Sierra Leone Smell Ebola all over

As West African nations try to stop the deadly Ebola
virus from spreading, people living in the affected
countries are nervous. In Sierra Leone,
communities are keeping a close eye on the exact
locations where the disease has emerged.
The posters are crudely drawn and graphic.
There's one pasted to the wall of the squat,
concrete community centre in Kroo Bay, a slum in
the centre of the capital Freetown, the kind of place
where you can imagine disease spreading fast.
The houses are built of breeze block and have
battered, rusting roofs. The spaces between them
are piled with garbage, small children with no shoes
tote yellow plastic jerry cans of water through the
narrow lanes.
A pig lolls in the mud while her offspring snuffle in
the filth.
Many Sierra Leoneans can't read, so public
information is often presented on large posters.
People in Freetown are nervous. They are
desperate to keep the virus at bay, to keep it out in
the provinces. They keep track of the numbers in
the way they keep track of football scores.
I've been making radio programmes there, and a
couple of weeks ago we recorded one in Port Loko,
a province north of Freetown.
"Ah, Port Loko," said someone when I got back.
"Four cases."
I'd know from my colleagues immediately if they
were talking about Ebola. It was in the tone of
voice, the roll of the eyes, the uneasy laughter.
Then they would tell me that so and so had died and
I would feel that rush of adrenaline triggered by
sudden fear. One of my colleagues spent the whole
day last week wearing a pair of blue rubber gloves.
People are frightened for two reasons. First and
most importantly, because there's no known
vaccine, no cure; second, because of the ghastly
physical reality of the disease, as portrayed in
those lurid posters.
Yet these are people inured to disease. Consider,
for example, their attitude to malaria, which kills
thousands in Sierra Leone every year.
Not infrequently in the last few weeks I've
encountered people complaining of a headache or a
night of intense sweating.
They slide off to the hospital and reappear a day or
two later with a bag full of drugs. They laugh it off.
"Oh yeah, there are so many mosquitoes at this
time of year," they say.
"But you sleep under a net, right?" Well, actually no,
they don't, even though sleeping under a treated net
is the single most effective way to avoid getting
bitten by a mosquito and being infected with
malaria.
They see malaria as an occupational hazard but
they see Ebola as a death sentence.
I spent an instructive couple of hours at the
weekend with a woman from Finland. Eeva was
once a midwife, but she's just finished a five-week
stint with a Red Cross team that has been going
door to door in Kailahun province, the border region
where Ebola first arrived in Sierra Leone.
She was on what's known as a sensitisation
mission, explaining to people exactly how the virus
spreads and how to avoid it.
There are three simple rules, she told me.
Rule one: If you've got a headache or a fever, go to
the health centre for a test. You can recover from
Ebola if the infection is spotted early enough.
Rule two: If someone dies, don't touch the body.
It's highly infectious. Don't wipe the mouth, don't
close the eyes.
Rule three: Don't eat bushmeat, the meat of wild
animals.
The underlying message was this - Ebola is
manageable. It's deadly and frightening but if you
follow the three rules and use a lot of soap and
water, you probably won't get sick. And if you do,
even though the death rate is high, there are
survivors.
I told Eeva she was a brave woman, but she
shrugged the compliment off.
She said she'd had the opportunity to take two
different jobs - one in Sierra Leone, the other in
South Sudan, where there's continuing fighting. "I
told myself, I'm not going to South Sudan - I've got
a family," she said.
As I left Freetown on Sunday morning there was a
last reminder of the Ebola spectre. Outside the
airport building was a table and a couple of buckets.
We all had to wash our hands in water that carried
a strong whiff of chlorine.
My friend in the blue rubber gloves had jokingly
asked me if I might have space for him in my
suitcase.
I sympathise with his powerlessness; I had a plane
ticket; he can only sit and wait. I hope the message
that Ebola is both manageable and survivable gets
through.