Boys Town, Liberia - Every evening for months the sky would turn orange as Liberia's Ebola crematorium roared into life, its towering flames reducing victim after victim to ash and blackened bone.
It was a ritual that the villagers of Boys Town came to dread, the thick black smoke and smell of death permeating their homes and spreading alarm in the community.
More than 10,000 people have died since the epidemic broke out in Guinea and spread to Liberia and Sierra Leone, and the incinerator became a symbol of the panic that enveloped the region.
By the time it shut in January, as Liberia began to emerge from the worst outbreak of Ebola in history, the facility had burned 2,000 men, women and children, their ashes tossed indiscriminately together into metal drums.
"When they used to burn the Ebola bodies the odour was unbearable to us. Our children were getting sick. Many people left the town to go elsewhere. I hate to hear about this place called 'crematorium'," says Boys Town resident Anita Zoegai, 45.
Now the families of those sent into the flames are finally being allowed to claim their remains, after the ashes of all 2,000 were handed back at a traditional ceremony over the weekend.
Tribal chiefs and religious leaders gathered at the crematorium, 35 kilometres (22 miles) east of the capital, for the traditional handover of 16 drums holding the remains.
AFP
