I like Belgium for its diverse population, wandering around in Antwerp reveals a glimpse of what the rest of the world might look like. At the same time the intolerance towards this diversity is increasing. I thought it was a joke until I actually saw the military standing guard in the Jewish quarter in Antwerp!
Imagine the surreal feeling I had during a meeting with Liberian ministers about quarantine measures taken for families of confirmed ebola patients. They started comparing with the military presence in Belgium, so how could we be against coercive measures taken in Liberia? High time to come out of my ebola bubble and see what is happening in the rest of the world!
The 2 months in Liberia were interesting, there was hope the last chains of transmission could be stopped and the outbreak could finally be declared as over. Unfortunately this was not the case and until the day I left the country there was still a lot of work to be done. So many children lost their parents, so many parents lost their children, the economical and social consequences of this outbreak only start to reveal now.
But I am back home, packing again to continue to Ethiopia next week. First making a stop in a western corner of Belgium, enjoying voluntary isolation, peace, quiet, silence and red wine (yes, I am a village girl!).
The temperature monitoring sheet has some blanks here and there, it seems these months of working in ebola context are slowly fading.
Vébola, over and out.
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| Elwa 3, MSF Ebola Treatment Centre, Monrovia, Liberia (January, 2015) |
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