On the road...

Over the past week I (Heleen) travelled across Sierra Leone. First to Pujehun, in the far south, then to Kailahun in the east. It was nice to get away from Freetown, the always busy city, where the Ebola messages are right in your face, non-stop: posters, paintings, radio messages, etc. etc.

Now I looked out of the window and saw beautiful wide rivers, birds dancing in the air, a mother playing with her baby, holding him high over her head, a child smiling and calling out “Pumwuy!” (white person), a little boy holding a goat (upside down) under his arm. Despite the dryness of this season, I spotted some beautiful flowers: bright red, purple, yellow… The Ebola crisis seemed far away.

But when taking a closer look, I noticed the differences with earlier visits: schools are locked up, playing fields deserted. In the markets all the stalls are empty. There is not much activity around the clinics and hospitals. We passed several Community Care Centers for (suspected) Ebola patients and one of the MSF Ebola Treatment Centers. Then there were the frequent checkpoints where we had to come down from our vehicle, wash our hands with a chlorine solution and have our temperatures checked. And anytime I looked out of the window my view got partly blocked by a sticker saying “Stop Ebola. Prevention is your best protection.” Ebola is real, also outside Freetown. In fact, Kailahun was the district where it all started.

In one of the villages I chatted with two teenagers, a boy and a girl selling oranges and sweets. They told me they have no idea when their school will reopen, but “If school opens tomorrow, I will go back,” the boy said determined.

In Pujehun I met with the Save the Children staff. We brought out large sheets of paper and started describing the Ebola crisis through the eyes of a child: no school to attend, not being allowed to touch your friends, hearing non-stop Ebola messages on the radio, seeing graphic pictures displaying the symptoms of Ebola, hearing people talk and use unknown language: quarantine, contact tracing, swab taking… As farming activities were restricted, many families faced hunger and malnutrition. Children saw the ambulances come and go. An SCI staff commented: “they will say, ‘that ambulance took my mother and she never came back’…” People in strange suits came to the village to remove the dead in plastic bags. Some children survived Ebola but were no longer welcome in their communities.

The next step was to think: how would children feel about all these things? Another long list was made: sad, afraid, confused, abandoned, stigmatized… And then the last step: how may children behave when they feel like this? Some withdraw, some cry, some wet their beds, others struggle with concentration, while there are also children who become irritable and start fighting a lot.

It was a very helpful exercise which opened our eyes to the psychosocial impact of the Ebola crisis on children. We can’t change what has happened to the children, and may not be able to change what is happing to them today. But together we can make efforts to help children come to terms with the stressful events they have experienced. That’s what I hope to be doing over the next few weeks…

My visit to the Kailahun Field Office was cut short when I came down with food poisoning. Never a great experience, but worse in the era of Ebola. I was not allowed to work and had to spend most of Thursday in the staff guest house, resting and drinking lots of ORS. Thankfully my temperature remained within the normal range and today I was able to travel back to Freetown. Please keep me in your prayers as I further recuperate…

On the road...

Beautiful rivers...

This is the road to Kailahun - a district with a population of 465,000!

Temperature check

The dusty town of Kailahun, a district capital without paved roads...