The Woman from Guinea

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Fatoumatta Camara/Photo Credit: Amy Camara
Fatoumatta Camara. (Photo Credit: Amy Camara)

At the peak of the Ebola panic in New York, on November 18, came the story of a woman who had recently traveled to Guinea, who collapsed and died in a Brooklyn hair salon. Because of her recent travels to an Ebola-affected country, health officials tested her body for the viral disease. A few days later came another tiny story: The tests had come out negative.

That was it—a brief footnote in the ongoing story of Ebola.

But who was this woman who died of a heart attack at age 41? It turns out she has a story of her own, and not a happy one. Fatoumatta Camara had been dealing with a lot of stress, family members said. She had recently lost her children, both girls: Coco Elizabeth, 14, and Yvonne, 4.

At 5’6 and weighing 115 pounds, Camara was a beautiful woman with a great smile. She loved to cook and travel. She was soft-spoken, usually reserved, although with a knack for unexpected humor. She liked to laugh and knew how to make others laugh, too, with self-deprecating jokes. Friends said she was a little amused by the Ebola screening she had been subjected to at the airport when she arrived from Guinea.

Born in the Guinean capital of Conakry, Camara grew up in a large family with several siblings. She attended secondary school in the city and grew up speaking French, the country’s official language, as well as her own native Sossou, one of the three dominant dialects in the capital. As a child, Camara was shy, relatives said. She mostly kept to herself, a habit she continued into adulthood.

In 1998, Camara came to the United States and first settled on Saratoga Avenue in Brownsville—an area with a high population of Guineans. She had lived in Switzerland with her husband. But when the marriage collapsed, she moved to the U.S. It was going to be another start for her. Like most immigrants who leave their native lands to resettle in America, Camara hoped to start a better life.

She picked up jobs braiding hair in several African hair salons in Brooklyn before finally establishing her own braiding shop, Fatima’s African Hair, in Brownsville. Friends and relatives said she was excited about the new business venture.

Camara was always a go-getter, they said, and her shop did well at first. But at the height of the economic recession in 2008, the business went into a tailspin. There was little money coming in, and, with a daughter to support, Camara struggled to eke out a living. She managed to keep the business afloat but her economic troubles were compounded by health problems. Family members said she took ill, on-again and off-again, over the last four years. They didn’t say what health issues she was dealing with, but her brother, Abraham Kamara, 41, a delivery man in Queens, said it had become untenable for his sister to continue running the braiding shop because of failing health. So she closed it.

And three years ago, tragedy struck: Camara lost her father, Modou Sireh Camara, in her native Guinea. His death hit Camara hard, family members said. She became dejected. Friends sensed a more distant person; she withdrew into her own world. Even though she tried to be stoic and put a brave face on her string of misfortunes, friends and relatives said that Camara was a woman in distress. Family members tried to lift her out of her depressive state. “She was losing her mind,” her brother said.

At their home in the Langston Hughes housing projects in Brownsville, life was messy for Camara’s children, too. Her older daughter, Coco Elizabeth, observed that her mother had gotten increasingly edgy. She would constantly yell and scream at her kids, Camara’s brother Abraham said. She became easily irritable, lashing out. Her older daughter became increasingly worried not only for her mother but also for her and her sibling’s safety. So seven months ago, Coco called the Child Protective Services on her mother, and the two girls were taken away. Coco has been placed in the care of a relative in Brooklyn while the state has custody of little Yvonne. Relatives said that even though Camara was still able to see her kids occasionally, the family break-up was too much for her to take. And it embarrassed her in front of her friends and community in Brooklyn.

Three months ago, she traveled to Guinea to see her mother, Tata Camara, and other siblings. It was an opportunity to reunite with her extended family but also to escape her stressful life here in the U.S. By all accounts, Camara had a wonderful trip, and when she returned to the U.S. on October 31, family members said they saw a cheerful side of her that they had not seen for some time. She told family members her trip was a great success. She also told them that she didn’t want to live in the U.S. anymore; she wanted to return home to Guinea for good.

Then, on November 18, she came to visit Amy’s African Professional Hair Braiding, on Belmont, not far from the Langston Hughes houses. She occasionally came by the shop, sometimes to pick up some work and sometimes just to while away the time. On that Tuesday she chatted with the salon’s owner, Amy Cisse, and placed a call to an attorney—she had been seeking legal help to win back her daughters. She didn’t get a response.

Momentarily, she got up to use the bathroom, but collapsed and died.

Camara, who was buried at the Florel Park Cemetery in Morganville, New Jersey, was one of the 350 people on the Ebola monitor list during the week of November 18. She had not displayed any Ebola symptoms. In fact she herself had visited a hospital a week after her return, for a medical check-up. “But everything was fine,” her brother Abraham said.

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