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By Patrick Hayes

Today I learned that a friend, his wife, and his eldest boy died of Ebola. Pe-ter Kanu was from Masiaka in Sierra Leone and he was the catechist for

his Roman Catholic parish there. A man of great faith and happiness, he tookcare of people, often at his own expense. He died in poverty, but he was veryrich. He once gave me a fine pineapple, which he grew in his garden, and Ioffered to share it with him. No, he said, it was just for me.

When I first arrived in Sierra Leone, where I was a visiting scholar in 2010,a priest took me to see the Roman Catholic Archbishop of the Diocese ofFreetown. It was a courtesy call, but for me it was an interesting introduc-tion to the country. Sitting in his air-conditioned office, we talked about thenational elections. Then, the power cut out and we were left in the dark. Yousee, he said, this little inconvenience is a symptom of something greater andif our politicians are unable to stabilize the country, there will be chaos.

A hospital in Kenema, Sierra Leone, where Ebola virus samples have been tested. Leasmhar/Wikimedia Commons photo

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Ebola Ravages Sierra Leone

22 THE LIVING CHURCH • November 16, 2014

rising. With police now occupied in responding tocalls from infected households or keeping the curiousaway from dead bodies, they cannot monitor the cityas before. Other irresponsible behavior has been re-ported in the Pujehun district on the southern borderwith Liberia. Contact tracers there have been called“ghosts” because they collect salaries without in-specting suspected households. Still other schemeshave families paying off health workers and burialteams to issue death certificates that falsely identifythe deceased as something other than an Ebola vic-tim. The stigma is often too great for families to bear.

Agriculture is also taking a hit. Forbes has reportedthat 5,000 small farmers who would ordinarily selltheir produce to Africa Felix, a juice manufacturer,have been stymied because of tolls levied at “healthcheck points” along major roads. Jonathan Shafer,managing director of Africa Felix, has noted that theEbola scare has prompted his chief operating officerand his chief technician to flee Sierra Leone. They hadno plan to return.

Investors in these kinds of businesses have pan-icked — so much so that the World Bank’s predictionsfor 2015 put revenue losses in the billions of dollars.Its estimates for “low Ebola” to “high Ebola” rangefrom $1.6 billion to $25.2 billion, depending upon theability to stem the spread of the disease by early nextyear. According to Kaifala Marah, Sierra Leone’s fi-nance minister, “every gain that we have made hasbeen lost.”

Reviving the engine of development is often at themercy of the central entry points to Sierra Leone

— Lungi Airport and the port in Freetown. Cancella-tion of flights to and from Sierra Leone by some coun-tries has troubled the burgeoning tourism industry.

Stability is precious and fleeting in Sierra Leone,where fear of Ebola is now rampant. The disease

has had some insidious repercussions, but instabilitymay be the worst. Every day shows the fragility of thegovernment. There are measures of this.

For average Sierra Leoneans, the timing of theEbola crisis could not be worse. It is the rainy seasonand, thanks to government-sanctioned quarantines,crop harvests are at a low. The price of food has sky-rocketed and forced people to go into the bush forfood and firewood. Quarantined areas such as Water-loo, about 20 miles east of Freetown, have seen severefood shortages, and the United Nations Food Pro-gram has had to step in to provide rice to thousandsof residents there, many of whom were queuing upshoulder-to-shoulder in public areas — precisely thekind of gathering a quarantine is meant to prevent.Add to this the further dependence on the world com-munity for survival and the demoralization of the peo-ple takes deeper root.

Economic forces are also jeopardizing national sta-bility. Growth rates — in some sectors topping 15 per-cent in investments in the last few years — have beenobliterated. London Mining, one of the key contractssecured by the Sierra Leonean government duringthis period, has announced it will be going into bank-ruptcy. The extractives industry is not what it used tobe and stock for the London-based company tumbleddramatically in the last year as the price of iron oredeclined. As a result, the company is reneging on acovenant with the people of Sierra Leone for thou-sands of jobs at its mine in Marampa and a needed in-jection of tax revenue.

When young people are unemployed and desperate,mischief occurs. In the southeastern city of Bo, for in-stance, crime — too often violent crime — has been

CDC

CATHOLIC VOICES

Ebola Ravages Sierra Leone

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The country’s pristine beaches are now empty. Mov-ing in massive relief aid to Freetown and the nation’sinterior has necessarily crowded out commercialtransports.

Education — primary, secondary, and tertiary —has ceased. A new school term that should havestarted weeks ago has been halted indefinitely.UNICEF reports that 108,000 students who shouldhave sat for their secondary school exams havemissed them. The Ministry of Education uses the ra-dio to reach younger children with lessons that can beengaged at home, but often villages do not have ac-cess to a radio signal (or radios) or students’ parentsare illiterate and do not place a high value on learning.Just as it was during Sierra Leone’s civil war, a lack ofaccess to the classroom retards development — bothin traditional math and reading skills and things likebasic hygiene education. College students are frus-trated, too. For those who have reached the culmina-tion of their studies and who have been selected asscholarship winners to earn graduate degrees in

places like China, South Korea, and Italy, not only isit difficult to obtain a visa but there is no money tohelp with plane fare.

Among the unseen burdens on Sierra Leoneans,Liberians, and Guineans is a strain on those workingoutside these countries who send funds to theirhomeland. Family members who have lost breadwin-ners have placed inordinate demands on expatriatesto increase their contributions. Of course, those work-ing in the diaspora have to pay for their own living ex-penses, too, and feel the pressure of loved ones backhome who are pinched by rising inflation. Ebola thus

has both economic and psychological burdens asso-ciated with it. No matter how hard they work, manyexpatriates carry the guilt of not being able to helpthose left behind.

For their part, churches have performed admirablyin the face of Ebola’s ravages. The Anglican Dio-

cese of Freetown recently supplied land to a chil-dren’s hospital east of the capital city of Freetown foran isolation unit. Bishop Thomas Wilson had beenholding the land in reserve, but the national need hasbeen so great, the diocese believed it had a Christianduty to arrange transfer. It joins other Christian bod-ies, such as Caritas, World Hope International, and theHealey International Relief Foundation, in setting uphealth facilities and moving urgent medical suppliesand foodstuffs to those areas of the country that lackcapacity or are under quarantine.

Already there is talk of a shortage of beds and bodybags in treatment centers across West Africa, andmore than one reporter has latched on to the idea that

if you sit outside a center longenough, some infected person isbound to show up only to be turnedaway. News at eleven. The reportson the death toll will continue, andthe agitation of the population fromthis tinderbox will also grow. At-tacking Ebola at its source — byfunding, by personnel, by equipment— will be a boon to stability. Other-wise, anarchy will ensue and a mas-sive global pandemic will be the re-sult.

West African nations that havevested interests in seeing an end toEbola are also joining forces, butmore needs to be done by nations inthe developed world to bring aboutnormalcy for the affected popula-tions. The Most Rev. Daniel Yinkah

Sarfo, Primate of West Africa, issued a recent state-ment encouraging “Anglican Churches or ChristianChurches the world over to express their solidarity byobserving one Sunday as Ebola Sunday to pray andmobilize resources for the affected areas in the sub-region or West Africa. Now Ebola is at war against hu-manity; the world must act now to stop Ebola.”

Patrick J. Hayes is archivist for the BaltimoreProvince of the Redemptorists and a former visitingscholar in religion at the University of Makeni,Sierra Leone.

“Anglican Churches or Christian Churchesthe world over [could] express their solidarityby observing one Sunday as Ebola Sunday topray and mobilize resources for the affectedareas in the subregion or West Africa. NowEbola is at war against humanity; the worldmust act now to stop Ebola.”

— The Most Rev. Daniel Yinkah Sarfo,Primate of West Africa