Monica Mark in Kailahun
Repercussions have radiated from far-flung villages to financial markets, and from rural farmers to urban dollar boys
When his neighbours began falling ill with Ebola, Sheikh Kallon felt fortunate that he was well enough to continue tending his farm deep in the forested interior of Sierra Leone. Then, one of his drinking buddies died of the disease, and Kallon's entire family was quarantined for 21 days.
"I asked my workers to keep going to the farm, but they said they don't want to touch money from my hands in case they get Ebola," he said.
With his crops rotting in the fields, Kallon now spends his days sitting with his family on their porch surrounded by soldiers enforcing the quarantine. The soldiers hardly need bother: lifelong neighbours are too terrified to approach, and a few miles away an entire community that has been unable to trade altogether has run out of salt.
Rural farmers like Kallon – whose rice, cocoa and cassava fields account for nearly half Sierra Leone's gross domestic production – are among the hardest-hit in the economic fallout of the world's biggest Ebola epidemic.