and be like this female doctor that visited the hospital last week.’”
As a daughter of a single parent, Elizabeth worked hard to balance school and chores at home. After two years, Elizabeth’s uncle stepped in to help.
“My uncle saw my potential and suggested to my mother that I move with him to finish school in the city,” says Elizabeth. “All my mother ever wanted for me was to become an educated woman. She always had my best interest at heart, so she let me go with my uncle.”
Elizabeth fulfilled her mother’s wish. Finishing school with flying colors, Elizabeth went on to college to study community health sciences and took a job with the Ministry of Health and Sanitation, traveling throughout Sierra Leone to administer health services while raising five children with her husband.
In 1991, Sierra Leone erupted in civil war that over the next ten years would leave tens of thousands dead and two million homeless. For Elizabeth, this would translate to lost loved ones, endless heartbreak, and a service to her country that would touch hundreds of lives. Elizabeth lost her husband in the second half of the 10-year war, leaving her with the responsibility of caring for their children on her own. She even adopted three more children who were orphaned by the brutal violence.
Fighting in Sierra Leone intensified and forced Elizabeth and her family to flee east to Guinea, where they resettled in a refugee camp. Even in the camp, Elizabeth never stopped helping those around her. “I continued my humanitarian work to relieve the suffering of my fellow refugees,” Elizabeth says. “But it also relieved me of the mental torture that I was going through from the loss of my loved ones.”
While Elizabeth lived in the refugee camp, back in Sierra Leone rebels killed her brother. Leaving her eight children in her sister’s care, Elizabeth traveled back to Sierra Leone to make funeral arrangements. Upon her return, Elizabeth accepted a job with the Red Cross and relocated her family, including her three adopted children, to Sierra Leone’s capital of Freetown.
Elizabeth was still working for the Red Cross when the rebels launched their January 6th, 1999 offensive on Freetown. The deadliest day in Sierra Leone’s civil war, entire families were gunned down in the street and thousands were mutilated. Neighborhoods were set on fire, leaving up to 80 percent of some areas scorched. Elizabeth and her family were one of the 51,000 who lost their homes that day.
“I was commanded to leave my house,” says Elizabeth. “The rebel said to me: ‘Take yourself and your people out of this house. If I close my eyes and open them and you are still in here, you will count yourself among the ashes.’ We all made it out, except my youngest brother, who burned to death trying to collect our belongings.”
After fleeing to Guinea for the second time, Elizabeth did not think she would ever return to Sierra Leone, until International Medical Corps entered the country to provide emergency relief services and offered Elizabeth a job as International Medical Corps’ health coordinator. “I was still not confident about staying back in Sierra Leone, considering the mental torture I went through,” she says. “In the end, my responsibility to put bread on the table for my family won and I took the job.”
Working with International Medical Corps to provide emergency services to the displaced, Elizabeth felt a special connection with her new role. “The first two weeks with International Medical Corps changed my whole perception about life. I found myself thinking that I was being treated very special.”
During almost a decade with International Medical Corps, Elizabeth’s role as health coordinator has also led her to provide health care service at special care centers created by the government for former child soldiers and support refugees returning to Sierra Leone when the war ended. Elizabeth was also the driving force behind the first effort in Sierra Leone after the war to provide repair of fistula, a severe gynecological rupture that can occur during labor and in extremely violent cases of rape.
“This program is the greatest dream I have ever realized,” she says. “Fistulas are a health problem that could just as easily affect me or my closest family. When I came across women in need of fistula repair, they were psychologically depressed, abandoned, or even divorced because of their condition. It was incredibly common after the war, so I contacted the country director and we worked together to find the funds to start it.”
Elizabeth is now the program coordinator for International Medical Corps in neighboring Liberia and is working to bring much-needed health care facilities to some of the most isolated, underserved areas in the country. To this day, Elizabeth feels tremendous gratitude toward International Medical Corps.
“Before joining International Medical Corps, I was a single mother living on less than $5 a day with eight children to feed,” Elizabeth says. “My children had no hope for a good education, but my children have been able to go to universities in Sierra Leone and abroad. We have been able to get out of poverty, even build a home. I will always be so grateful for all that International Medical Corps has made possible for me and my family.”