Ebola's rude interruption in Liberia

Hoosier farmers Travis and Gina Sheets had a dream: helping the West African nation of Liberia move from importing food to exporting it. But the Ebola crisis rudely interrupted the dream, keeping the Sheetses back home in Indiana for at least a few months.

Through their work with Hope in the Harvest Mission International, the Sheetses started a 5-acre demonstration farm at Liberian International Christian College earlier this year before returning home. These long-distance runners—Travis competes in marathons and triathlons, while Gina runs ultra races—desperately want back in the Liberian farming race.

“We’re still training,” said Travis, who goes to Zambia this month for more training in agricultural production in developing countries. “We haven’t walked away from this race.”

But the Sheetses do not have a return date for Liberia.

The demonstration farm at the Liberian college opened a market for local residents to buy beans, corn, and tomatoes at wholesale, enabling them to resell the produce at a local market. Out running at their usual 5:30 a.m. time, the Sheetses would see women coming to the farm to buy the produce as early as possible. “All of a sudden there was a business for them,” Gina said.

The Sheetses also taught agriculture and economics classes at the college. Gina, the former director of state agriculture for Indiana Gov. Mike Pence, was quickly tapped to be vice president of administration for the small Liberian college.

Like horses pawing the ground and ready to run, the Sheetses want to go back to Liberia as soon as possible. They are not sure how much devastation they will find. They likely will have to wait until about three months after the Ebola disease runs its course. Some of their friends already have died. Contractors finished the ground floor of a new agricultural center for the college, but the Ebola crisis stopped construction. The Sheetses returned to the United States in July, just before Liberia went into a state of emergency. Curfew runs from 9 p.m. to 6 a.m. Markets have been disbanded. Group assembly is prohibited.

The Ebola crisis hit Liberia at a tough time. The country had a stronger economy after World War II, having been founded as a nation by freed American slaves before the U.S. Civil War. A 1980 military coup against an elected government led to devastating civil wars and tribal conflicts in the 1990s. Elected as the first woman head of state in Africa in 2005, Harvard-trained economist Ellen Johnson Sirleaf has offered some hope and progress. But the Ebola virus could prove as devastating as any civil war.

The Sheetses still hope that their farm backgrounds can boost productivity of small farmers beyond self-sufficiency to earning a livelihood from selling farm products. From Frankfort, Ind., they prepare for the move and their plans to launch fish farming in Liberia, growing tilapia in makeshift aquariums at their home.

Once they return, they anticipate all kinds of challenges. “Will we go back to nothing, or how much damage?” Travis asked. “Do we rebuild buildings, or do we do more teaching?”

They have no place to turn except prayer and the Lord. But faith in Christ is what took them to Liberia in the first place.