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MONROVIA, Liberia — A couple of dozen students sat quietly inside the C.D.B. King Elementary School’s dim and dusty auditorium on their first morning back. Despite the stuffy heat, many of the children wore long sleeves and trousers that covered as much skin as possible.
利比里亚蒙罗维亚——几十名学生静静地坐着在查尔斯金小学(C.D.B. King Elementary School)落满尘土的昏暗礼堂里面，这是他们复课的第一天早晨。尽管天气闷热，很多孩子仍然穿着长衣长裤，尽可能多地遮盖皮肤。
A second grader wore pink knit mittens that muffled the sound of his clapping when the teachers introduced themselves. As everyone rose to sing Liberia’s national anthem, he saluted with his left hand, still sheathed in the mitten.
一名二年级学生戴着粉色的针织连指手套，因此老师们做自我介绍的时候，他鼓掌的声音闷闷的。大家起立唱利比里亚国歌时，他用左手行礼，但仍戴着手套。
“Ebola destroyed and devastated our land,” Venoria Crayton, the vice principal, told her pupils. “It brought us sadness, it brought us pain. Some of your neighbors died, right? Some of your neighbors’ children died, right? But you are here.”
“埃博拉让我们的土地满是疮痍，”副校长维诺利亚·克雷顿(Venoria Crayton)对学生们说。“给我们带来了悲伤，带来了痛苦。一些邻居病逝了，对吗？邻居家的一些孩子病逝了，对吗？但是你活了下来。”
About eight months after governments in the region closed schools to stop the spread of Ebola, uniformed and backpack-carrying schoolchildren have returned to the streets of Monrovia, the capital, perhaps the most visible sign of the epidemic’s ebb.
八个月前，当地政府为了阻止埃博拉病毒蔓延，关闭了学校。现在，身穿制服、背着书包的学生们，重新出现在了首都蒙罗维亚街头。这或许是疫情高峰期已过的最明显迹象。
But Liberia’s on-again, off-again back-to-school campaign is also a measure of the long shadow cast by Ebola, a disease that affected almost every facet of society in the hardest-hit countries, Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guinea.
但是，利比里亚的复课行动时断时续，也体现了埃博拉产生的长期影响。在疫情最严重的国家利比里亚、塞拉利昂和几内亚，社会的方方面面几乎都受到了影响。
Though Ebola cases have all but disappeared in Liberia, with the Health Ministry saying Wednesday that the last patient in treatment had tested negative for the virus, lingering fear and a depressed economy have dampened the turnout at schools. Many have yet to reopen, having failed to meet the minimum requirements put in place to prevent transmission of the virus.
利比里亚卫生部本周三表示，最后一个接受治疗的病人，病毒检测呈阴性。然而，即便该国已经没有埃博拉病例，挥之不去的恐惧感和经济不景气的状况，也影响了学校的出勤率。因为无法满足防止埃博拉病毒传播的最低要求，很多学校尚未复课。
Many of those that have reopened are struggling. Just as Liberia’s weak health care system collapsed as Ebola began raging across the country, many people here worry that the nation’s schools may be ill equipped to handle even the tail end of the epidemic.
很多已经复课的学校处境也很艰难。就像在埃博拉疫情刚开始肆虐利比里亚时，该国脆弱的卫生保健系统崩溃了一样，这里有很多人担心，即便疫情已经接近尾声，该国的学校仍然缺乏足够的资源给予应对。
C.D.B. King, despite being in the center of the capital, lacks electricity and running water, and has only a few toilet stalls for a student population that numbered 1,000 before the outbreak.
查尔斯金小学尽管处于首都的中心地带，但仍缺乏电力和自来水，并且只有很少几个厕位供学生使用。疫情爆发前，该校有1000名学生。
Now, the school is trying to overcome those longstanding problems — and the ravages of a disease that has killed more than 9,600 people in the region.
现在，学校正在努力克服这些长期存在的问题——埃博拉在该地区已经导致逾9600人丧生。
Fanning herself with a sheet of paper, Ms. Crayton, the vice principal, rattled off a list of don’ts: Don’t play rough. Don’t exchange pencils. Don’t share food. Don’t spit. Don’t urinate in the courtyard. Don’t hide illness in the family.
副校长克雷顿一边用一张纸给自己扇风，一边列举注意事项：不要粗野打闹，不要互相交换铅笔，不要分享食物，不要随地吐痰，不要在院子里小便，家中有人生病不要隐瞒。
“If you want to live,” she told the students, “don’t lie about Ebola.”
“如果你想活下去，”她告诉学生，“就不要在埃博拉的问题上撒谎。”
By the end of the first day of class, only about 30 students had showed up.
复课第一天到放学前，只来了大约30名学生。
“People are still afraid, so they are careful with their kids,” said Augustus Seongbae, the principal. “Many of them are watching what happens to the kids who come first.”
“大家还是很担心，所以他们在自己孩子的事情上很小心，”奥古斯·斯恩贝(Augustus Seongbae)校长说。“很多人都在观望，想看看那些一早复课的孩子会怎样。”
Fierce disagreement over whether to resume classes forced the government to change the original start date of Feb. 2 several times before finally deciding to reopen schools on a rolling basis starting on Feb. 16. The government said that with Ebola waning, many children were already playing in their communities, and that potential teaching time in the classroom was being frittered away.
对于是否应该复课，人们产生了激烈的分歧，因此政府原本定于2月2日复课的计划被迫修改了好几次，最后决定让各学校从2月16日起分批次复课。政府表示，随着埃博拉疫情缓解，很多孩子已经开始在自己的社区里玩耍，本来可以花在课堂上的教学时间被白白浪费了。
But some lawmakers, education officials and parents argued that children should not go back to school until Liberia is declared free of Ebola, or 42 days after the last case of the disease — which experts say could be months away.
但一些议员、教育官员和家长认为，孩子们不应该重返校园，除非利比里亚宣布埃博拉疫情结束，而那应该是在最后一个病例治愈42天之后——专家表示，可能还需要几个月才能实现。
Tolbert Nyenswah, the Liberian deputy health minister in charge of the Ebola response, said Wednesday that there had been no new confirmed cases of the disease in the country for 12 days, but that officials were still tracking 102 people for possible exposure to the virus.
本周三，负责应对埃博拉疫情的利比里亚卫生部副部长托尔伯特·耶斯瓦(Tolbert Nyenswah)表示，该国已经连续12天没有新增确诊病例，但官员们仍在观察102个可能接触过病毒的人。
”We are not out of the woods yet,” he said.
“我们尚未摆脱危险，”他说。
Miatta Fahnbulleh, the mother of the boy with the pink mittens, James Nyema, 9, used to send him to a private school. But because she had been unemployed for months from her job as a kindergarten teacher, she had chosen to send him to C.D.B. King, a public school. Public schools are free, though parents must pay for uniforms and other supplies.
那个戴粉色手套的男孩叫詹姆斯·耶马(James Nyema)，今年9岁。他的母亲米阿塔·法布莱(Miatta Fahnbulleh)以前把他送到私立学校读书。但是好几个月前，她丢掉了幼儿园老师的工作，因此决定让儿子入读公立的查尔斯金小学。公立学校是免费的，但家长需要缴纳制服和其他用品的费用。
She walked her son, known as J.C. because his middle name is Christian, to school in the morning with a blue plastic bag containing his lunch and a water bottle.
她早上步行送儿子去上学时，提着一个蓝色塑料袋，里面装着孩子的午餐和一瓶水。因为儿子的中间名是克里斯蒂安(Christian)，大家管他叫JC。
“I told him when he was going, ‘Don’t deal with anybody, don’t drink anybody’s water, don’t touch anybody,’” she said, laughing, as she came to pick up her son after lunch.
她在午饭后接儿子时笑着说，“我告诉他，上学的时候‘不要和任何人来往，不要喝任何人的水，不要碰任何人。’”
She had dressed him in trousers and long sleeves, which he usually wore only during the rainy season — not now, the driest and hottest time of the year. She had bought the mittens at a nearby market, where they had become available during the height of the epidemic last year.
她让儿子穿上了长裤和长袖上衣，通常他只在雨季这么穿，但现在不是雨季，而是一年中最干最热的时候。连指手套是在附近的集市上买的。这种手套是去年疫情最严重时开始卖的。
“What can I do?” she said, laughing again.
她说，“我能怎么办呢？”说着，再次笑了起来。
At C.D.B. King, Ms. Crayton arrived at 6:30 a.m. on the second day of class to try to make the school safe against Ebola. No one at the school had received any direct training, so she consulted an instruction pamphlet she had received along with materials from international donors — infrared thermometers, buckets, chlorine, rubber boots and gloves, brushes and soap.
复课的第二天，克雷顿早晨6时30分抵达查尔斯金小学，试图加强学校预防埃博拉的措施。学校里没有人接受过直接培训，所以她参考了接收国际捐助物资时拿到的指导手册，那些物资包括红外体温计、水桶、氯、橡胶靴子、橡胶手套、刷子和肥皂。
She chased away local petty traders who had stored their goods overnight in the schoolyard. “This is a government school,” she told one woman, who scampered away with her wares on her head.
她赶走了那些把货物存放在学校操场里的当地小商贩。“这是政府办的学校，”她告诉一个妇女，后者把货物顶在头上迅速离开了。
The school’s lone security guard — who ran at least two side businesses, including renting out the schoolyard for storage and operating a prepaid cellphone card business just outside the school entrance — was put in charge of taking incoming students’ temperature. Hand-washing stations, filled with chlorine and water drawn from the well in the schoolyard, were set up at the entrances to the school and the toilets.
学校唯一的保安至少还兼做着其他两份副业，包括把校内的操场出租给别人存放东西，以及经营校门外不远处的一个预付费手机卡摊位。现在由他负责给进校的学生量体温。学校入口和厕所之间有一些洗手位，装满了氯和水。水是从校内操场上的那口井里打上来的。
A teacher rang a cowbell to call the morning assembly. After the Lord’s Prayer, Ms. Crayton warned her students, “Ebola is still in town, so we just want you to be very, very, very careful.’’
教师用一个牛铃通知大家早集合。念诵主祷文后，克雷顿告诫学生们说，“城里仍有埃博拉病毒，因此你们需要非常、非常、非常小心。”
Over the remainder of the first week, some of the pieces began falling into place at C.D.B. King. Liberia’s red, white and blue flag was hoisted up in the schoolyard. The children seemed to relax, and J.C. even wore shorts by the end of the week. By Friday, about 60 students had showed up.
在复课第一周接下来的时间里，一些东西开始陆续就位。利比里亚红白蓝三色组成的国旗悬挂在校园里。孩子们似乎放松了下来，JC甚至在第一周结束时穿上了短裤。到周五，来上课的学生达到了60名左右。
The cowbell set the children free. Unable to find an aunt who was supposed to accompany him, J.C. began walking home, lingering in front of stores with toys. Back home, his mother laughed when asked about her son’s short pants and sleeves, with the mittens nowhere in sight.
铃声响起，孩子们放学了。本来说好由阿姨来接JC，但JC没有看到阿姨，就自己开始往家走，中途他在出售玩具的店铺前磨蹭了一阵。回到家里，当被问及JC的短裤短袖时，他母亲笑起来，那双手套完全不见了踪影。
“We’re afraid-o,” she said. “Ebola is still here.”
“我们很害怕的哦，”她说。“这里还有埃博拉。”
