Overview...

What started as an awareness raising and ethnographic styled walk through Sierra Leone, this site now details the encounters of a not so academic academic who spends more time occupying Wall Street and squats than a university...

Wednesday, October 15, 2014

The Precarity of Living with Ebola

I don't know where to begin.  I've never in my life hoped for anyone to have Malaria (especially after almost dying of it myself), and never even thought much of Typhoid fever.  But right now I am hoping, and asking for any and everyone's positive thoughts and prayers, that Yapo just has malaria or typhoid.

Yapo and Tyson
For months I have been interacting  almost daily with Yapo in Sierra Leone, trying to figure out a way to combat this deadly disease.  Trying to raise awareness here in the US, get donations for food and medicine, and simply trying to get people here to care.  Yet, repeatedly, I have to tell him I've come up empty.


It took us three years to scratch together enough money just to start building a small office/community center in Makeni.  We finally sent the money - $3800 - in two allotments last spring, and started building the foundation for our vision for alternative, community centered not-for-profit "development" in Sierra Leone.  We got this high:

aibia's office/community center...
Then Ebola struck, and everything in the country stopped.  But not Yapo, Throughout it all, He has been working incredibly hard, struggling to make things better.  Proposal after proposal, idea after idea: an information campaign, a door to door awareness campaign, medical professionals, volunteers, etc.  The budget dropped and the plans changed as we came up empty one after the other. What about just food and medicine?   We tried to no avail, but yapo kept working.  He created a group called "save Salone" on whatsapp made up of over 30 professionals and connected people working towards productive responses to Ebola.  From that day I have been connected not just to him, but to his whole network.  This has of course connected my network to him and them.  This website i"m writing on right now, our organizations website (www.aibia.org), facebook, etc.  The world that I know and the people I engage with have been connected because of Yapo's tireless work ethic.  And work done in the face of a deadly disease that is taking life after life around him, and has literally destroyed the entire fabric of society in Sierra Leone and the surrounding countries.  Everything has stopped.  Food, jobs, no one can touch anyone, nothing can be moved around the country or in and out of it really either.  There is only the food you can grow, and the salvation of hope.  An entire population being taught to fear touching another person...

Yet throughout this, Yapo is sending picture after picture, story after story, of what life is like on the ground dealing with Ebola.  Orphans, ambulances, quarantined people, even the dead.  Whatever it takes to have the story told.  But not just to get the story out, but because he is trying to affect local change.  To stop Ebola there in Makeni.  He has been on the front lines trying to make this better, better for all of us.  These are some of his pictures:

Suspected large scale contamination of a village...
A recent orphan...
A little girl being taken to isolation...
A women headed for quarantine...
All of that work came under a different light this morning though.  I got a message from him in his typical humble fashion.
"Tim sorry, i might not be able to followup with the documentary thing for now, because i have some fever, though not too severe for now, they might put me under isolation for observation."
Like somehow the documentary is more important than his fever.  Of course to him it is, because the documentary is a way to get people throughout the rest of the world to know and care about what is happening in West Africa.  The fact that he might have Ebola and a better than not chance of dying doesn't seem as important.  Amazing, the will and heart of some people...

----Break----

Wooo!!!  Update!!!  paused to check phone and he just got the test back, Typhoid fever!!  No Ebola!!  He will have to be admitted to the hospital for three days, but should be ok after some antibiotics.  Never would I have thought I'd be glad that a friend of mine has a disease that kills 200,000 people per year globally, but with antibiotics and a few days he should be fine.  With Ebola, there is no cure, and in this outbreak 60-70% of people with it are dying (compared to .09% fatality rates with Typhoid).

This has been a very scary morning.  A morning that happened to me here in the US just today, but that is happening to the everyone in West Africa everyday right now, every day.  As people die though, we do so little.  Our governments send small contingents of 300 or 600 people, old medical supplies, and pay it lip service.  Only when a man dies in Dallas and his nurses or a nurse in Spain catch the disease do we really stand up an start to take notice.  People claiming Ebola is fear-mongering, the next disease said to be - but that won't be - a threat.  Yes, maybe not to you today, but an entire region of the world is being devastated by it.  And if we don't stop it there, it will make its way here.....              

Recent Orphans... 
Yapo when I was there...
Yapo and I trying to make some bricks!

Taking its toll

Powerful Commentary from Sierra Leone:

"Friends, these days you need much more than courage to carry on here. You wake up in the morning , turn your  tv on, the news is about ebola deaths, images of body bags, mass burial and scary projections nothing to smile about. You turn the radio on , the news is about health workers on strike, burial  team, misuse of ebola funds, corruption and some politicians that are mocking their people even during the outbreak. Food prices coutinue to go up , more businesses are folding up and our way of life totally affected. You don't  know who to trust. Your son or your wife ? In the public transport or your grilfriend might even be your free ticket to the disease. You saw a friend loose his whole family to the disease, your next door neighbors are quarantine. And you ask yourself, who is next? Schools are closed; on leisure activities and the figures for new cases continue to go up . You count yourself very lucky to return home safe everyday without any hitch even as we put up brave face but the truth is that we are living in constant fear.  This is Sierra Leone for u today! Am I lying?��

Leh God sorry 4 we ya!"

Tuesday, October 14, 2014

Militarized Expansion

Ebola:
"BREAKING NEWS: Ebola confirmed among S/L army battalion (LEOBATT 2) on standby for deployment to Somalia. D entire battalion to b quarantine today.credit Umaru fofana"

The last safe place from Ebola?

Ebola in Sierra Leone:
"A village in koinadugu is said to have recorded 20 unexplained deaths. Fakoya village in Nenie Chiefdom has been quarantined and blood samples collected for ebola tests to ascertain whether the reported deaths are ebola related. If the results prove positive it will be the first time the virus has gotten its way to Koinadugu district which remains the only district without the virus."