SARWORLOR, Liberia — Five months ago, Roseline Phay, a 32-year-old farmer from the West African nation of Liberia, set off on a quest to find contraceptives.
Phay and her partner have two daughters, and they barely make ends meet. Determined not to have more children, she went to a health worker in her village, but contraception pills, implants and condoms had run out. Phay trekked for hours on red clay roads to the nearest clinic, but they had no contraceptives either.
She did not know it, but her mission was doomed from the beginning. Just weeks before, U.S. President Donald Trump abruptly suspended most foreign aid through the U.S. Agency for International Development, which paid for medications in Liberia's public clinics.
Tenacious and outspoken, Phay repeated the trip four times. Then she got pregnant.
''I'm suffering,'' she said, with daughter Pauline crying in her arms. ''I have this little child on my back, and the other child in my stomach is suffering." She must continue farming throughout her pregnancy, she said, or "I will not eat.''
After she got pregnant she had to wean Pauline off breastfeeding, she said, and the girl became so badly malnourished that she almost died. The U.S. cuts left no therapeutic food to give her, and she is still ill.
Phay is among millions across Africa who have seen their lives upended after the U.S. aid cuts. In Liberia, the American support made up almost 2.6% of the gross national income, the highest percentage anywhere in the world, according to the Center for Global Development.
''The impact of USAID in Liberia cannot be overstated,'' said Richlue O. Burphy, who worked for USAID projects for over a decade and manages the National Lottery, a government body. ''Everywhere you go, you see the USAID (signs). And almost all the government institutions ... had some kind of USAID partnership.''