When Sophie Roden was 24 years old, she moved from her Sydney home to Africa to take a job fighting the spread of Ebola. Now, she monitors and evaluates the largest social mobilization program in the country, which equips two million Liberians with the skills they need to fight the disease.
Roden began her tenure working in Africa with the African Development Corp, managing the transition of their UNICEF program into an Ebola awareness program when the disease first hit the continent. Soon after, she moved to Mercy Corps, where she currently works on a large-scale education program for Liberian communities.
“I was working as an intern for Mercy Corps when Ebola first hit, and I was terrified. But when my internship ended and I had to move back to Sydney I was devastated, I knew I had to get back to Africa as soon as possible. Watching the epidemic spread from back home just didn’t feel right,” she told Women’s Agenda.
“So I came back as soon as I could and I have been working with Liberian communities ever since, trying to get rid of the epidemic for good. It’s very challenging getting the people here to trust you, to believe you when you tell them how to protect themselves against infection. They are so tired of hearing about Ebola.”
Roden said communities experience a lot of message fatigue around the disease, because the epidemic feels as though it has been around for a lifetime. She said the biggest challenge for Mery Corps is to constantly find new ways to communicate the importance of remaining vigilant in the face of the epidemic.
“The communities here have lost their trust in health care services because that is how Ebola was first transmitted to Liberia, and this poses more challenges still. We are worried that polio might come back to communities here because the people have stopped trusting the doctors and nurses who protect them against it,” she said.
“It is so challenging, it feels like there are always new roadblocks that we didn’t anticipate, and sometimes it really wears you down. But it is the most rewarding thing you can do, so I would never want to be doing anything else.”
Roden said the team of 30 staff working on Mercy Corp’s Ebola program have been working from very early in the morning to very late and night every day, including weekends, ever since the disease hit. When we spoke via Skype, she was having her first morning off in months. It was one of Liberia’s only public holidays.
But in the face of all these challenges, Roden is hopeful.
“I know that Liberia will recover from this. The government and the international community are doing such a good job and we were recently very close to being declared Ebola free,” she said.
“The people here are very resilient and you can already see they are bouncing back. These communities have been through civil war and unrest like we can’t imagine, so they can come back from this. I can already see businesses and schools reopening and people flocking back to them. They are ready to heal.”
So how did Roden get to be one of the youngest international aid workers in Africa?
“I always knew I wanted to do development work. When I was 17 I spent a year living in Zambia and ever since I have known that I’ve wanted to come back to Africa to work,” she said.
After returning from Zambia, Roden went to law school and after graduating got a job working as a lawyer for a refugee legal service in Sydney. When the federal government starting making deep cuts to the sector and Roden’s contract ended, she took the opportunity to pursue her goal of becoming an international aid worker in Africa.
When I asked Roden what is next for her career, she said she couldn’t see herself leaving Liberia any time soon.
“This is one of the most amazing and most beautiful countries on earth. It’s addictive.”