ThinkTank

By Umaru Fofana

For the third time I visited Mariatu Kargbo this week at her Old Wharf residence at Wellington in the eastern Freetown suburb. She is a female member of one of the Ebola burial teams managed by the Red Cross, working in the Western Area Rural. Their job is straightforward but not simple

By Umaru Fofana

On the edges of Freetown is the beauty of the Atlantic Ocean – gold and white sandy beaches compete and empty themselves into the blue of the sea.

But on the edges of that ocean and beneath the veneer belies the ever-increasing filth that comes gushing from communities perched further up the foot of the mountain overlooking the shores and beyond.

By Umaru Fofana

On a bed inside the Port Loko Government Hospital he sits. All he now knows is a toy given to him by someone he does not know but assumes is his mother. As he cuddles the teddy bear, it is obvious Ibrahim Sankoh misses a hug he has apparently not had for a while. Both his parents got snatched away by Ebola. So did his siblings. The four-year-old boy got infected by the virus and recovered through the intervention of some Danish health workers at the GOAL-run facility in northern Sierra Leone.

By Umaru Fofana

It is Sunday afternoon at the ever-pristine Lumley beach. Cars are parked. Revellers already frolicking. Girls in miniskirts panting and perambulating. All at their peril and at the peril of the broader society.

By Umaru Fofana

The Ebola outbreak in Sierra Leone has exposed many things: from the obvious to the discreet, from the sublime to the ridiculous, from the altruist to the self-serving – both at the leadership and the followership.

By Umaru Fofana

There are certain things in life that get determined by our circumstance or the situation we find ourselves in. That could be for good or for bad. With the passage of time it is unimaginable that the man who would later become head of the Catholic Church was a Hitlerite. Pope Benedict was an active member of the Nazi Youth Wing during the Second World War. He would later become a symbol of global peace, harmony and justice as pontiff.

By Umaru Fofana