“Cordon” in real life setting?

After 3 weeks of being too tired to play tennis in the weekend I forced myself this morning and cycled over to Bo Club to meet the coach for another session on the court. On my way over there, I heard a woman shouting something at me in Kreo. I could pick up ‘ebola’ in her sentence so I stopped and asked someone to translate it for me: ‘you puwnis are well protected against ebola, but you will infect us and we will die’. As I continued my way I thought about what the women said. Maybe she has a point; we are protected in some way, because the last days a lot has been done to prepare ourselves for an outbreak in Bo. In the houses, chlorine buckets have been installed to wash our food and our ‘bodies’ to kill any virus trying to invade our system. The fact that you smell like a swimming pool the whole day is just a minor inconvenience.

However, it is sad to notice that a lot of people believe that the ‘white men’ are injecting the ebola virus in patients in the hospital. It shows again how important it is to really understand the cultural believes and ways of reasoning in the population, otherwise there is no way this outbreak will be contained soon. These believes and rumours result in people infected with ebola hiding and running away from the hospital, because they are scared. Soon all hospitals in Bo will be empty and all the children suffering from severe malaria will die at home, because their parents are too scared to come to the hospital. Off course they are scared! Everyone is very worried at the moment, puwni or not. 

Pharmaceutical companies don’t invest in finding treatment as it will not pay off the investment. Previous outbreaks have always been contained rather quickly and the number of people infected remained low compared to other diseases. Although there is a lack of treatment, the last months showed that people do fight the virus by themselves and walk out of the isolation ward in good health. Providing supportive treatment like fluids, malaria treatment and vitamins can help to make the body strong enough to fight the virus. That is why it is so important to come to the hospital and get this treatment, and above all, to prevent infecting other people. Too many have died already, this really needs to stop.

I didn’t manage to keep my eyes on the ball today…

Man climbing the waterfalls in Kenema, Sierra Leone, 2014