People stand outside a school in Conakry in 2015 as students resume classes after four months off because of Ebola. (Cellou Binani/Agence France-Presse/Getty Images)

She was 13 when the Ebola virus struck her country, shuttering schools across Sierra Leone. The closures lasted nine months, but Mari Kalokoh could not return to the classroom for years.

“I felt like nobody,” she recalled of her time on the street, begging for food. Now a radio has replaced her teacher in the era of the coronavirus.