Year: 2014

Sierra Leone quarantines more than 1-million people

A woman passes a sign posted in an awareness campaign against the spread of Ebola in Freetown, Sierra Leone. (Pic: Reuters)
A woman passes a sign posted in an awareness campaign against the spread of Ebola in Freetown, Sierra Leone. (Pic: Reuters)

Sierra Leone has ordered the quarantine “with immediate effect” of three districts and 12 tribal chiefdoms – affecting more than one million people – in the largest lockdown in west Africa’s deadly Ebola outbreak.

President Ernest Bai Koroma, in a national televised address late on Wednesday, announced that the northern districts of Port Loko and Bombali were to be closed off along with the southern district of Moyamba – effectively sealing off around 1.2-million people.

With the eastern districts of Kenema and Kailahun already under quarantine, more than a third of the population of six million, in five of the nation’s 14 districts, now finds itself unable to move freely.

“The isolation of districts and chiefdoms will definitely pose great difficulty but the lives of everyone and the survival of our country takes precedence over these difficulties,” Koroma said.

“These are trying moments for everyone in the country.”

The deadliest Ebola epidemic on record has infected almost 6 000 people in west Africa and killed nearly half of them, according to the World Health Organisation’s latest figures.

The virus can fell its victims within days, causing rampant fever, severe muscle pain, vomiting, diarrhoea and — in many cases — unstoppable internal and external bleeding.

In Sierra Leone, Ebola has infected 1 813 people, killing 593, by the WHO count.

Koroma said that 12 of the county’s 149 tribal chiefdoms – much smaller administrative areas than districts – were also to be placed in quarantine. The total population in these areas was not immediately clear.

The president said corridors for travel to and from non-quarantined areas had been established but would only operate between 9:00 am and 5pm.

“The Ministry of Health and Sanitation and the emergency operation centre will establish additional holding centres in the quarantined chiefdoms,” Koroma said.

Death toll
Sierra Leone announced on Wednesday that around 100 bodies and 200 patients had been collected from homes during a nationwide three-day lockdown and house-to-house information campaign which ended on Sunday.

“To sustain our efforts in overcoming the challenges that were further revealed during the house-to-house campaign and in consultation with our partners – and in line with our people’s avowed commitment to support extra measures to end the Ebola outbreak – the government decided to institute these further measures,” Koroma added.

The WHO said earlier this week 5 864 people had been infected since the virus first emerged in southern Guinea in December, and that 2 811 had died.

In Liberia, which has been hit hardest by the outbreak, 3 022 people have been infected and 1 578 have died while in Guinea, Ebola has infected 1 008 people, killing 632.

Nigeria has recorded 20 cases, including eight deaths, since the virus first arrived in the country with a Liberian finance ministry official, who died in Lagos on July 25.

Guinea’s President Alpha Conde and cabinet ministers from Liberia and Sierra Leone were due to attend a meeting in New York on Ebola convened by United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon later Thursday.

The meeting – part of the United Nations General Assembly – will hear from US President Barack Obama and world leaders are expected to pledge help for efforts to try to contain the spread of the virus.

Nigerian President Goodluck Jonathan appeared to jump the gun on medical advice at home on Wednesday to tell an applauding UN that Nigeria was free of Ebola.

“We can confidently say that today Nigeria is Ebola free,” Jonathan told the largest diplomatic gathering in the world to a ripple of applause in New York.

“Nigeria is Ebola free,” he said a second time to further applause.

Doctors said earlier they would have to wait to declare the outbreak over despite the Nigerian federal health ministry saying all patients being monitored for the virus had been cleared.

Rod Mac Johnson for AFP

Lessons from the Kenyan classroom

Children play at the sprawling Mathare slums, one of the largest and poorest in Africa, near Kenya's capital Nairobi. (Pic: Reuters)
Children play at the sprawling Mathare slums, one of the largest and poorest in Africa, near Kenya’s capital Nairobi. (Pic: Reuters)

On a recent Thursday at around midday, I saw a group of kids, not more than 15, who by their size appeared to be in nursery school.

The little boys and girls in pink checked shirts and grey pair of shorts were clustered in front of televisions on display.

They were pointing at a monkey swinging on the screens. They sighed in awe when they saw the close-up shots of ants. Around them were aisles after aisles full of new products for sale.

When I saw them, I thought: “Wow, these kids are out shopping at this hour … shouldn’t they be in class?”

However, unknown to me they were in class. Their teacher had brought her class on a trip to a SUPERMARKET.

Let that sink in.

A supermarket.

That one place that we dash into quickly to get a few things was their location for an educational trip.

Their teacher enthusiastically showed them why the many TVs in different sizes were on the shelves and why they had price tags on them. And that was not all; she was also describing to these young children why certain aisles were labelled the way they were.

Soap.

Body lotion.

Glass.

Again, a trip to a supermarket.

It stood out for me because school excursions during my primary school days were always out of town, probably to a beach or an agricultural institution or to the zoo or the airport – what I would now consider ‘educational’. A supermarket, in my view, was the least educational place for any learner.

But I was wrong.

From the looks of things and by the teacher’s thorough explanation of what happened here, you could tell this was an important trip.

The supermarket is in Mathare North. Mathare in Kenya is an area known for slums (second to Kibera), violence and more slums. In fact a quick search on Google shows you that the extent of poverty here is on another level.

Indeed it is true. I know, I live here.

The area has informal settlements popping up all over. Every few hundred metres you are bound to find a burst sewer that flows into water pipes, and food vendors. You will see clinics and health centres competing for space with bars and entertainment joints. You will see stalls lined up, trying to attract potential customers with their music, sales pitches or adverts.

There are car washes, colourful matatus (public taxis) and happy children playing on the road side. There are high-rise houses so close to each other that if one tenant has a cold, the neighbour next door would probably pick it up. That close. There are electricity wires in meshes swaying and scrapping the air in the Mathare skies.

Each day as I get into a matatu to town, I pass school children who, despite their torn socks and faded uniforms, carry paper bags full of books as they head to class. I see little boys and girls bracing the morning chill to get to school.

It was only when l I bumped into the class on this trip that I realised their lessons were both in and out of the classrooms.

I deduced that their teacher wanted to show them the available possibilities amidst the sea of poverty they knew. There was such a high level of want that these young minds would look forward to attending class the next day, pegged on the possibility of stepping into a supermarket that they either passed by every morning or whose branded paper bags they saw on the streets.

Seeing these inquisitive children asking why the soaps were put away from the bread and maize flour made me realise that while this visit to the supermarket was ordinary to me, it was probably a first for these little leaders.

You could see the admiration in their eyes as shoppers carried items passed them. It hit me that this trip was the opening of new chapters in these children’s lives. That beyond the mire of life in a slum town as they know it, there was so much more available. So much variety was presented to these kids but circumstances had hindered them from reaching out to them.

I saw this and I was challenged to take a fresher look at the things I have and assume exist for everyone else.

Later, the children filed past the teller and each was given a lollipop on their way out. Some of them began to undo the lollipop wrappers in glee. Then I noticed one who looked at his sweet for a while and then simply put it into his shirt pocket, stretched out his palm and joined his hand to complete a chain of little hands and glossy excited eyes.

Once their lesson for the day was over, they streamed out with their teacher.

Eunice Kilonzo is a print journalist and storyteller who tells tales on development, feminism and health. Connect with her on Twitter: @Eunicekkilonzo 

Survivor of Nigeria church collapse tells of days of darkness

Beds used by guests are seen near an excavator at the site of the collapsed Synagogue Church of All Nations in Lagos on September 17 2014. (Pic: Reuters)
Beds used by guests are seen near an excavator at the site of the collapsed Synagogue Church of All Nations in Lagos on September 17 2014. (Pic: Reuters)

Lying in the rubble of the guesthouse, only able to tell if it was night or day through a tiny crack, Lindiwe Ndwandwe heard the screams of others beneath the debris slowly turn silent.

For five days the 33-year-old was trapped inside a toilet next to the dining hall of the collapsed Synagogue Church of All Nations, breathing only through a small hole in the wreckage.

In the end, she was forced to drink her own urine to survive.

“It’s like a dream to me that really, it’s me that came out from here,” the South African told AFP on Saturday as she surveyed the remains of the church in the Nigerian city of Lagos.

“I don’t believe it. The tears that I cry, it’s because I don’t believe.”

A total of 86 people were killed and dozens more left trapped when the guesthouse attached to the church run by Nigerian preacher TB Joshua collapsed on September 12.

Some 350 South Africans were thought to be visiting the church in the Ikotun neighbourhood of the megacity of Lagos when the three-storey building came down during construction work.

Joshua, one of Nigeria’s best-known evangelical preachers referred to by followers across the world as “The Prophet” or “The Man of God”, on Sunday pledged to go to South Africa to meet survivors and their families.

He observed a minute of silence at his weekly morning service, and said he would “be travelling to South Africa to meet people from South Africa and other nations… in memory of martyrs of faith”.

Legal action
But South Africa’s largest opposition party on Sunday said it will push the government to launch a class action against the church, where 84 of its nationals lost their lives.

Democratic Alliance shadow foreign minister Stevens Mokgalapa said the fact that rescue workers complained that staff at the church had impeded their work in the immediate aftermath of the disaster meant there could be cause for legal action.

“The DA believes that there is now enough evidence for the South African government to, at the very least, explore the possibility of a class action suit against the (church) on behalf of the affected families,” Mokgalapa said in a statement.

“It stands to reason that the church and its members may be criminally liable for the death of a number of South Africans who could have been rescued from the rubble if rescue work was speedily permitted.”

South Africa is sending a plane to Lagos to retrieve survivors of the disaster, media outlets reported.

Nigerian President Goodluck Jonathan visited the church on Saturday and promised to investigate the cause of the tragedy.

He said he would hold talks with stakeholders in the construction industry on how to prevent such a thing happening again, expressing his condolences to South African President Jacob Zuma.

Kenya offers fully-paid holiday to US teenager mistaken for ‘white widow’

A 'Red Notice' for the arrest of Samantha Lewthwaite issued by Interpol. (Pic: Getty)
A ‘Red Notice’ for the arrest of Samantha Lewthwaite issued by Interpol in September 2013. (Pic: Getty)

Kenya’s government has offered an all-expenses-paid holiday in Kenya to a 15-year-old American teenager and her family after police mistook her for Samantha Lewthwaite, the British terrorist suspect nicknamed the “white widow”.

The teenager was “harassed by police in Mlolongo”, outside the capital Nairobi, “on accusations of looking like” Lewthwaite, the government said.

Joseph Ole Lenku, Kenya’s interior minister, announced that “the government will sponsor a fully-paid holiday for the family” to make up for the incident and that police were also investigating.

Lewthwaite was married to Germaine Lindsay, one of four Islamist suicide bombers who attacked the London transport network on 7 July 2005, killing 52 people.

The 30-year-old Muslim convert has been linked to Somalia’s al-Shabab rebels, who have launched a string of attacks in Kenya including the assault on Nairobi’s Westgate shopping centre that claimed at least 67 lives a year ago on Sunday.

There has been no confirmed sighting of Lewthwaite since she gave Kenyan police the slip in Mombasa in 2011, reportedly using a false South African passport. Last month Kenyan detectives hunting her said the trail had gone cold.

She is wanted in Kenya on charges of being in possession of explosives and conspiracy to commit a felony dating back to December 2011, and is the subject of an Interpol “red notice” warrant for her detention issued at Kenya’s request.

David Smith for the Guardian

Nigeria: TB Joshua under pressure over fatal church collapse

(Pic: emmanuel.tv)
TB Joshua (Pic: emmanuel.tv)

Popular Nigerian preacher and televangelist TB Joshua was under mounting pressure on Wednesday to co-operate with the authorities after a fatal building collapse that claimed at least 67 lives.

TB Joshua and staff at his Synagogue Church of All Nations had so far failed to disclose information to the investigation, the Lagos state government and emergency services said.

South Africa’s President Jacob Zuma announced on Tuesday that 67 of his compatriots were killed in the collapse on Friday.

Pretoria’s ambassador to Abuja complained investigators had faced difficulties in getting detailed information on the ground.

In Lagos, rescuers were still picking through the rubble with heavy lifting equipment and using sniffer dogs in the search for survivors.

“The church is not co-operating with emergency workers at all,” said National Emergency Management Authority (Nema) spokesperson for the southwest region, Ibrahim Farinloye.

“For the first three days of the incident, the church people were very hostile and prevented rescue officials access to the site,” he told AFP.

Earlier access may have saved lives, he added, giving the latest toll as 67 with 131 survivors.

South Africa’s ambassador to Nigeria, Lulu Mnguni, told the eNCA news channel that the death toll was still uncertain.

“The numbers can still either go up or down. We have put more people on the ground to assist us,” he said.

Some five South African church tour groups totalling about 300 people were thought to have been in Lagos at the time, the government said.

Toyin Ayinde, Lagos State commissioner for town planning and urban development, said an investigation would examine Joshua’s claim that a low-flying plane may have been responsible for the collapse.

He told Nigeria’s Channels television they were checking with Lagos international airport, which is just east of the church, about the altitude of planes in the area at the time.

Samples were being taken from the building to determine the material used in the construction.

Initial indications suggested the collapse was caused because extra floors were being added to the building without strengthening foundations.

Ayinde said Joshua and his staff had not yet met engineers and representatives of the Lagos State Emergency Management Agency, which was affecting their ability to disclose accurate information.