11/19/2014 - 03:07 GMT
by Anne CHAON
There is little to celebrate in the tribal chiefdoms of eastern Sierra Leone, where the retreat of the Ebola virus is mitigated by grinding poverty worsened by draconian quarantine restrictions.
In Kenema, a diamond exporting hub and the heart of the west African nation's cocoa and coffee industry, no new infections have been recorded since October and the town bustles with trade and traffic.
But the district -- part of the Ebola epicentre straddling Sierra Leone, Liberia and Guinea -- remains isolated by a largely unsuccessful lockdown imposed in August to keep Ebola from spreading elsewhere.
"The trauma is still there and business is difficult," says Mohamed Basma, sitting in shorts and flip-flops behind a desk blasted by over-zealous air-conditioning.
A leading diamond trader in Kenema, Basma hasn't even the most tiny rock to show off.
"We can't say we're finished with Ebola, although here we've done a better job in controlling the virus than elsewhere and no new cases for almost 21 days is encouraging," he says.
Yet the authorities continue to prohibit public gatherings, preventing locals from working with spades and sieves the diamond-rich flood plains to the east, thus Sierra Leone is certain to miss its goal of exporting $200 million (160 million euros) in gems in 2014.
An ethnically-diverse, Krio-speaking city of 190,000, Kenema already has the highest incidence of Lassa fever -- another viral haemorrhagic disease -- in the world.
Ebola has killed more than 5,000 in west Africa since it emerged in southern Guinea in December, spreading first to Liberia and cutting a swathe through Sierra Leone since May.
Chain reaction
Highly infectious through exposure to bodily fluids, its early rapid spread was attributed in part to relatives touching victims during traditional funeral rites.
Epidemiologists agree that it was brought into Sierra Leone by a herbalist in the remote eastern border village of Sokoma. She claimed to be able to heal Ebola and encouraged sick patients to cross from Guinea for treatment.
She died and the mourners at her funeral fanned out across the Kissi tribal chiefdoms, starting a chain reaction of infections which has so far led to an official toll of around 1,200 deaths in Sierra Leone, although the real figure is thought to be much higher.
Eleven checkpoints dot the 300-kilometre (185-mile) route between Freetown and Kenema, with police or soldiers stopping travellers to question them about their business.
Cars are banned from the roads between 5:00 pm and 9:00 am and in the early morning, long lines of trucks, vans and taxis wait for the go-ahead to continue their journeys, surrounded by traders offering rice, soda, banana and pineapple.
Drivers and their passengers have to undergo temperature checks and sometimes a subtle exchange of notes eases the passage eastwards.
"We haven't been able to go to the fields for six months. We lost our cassava crops, rice and vegetables. The disease is declining, but we still have seven houses in quarantine," says Mohamed Fofanah at Mayemba, a hamlet on the route that has seen 25 deaths and 17 survivors.
"We're not supposed to go anywhere else and others aren't supposed to come here to Kenema," says Sidie Fofanah, founder of Starline radio, which educates its audience in the east on the ravages of Ebola.
Prices soaring
He says it is difficult to travel to Freetown and even getting to the neighbouring town of Kailahun, four hours further east on a potholed, often flooded muddy road, is a Herculean task.
Prices are soaring as a result and, in the absence of market stabilisation measures, inflation is out of control.
"Everything changes in a flash -- something that which costs $2 today will be worth $5 tomorrow, or $15," says Fofanah.
"Life seems back to normal, with people at work, but banks still only open from 9:30 am to midday, there is still no school and, above all, no doctors," he adds.
"We've lost three who died of Ebola at the beginning of the epidemic, and the others fled without being replaced."
Nevertheless, cocoa farmers are beginning to return to Kenema carrying jute bags full of their produce to the city's exporters by motorbike or taxi.
"Our problem is transportation," says Bassam Ayoub, owner of the Ayoub Trading business.
To reach the port of Freetown, from where the company exports its beans to the Netherlands and Turkey, its trucks take up to two days to negotiate 350 kilometres of road.
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