It has been a vexing problem for courtesans of queens, princesses and the powerful throughout history – what do you get for the woman who has everything?
For the guests celebrating the 76th birthday of Liberia’s President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, the answer was straightforward: a few buckets, some bars of soap and gallons of disinfectant.
A head-of-state might normally blanche at such a thrifty tribute, but Ebola-hit Liberia is living in strange times and Sirleaf was more than happy, according to an official statement on Thursday’s celebrations.
“She noted that the commemoration of her birthday should be a moment of reflection for all Liberians and partners standing up together in the difficult period to fight the Ebola,” Sirleaf’s office said, expounding at length on the austerity of the occasion.
The gift came from an association of former pupils who had travelled from an agricultural school 70 kilometres east of the capital Monrovia to wish their leader many happy returns.
“We will join the government in fighting and driving away this pandemic that has attempted to devastate our country – but our country will not be devastated,” alumni representative Kenneth Best said in a stirring speech quoted by the presidency.
A man pushes a wheelbarrow containing a woman thought to be a victim of the Ebola virus at the Ebola treatment centre at Island hospital in Monrovia on October 2 2014. (Pic: AFP)
If Sirleaf didn’t feel like breaking out the champagne, it is hardly surprising. Her government is leading the fight against an Ebola epidemic that has killed almost 5 000 people in west Africa, around half of them in Liberia.
Her office was at pains to point out that the presidential birthday was a time for sombre reflection rather than wild celebration.
Sirleaf received well-wishers throughout the day in her austere office in the Foreign Ministry, including members of her cabinet, the chief justice and senior officials in the governor of the central bank.
But it wasn’t all doom and gloom, for the gathered guests, who recited poems and belted out birthday songs, according to the presidency.
One senator even brought news that he had managed to sign four financial bills into his county’s local laws, “as a present for the Liberian leader’s natal day”.
Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority, a US-based worldwide association of African-American female students and its male equivalent, Alpha Phi Alpha Fraternity, presented Sirleaf with a cake decorated with a presidential portrait.
A volunteer in protective suit looks on after spraying disinfectant outside a home in Waterloo, 30km from Freetown. (Pic: AFP)
Watching with horror as the Ebola crisis ravages their country, Sierra Leoneans in London are mobilising to help their compatriots fight the deadly virus back home.
Health workers are taking leave from their jobs in the state-run National Health Service (NHS) to volunteer in Sierra Leone, where at least 1 200 people have died so far.
Others are raising funds for medical supplies, protective clothing and even hot meals for those affected – anything that makes a difference.
“I see it as a call of duty – I need to go down and help my people,” said Ajan Fofanah, a 46-year-old trained paediatric nurse who has applied to spend eight weeks working in Sierra Leone.
He was born in the west African country and moved to Britain aged 27 to further his education. Now he wants to use his skills to help battle the virus that has killed four members of his extended family.
“I’m far away from them and this is what is heart-rending. I need to get closer,” he added.
Fofanah was one of around 80 Sierra Leonean medics who attended an event in London last week to find out more about how they could help.
All were successful professionals keen to put their careers in Britain on hold and even risk being infected with Ebola to help their country.
Mohamed Koker, a 50-year-old emergency doctor who has worked in Britain for 12 years, hoped his knowledge of languages and traditions would help break down barriers with locals.
“I think the urge within me to perform what I call a national duty overrides my fear,” he told AFP.
“Most importantly, I have all the Sierra Leoneans back home who have no medical knowledge and who are sacrificing themselves, who are doing more than I think I am doing here.”
It is not only doctors and nurses who are desperate to help.
The British government is leading the international aid effort in its former colony, but members of the 23 000-strong Sierra Leonean diaspora here want to go further.
Ebola “is the only topic of conversation” among many, said Ade Daramy, chairman of the Sierra Leone Diaspora Ebola Task Force, which is working to help co-ordinate the response.
Food campaign, clothing “When you live overseas and you’ve got family there – that just breaks you,” added Memuna Janneh, a 46-year-old British business consultant who grew up in Sierra Leone.
She started a charity in London to help feed people working on the frontline in Freetown, helped by her husband and relatives who are still living over there.
“LunchBoxGift” provided 2 600 meals to people living rough during the three-day lockdown in September, and now hopes to provide 50 000 more to hospital workers and patients.
“We may not have the cure, we may not have the logistics, we may not have the hospitals, all of those more complicated things that the government is battling to deal with,” she told AFP.
“But we can certainly as ordinary people come together to do food. It was really that simple for me.”
The British-based Sierra Leone War Trust for Children (SLWT) has also raised money to provide protective clothing and non-contact infrared thermometers for health workers and to deliver handwashing stations to rural areas.
In another innovative project, it sent 1 000 plastic raincoats to provide basic protection from Ebola for drivers of the “okada” motorcycles commonly used for transport.
For some, the urge to help is fuelled by a desire to save Sierra Leone from another trauma as serious as the country’s 1990s civil war.
Mayene Sesay (32) saw her mother shot dead in 1999 and lost a foot when a house she was in was set on fire.
She now runs an NGO for young disabled people in Sierra Leone.
Although not a medic, she attended the recruitment event in London to find out what she could do to fight Ebola.
“Whatever happens to me, I’m going to stay strong and help my country because I don’t want (it) to go through something else again,” she said.
“At least I can remember the person who shot my mum but I cannot see Ebola, where it comes from, how it affects my family. It’s like a ghost – you’re gone.”
Given the extent of the Ebola epidemic, it’s obvious that people should take proactive and preventative measures against it. The death toll has exceeded 4 500, and the worst-affected countries in West Africa are battling to contain it. On the one hand, volunteers like Kathryn Stinson, bloggers like Edith Brou and sites like Ebola Deeplyare genuinely doing their bit to help raise awareness. On the other, the US media and paranoid Americans are responding with hysteria and misinformation. Now we have what’s dubbed fearbola. Really though, it’s just stupidity in bad disguise.
2. Remove your children from their school in Mississippi because you’ve found out that the principal recently visited Zambia.
Quick geography lesson: Zambia is in Southern Africa, not West Africa, and has no confirmed cases of Ebola. ‘Mississippi on Alert’, then, for no good reason.
3. Avoid going to a store because someone who has Ebola went there too.
A nurse visited a bridal store in Ohio shortly before being diagnosed with the virus. Now no one is shopping there because: paranoia. To convince customers to return, the owners have scrubbed their shop down and brought in ultraviolet ray machines to rid it of any traces of the virus. This, after the health department told them it was unnecessary as Ebola doesn’t live long enough on surfaces to pose a risk.
This photo of a woman in a homemade protective suit at Dulles International Airport outside Washington has gone viral, and not because her outfit is on trend. There have been eight cases of Ebola in the US; gloves, a mask and body gown are not necessary here.
5.Prevent kids from attending a New Jersey school because they’re from Rwanda – which has zero reported cases of Ebola and is over 4 000km from the affected West African countries.
Two East African students were meant to begin classes on Monday at a school in New Jersey, but following a backlash from other parents, the school asked them to stay home for three weeks. Rwanda (perhaps in retaliation to this incident?), announced on Tuesday that it will start screening all Americans entering the country for Ebola, regardless of whether they are exhibiting symptoms or not.
As panic and ignorance about the epidemic continue to spread, it would be more useful to rely on facts instead of fear-mongering. Pack away the Hazmat suits and pick up a map.
A sign warning of the dangers of Ebola outside a government hospital in Freetown. (Pic: AFP)
We twist and turn on the dirt road, the tyres kicking up clods of mud. It has rained intermittently the whole afternoon and the road becomes increasingly difficult to negotiate, requiring the full 4-wheel drive.
The other landcruiser gets stuck briefly, stubbornly revving to keep up behind us. We toss and tumble around on the back seats as the land cruiser dives into another rut. “Welcome to ‘Kah-llun’” the driver announces.
This stretch of the day-long journey to the base at Kailahun started with wishes of “Bon voyage” hailed across the two-way radio in Bo at lunchtime. To get to Bo, we’d left Freetown at sunrise in a minibus, packed to the brim with luggage and mission staff.
There were half a dozen police check points between Freetown and Bo: each stop requiring some unpacking of the car in order to disembark, and then lining up to have our temperature taken, and occasionally having to wash our hands in chlorinated water.
Staff in white coats pointed the thermometer at our foreheads, and read the result out loud, while camouflage-clad troops looked on. “I’m from West Africa, you from South Africa”, one of them laughed, “Yes, we are all Africans!” we agreed, me thinking that a World Cup would have been more likely to bring us together than an epidemic tearing through the country.
But we had it easy. With special passes around our necks, and a Ministry of Health placard on the front window of the bus, proclaiming “ALLOW TO PASS – EBOLA RESPONSE”, we sped to the front of the one kilometre queue, while a line of trucks, cars and motor bikes, with Sierra Leoneans –- mothers, children and men of all ages –- sitting in the heat on the road, waited to be allowed through.
The government has implemented quarantined zones, to be adhered to for 21 days after the last reported case in each zone. It was evident that while usefully restricting movement, these measures were causing havoc in people’s lives, and the transport of supplies across the country. For me, this was the first indication that the posters on houses and trees might be true, that “EBOLA IS REAL”.
We stopped on the outskirts of Bo to take a tour of the treatment centre. Built in only five weeks, the centre can take in 100 patients, and even has a helipad. In the next phase an onsite laboratory will be installed to speed up the time between a blood sample being taken and the result being available.
Few sites have onsite laboratories, and specimens are taken by road for testing, often leading to people who test positive for Ebola mixing with those who test negative for several hours in the waiting area of the centre.
Walking up to the centre, one is filled with awe: the white tent-like structures look like an impressive utopian city. But at the same time, they invoke the fear and intrigue felt by anyone who is drawn to the television news broadcasts of the yellow hazmat suits, masks and goggles. From a distance and for the first time, we catch a glimpse of these suits for real: people unloading a stretcher from the back of a vehicle … “Was that a body?”
Inside, the centre is carefully organised into high and low risk zones. Hand washing points, consisting of elevated plastic vats of chlorinated water, with a bucket underneath, are strategically placed throughout, and the paths through the zones are cordoned off with orange barrier fences and a carefully planned open water drainage system.
We see national staff putting on their Personal Protective Equipment, one layer after the next, as we stand sweating in our single layer of scrubs and gumboots.
Where are the sick and dying? One patient emerges from the high risk zone and takes a seat behind the orange barrier fencing. A few metres away, behind another orange fence, a health promoter shouts across to him, “Hello, Mr X. Since you no longer have symptoms, you are getting better. We now need to wait to see what your viral load result is, and maybe you can go home.”
We crane our necks to get a glimpse of the sick in the high risk tent. While the staff in the hazmat suits move slowly and carefully around the ward, partitions allow the patients their privacy, screening off our inquisitive eyes and those who may well be dying next to them.
We hit the road to Kenema, enroute to Kailahun. In Kenema, the market place teams with people in close proximity, buying and selling goods and food. Where is the Ebola? Where is the fear? I wonder why the fear of infection is not keeping more people away from the town centre.
But I wonder no more as we approach a busy traffic circle: a man lies prostrate in the road, emaciated and his face contorted in pain. With one arm he tries to shade his eyes. Far gone, too far gone. We shake our heads and drive on. We look back. No one will approach him: he will most likely die alone. Yes, Ebola, it’s real.
Kathryn Stinson has a PhD in Public Health and works as an epidemiologist at the University of Cape Town. She has three children, two Great Danes and one very supportive husband. She is volunteering in Sierra Leone for an NGO and writes in her personal capacity.
Since the Ebola epidemic began in Guinea last December, the virus has claimed close to 4 000 lives and infected more than 7 000 people, most of them in West Africa. Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guinea have been hardest hit, with lock-downs imposed and armed forces called on in an attempt to stop the spread of the epidemic.
In neighbouring Côte d’Ivoire, which has not been affected yet, bloggers are proactively using social media in a bid to keep Ebola at bay.
“It is important to have a good hygiene”, a young woman in a YouTube video explains,” so I let myself lather against Ebola now!” She takes a deep breath and presses her lips together. Next to her, a man lifts a large plastic bucket. In one fell, he pours the frothy content over her head. Soaking wet and laughing, she lets out a squeaky cry.
Edith Brou, a popular Ivorian blogger, started the “Mousser contre Ebola” (Lathering against Ebola) campaign to raise awareness about the virus. Inspired by the very successful Ice Bucket Challenge, she initiated a local version on YouTube: with soap instead of ice and hygiene items instead of monetary donations. The foam shower’s principle is simple: by accepting the challenge, you must give three soaps or hand sanitizers to friends. If a person rejects the nomination, he is ‘punished’ by having to distribute nine hygiene items to people around him.
Since the campaign started in mid-August, it has triggered a veritable wave of lather on social media under the hashtag “#MousserContreEbola”. In a swimming pool, a bathtub, or on a roof – more than 50 people already have taken up the challenge. On her website MoussercontreEbola, Brou collects videos and photos from participants and provides important information about the world’s worst Ebola epidemic.
Edith Brou, blogger and founder of the Lather against Ebola challenge. (Pic: Supplied)
Of course, she also received negative responses to the challenge, Brou says. Some people thought it “useless or ridiculous”. But as many people in the country do not believe that Ebola really exists, it is particularly important to raise awareness. Despite the government’s prohibition, some Ivorians still continue eating bush meat. Others trust in God to protect them or repress their fear from the virus with humour. Côte d’Ivoire really is very close to the danger, Brou says. “The virus can arrive at any time.”
Another Ivorian blogger, Florent Youzan, has created a free interactive map for the prevention of Ebola. On it, “proven cases” in Guinea and Liberia, two neighbouring counties that are severely affected by Ebola, are featured. An orange marker is in the middle of the map: “On Saturday, August 30 2014, a suspected case of Ebola struck fear into Yamoussoukro, the political capital of Côte d’Ivoire.”
Youzan’s map also tells users about sensitisation and prevention activities organised in the country. In the village Kandopleu, in the west of Côte d’Ivoire, the government simulated an Ebola case to practise for an emergency. The Red Cross sensitised the population in the regions near the borders with Guinea and Liberia.
Reggae Stop Ebola, a reggae-style song, has been doing the rounds on social networks for several weeks.
A young man dances in the streets of Abidjan and sings, “You get very high fever, fatigue, headaches, nausea, diarrhoea and vomiting. You cough heavily and you start bleeding. Watch out brother, this virus is dangerous!” Taking an official communication by the government, journalist and blogger Israël Guébo rewrote the text into simple, accessible French and incorporated reggae music for a catchy tune.
“Every citizen should contribute to sensitisation against Ebola”, he says. He sees music as a simple and efficient way to reach a wide range of many people. A mobile operator already offers Stop Ebola already as a ringtone. Alongside the official version in French, Guébo published versions of the song with German and English subtitles. His goal is to have the song heard across all bars, restaurants and taxis “to delay to a maximum” the arrival of the virus in Côte d’Ivoire.
Tanja Schreiner studied journalism and communication in Germany and France. She has lived in several African countries and currently works in Côte d’Ivoire. Connect with her on Twitter.
