ThinkTank

By Umaru Fofana

A Chinese version of a US-designed Hummer jeep parked along Lumley in the west of the Sierra Leonean capital. On it was inscribed – again modelled on something American – “Centre for Disease Control”.

Some Chinese health workers had stopped at a shop to grab a few bottles of water. They looked well dressed, Western-style, so that you had the impression they were educated in the America or Europe. They were apparently heading out to the east of Freetown where the Chinese-run hospital is situated at Jui.

By Umaru Fofana

Seven months into the Ebola outbreak in Sierra Leone new infection rates are escalating while the response to the virus seems to be locked in some power play mostly from outside and mostly around resources.

While that goes on, Kingtom cemetery where all of Freetown’s dead are buried these days is being expanded. There are even plans to move the burials to somewhere at Allen Town. Space is clearly not enough for the dead. How fast our people are dying as Ebola continues to go on the prowl!

By Umaru Fofana

Virtually everyone who travelled on the Brussels Airline flight from Freetown a few weeks ago noticed that it had onboard a passenger who could barely stand on her feet, unaided. Not because she was sick. Rather because she was clearly inebriated.

By Umaru Fofana

Ebola is taking a heavy toll on our health care professionals. You have to have the steel of a brave soldier to confront an enemy that’s just killed your colleague – not least when you cannot see that enemy and you have an option to flee.

These children play mostly barefoot in a house just next to an Ebola hit compound at Rogbangba

By Umaru Fofana

By Umaru Fofana

I still cannot come to terms with the fact that a journalist – or any other citizen for that matter – can be arrested at the say-so of the president of a country that claims to be democratic without clearly-stated reasons – state of emergency or not. Then such an arrest is not given the backing of a court of competent jurisdiction even if it is days after the person was picked up. This is more worrisome when such an arrest can be otherwise made using an existing law however obnoxious the law may be.

Most of these children in Kigbal have been orphaned by Ebola

By Umaru Fofana