After 38 members of his family died, he founded a soccer team to heal his community. It's working.
Survivors lead lonely lives in the face of stigma.
Like many in Sierra Leone, Erison Turay plays soccer. What's unique is the reason why.
Last year, Erison was infected with Ebola. During the summer months of 2014, he lost 38 family members to the Ebola outbreak. He was infected while trying to shuttle sick relatives to safety. He and his mother survived, but their lives were forever changed.
Pulitzer Prize-winning video journalist Ben Solomon traveled to Sierra Leone to document Erison's survival story.
This powerful New York Times documentary is a visually stunning look inside the lives of a group of Ebola survivors led by Erison and how they battle stigma by forming a soccer team.
Life as an Ebola survivor is lonely and filled with stigma.
Having witnessed so much sickness and death, residents of Ebola-stricken communities find themselves wary of getting too close to anyone who has been infected. Many refuse to accept or employ Ebola survivors.
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, trace amounts of the virus may linger in someone's body for some time after recovery. But because Ebola spreads only through direct contact, there's no reason to avoid normal interaction with those who've recovered.
GIFs via New York Times.
To combat stigma, Erison helped form the Kenema Ebola Survivors Football Club, where he and others could be accepted without shame.
The team is made up entirely of survivors, split into men's and women's teams. The club gave them a place to bond with one another, to escape the stigma that surrounds them, and to have some fun.
In Solomon's words, Erison's soccer club is "one of the most powerful ways to bring people together to try and understand where the country goes from here."
The men's and women's teams played against teams made up of medical personnel tasked with treating and fighting the virus. Survivors and fighters came together in competition. And in the process, they helped fight the stigma of survival.
During the Ebola outbreak of 2014, more than 27,000 people were infected with the deadly virus.
The World Health Organization (WHO) estimates that more than 11,000 people, primarily in the West African countries of Guinea, Liberia, and Sierra Leone, lost their lives. 10,000 children were orphaned.
While somewhere around 16,000 people infected with the virus survived, it's clear from Erison's story that all isn't well in their world.
We may not be far from ending Ebola once and for all. For now, however, it's still a very real threat.
We have the opportunity to eradicate Ebola. In July, the U.S. Agency for International Development announced that the U.S. government plans to spend upward of an additional $266 million to help West African relief efforts. This comes on top of the more than $2 billion it devoted to the cause last year.
"Now is an important time to help support these countries in the battle against Ebola. While an Ebola epidemic causes a lot of fear, it could cause much more damage if left to become endemic."
— Ben Solomon
WHO hopes that by the end of this year, a viable large-scale Ebola vaccine will be identified and put into production. Currently, there are two vaccines in late-stage clinical trials in Guinea and Sierra Leone. In the meantime, more than a dozen other vaccines have been proposed, but those are all fairly early in development and testing stages.
Solomon says long-term solutions still need attention.
"The virus isn't gone yet. Small pockets of these affected countries still deal with aftermath. The economies have faltered, the governments have lost the trust of the people and the medical systems have all been pushed to places they never thought they'd go. Now is an important time to help support these countries in the battle against Ebola. While an Ebola epidemic causes a lot of fear, it could cause much more damage if left to become endemic."
— Ben Solomon
But in the meantime, we must remember that for survivors like Erison, the fight goes on long after recovery.
And if it takes forming a soccer club to do that, then that's what they'll do.
Because they are, in so many ways, survivors.
A Generation Jones teenager poses in her room.Image via Wikmedia Commons
An office kitchen.via 
An angry man eating spaghetti.via 
Gif of baby being baptized
Woman gives toddler a bath Canva
An Irish woman went to the doctor for a routine eye exam. She left with bright neon green eyes.
It's not easy seeing green.
Did she get superpowers?
Going to the eye doctor can be a hassle and a pain. It's not just the routine issues and inconveniences that come along when making a doctor appointment, but sometimes the various devices being used to check your eyes' health feel invasive and uncomfortable. But at least at the end of the appointment, most of us don't look like we're turning into The Incredible Hulk. That wasn't the case for one Irish woman.
Photographer Margerita B. Wargola was just going in for a routine eye exam at the hospital but ended up leaving with her eyes a shocking, bright neon green.
At the doctor's office, the nurse practitioner was prepping Wargola for a test with a machine that Wargola had experienced before. Before the test started, Wargola presumed the nurse had dropped some saline into her eyes, as they were feeling dry. After she blinked, everything went yellow.
Wargola and the nurse initially panicked. Neither knew what was going on as Wargola suddenly had yellow vision and radioactive-looking green eyes. After the initial shock, both realized the issue: the nurse forgot to ask Wargola to remove her contact lenses before putting contrast drops in her eyes for the exam. Wargola and the nurse quickly removed the lenses from her eyes and washed them thoroughly with saline. Fortunately, Wargola's eyes were unharmed. Unfortunately, her contacts were permanently stained and she didn't bring a spare pair.
- YouTube youtube.com
Since she has poor vision, Wargola was forced to drive herself home after the eye exam wearing the neon-green contact lenses that make her look like a member of the Green Lantern Corps. She couldn't help but laugh at her predicament and recorded a video explaining it all on social media. Since then, her video has sparked a couple Reddit threads and collected a bunch of comments on Instagram:
“But the REAL question is: do you now have X-Ray vision?”
“You can just say you're a superhero.”
“I would make a few stops on the way home just to freak some people out!”
“I would have lived it up! Grab a coffee, do grocery shopping, walk around a shopping center.”
“This one would pair well with that girl who ate something with turmeric with her invisalign on and walked around Paris smiling at people with seemingly BRIGHT YELLOW TEETH.”
“I would save those for fancy special occasions! WOW!”
“Every time I'd stop I'd turn slowly and stare at the person in the car next to me.”
“Keep them. Tell people what to do. They’ll do your bidding.”
In a follow-up Instagram video, Wargola showed her followers that she was safe at home with normal eyes, showing that the damaged contact lenses were so stained that they turned the saline solution in her contacts case into a bright Gatorade yellow. She wasn't mad at the nurse and, in fact, plans on keeping the lenses to wear on St. Patrick's Day or some other special occasion.
While no harm was done and a good laugh was had, it's still best for doctors, nurses, and patients alike to double-check and ask or tell if contact lenses are being worn before each eye test. If not, there might be more than ultra-green eyes to worry about.