Ebola

Late Wednesday night, I made the really difficult decision to move up my departure date and go home early from Liberia.  When the Peace Corps announced that it was pulling out of Liberia (in addition to Sierra Leone and Guinea), I had to take that as my cue to leave as well – with the loving prodding of my family, advisers, and friends :) – Thank you to all of you who took the time to tell me you were thinking of me and (probably more importantly) who took on the difficult task of convincing me to do something you knew I didn’t want to do.  It’s the right decision to leave.

That being said, I do want to take this opportunity to correct what I think is an imbalance in the media coverage of what is happening here.  Ebola is a very serious, dangerous illness.  There is no cure (although there are treatment options which have been having a greater degree of success than in the past).  However, while far too many people are dying and we do need to take this seriously and education about the disease and its prevention needs to be forthcoming, I think the western media is taking this as another opportunity to grab onto a negative story about Africa and milk it for all its horrible, heart-wrenching details (at least from what I have seen through my satellite tv which plays BBC news on repeat…so maybe it’s a skewed perspective).  This disease is transmitted by contact with an acutely infected or deceased person’s bodily fluids (blood, sweat, vomit, pee, etc.) or by contact with infected food (bushmeat or fruit that has been eaten by fruitbats, etc).  Because of this, the risk for people can be minimized by taking the necessary precautions (washing your hands and clothes, avoiding contact with other people, eating thoroughly cooked food, etc.) and is especially low for many Americans who would be in Liberia.  I will admit that, given that I still live like a Peace Corps Volunteer and take shared taxis where I sit basically on top of strangers and move about crowded markets, etc., my risk level is higher than the average American citizen in Liberia (yes, I have discontinued all of those activities and now feel like a princess in my own taxi which takes me to the supermarket where my driver insisted on holding my shopping basket for me today, it was ridiculously uncomfortable).  I firmly believe that I could continue to be here and protect myself if I continued to take the necessary precautions.  But that is provided that I could eventually leave…which I was getting more and more concerned about my ultimate ability to do.  I was originally scheduled to depart Liberia on Arik Airlines, a Nigerian company which suspended all flights to Liberia after a Liberian man died of Ebola after arriving in Nigeria.  With my flight cancelled – and not knowing if other airlines would also decide to stop service to Liberia, and with the land borders closed, I had to decide that it was important for me to take this opportunity to move up my flight and go home early.  Learning that the Peace Corps was evacuating volunteers was enough to make me really sit up and admit that I don’t know what is happening on the larger policy level and can’t guarantee that higher ups won’t decide to take away my ability to go home when I want/need.

Now let’s talk about what Liberia is doing about Ebola.  There are massive education efforts going on – from billboards to flyers to pop songs on the radio (they are pretty catchy! I have found myself singing them to myself!).  There is water with chlorine and soap for washing your hands at the entrance to most places (government offices, supermarkets, my apartment building, etc.) – my hands constantly smell like I’ve been in a pool, and I am A-ok with that.  People have stopped shaking hands – which is very disconcerting as Liberians are really friendly people and shaking hands with the distinctive snap at the end is something so embedded in Liberian culture.  People are wearing gloves on the street.  I even saw a guy bring a friend a bag-water and be sure to tell the guy which corner of the water bag the saleswoman had touched so he would drink from another section.  People are not letting their kids run around to other people’s houses.  And most recently, the president has announced that all non-essential government staff will stop going to work as of today and then all the government ministries will be closed for one month while the buildings are cleaned (which selfishly made me feel a bit better about leaving as I wouldn’t be able to do much of the work that I had planned even if I was staying).  Obviously all of this is from my experience in Monrovia as I have not been upcountry since my first weekend here, but I feel like people here at least are very well-informed and I am hopeful that with this added caution the epidemic will soon be more under control.  This does not speak to the situation at hospitals and clinics, of which I only have very bleak second-hand information, but I think that knowledge of how to protect yourself from contracting the disease is the first step.

Perhaps not the best made flyer (I might not have written "from the Ebola virus" at the top like that...) but just to show you the sort of thing that's being handed out.

Hand washing station

One last thing and then I’ll stop going on and on about Ebola (which I now know more about than I ever thought I would!), one thing that is really hard about this disease is how common its symptoms are in other illnesses.  The first sign is a sudden fever, followed by weakness, followed by vomiting and/or diarrhea.  Well, I think I just described at least a dozen different diseases that are common in Liberia.  I myself, as I mentioned in a previous post, came down with a cold this week and was so nervous about Ebola that I convinced myself it was possible I had it! (I don’t, I called the Ebola hotline just to be 100% sure and the nice operator man and I had a good laugh at the fact that I clearly did not have Ebola – although my sore throat, headaches, and cough do show up on some of the published symptoms lists!).  Anyway, the point is that, with people being so afraid of Ebola and the symptoms being so commonplace, it really is a difficult situation here and people are tempted to and do turn on one another at the first signs of the disease, it’s really heartbreaking.

In the end, I know that I need to leave on Sunday night, but I will do so with a very heavy heart and more than a pang of guilt.  My thoughts will obviously stay here with all my friends as I hope they all manage to protect themselves and their loved ones.  Liberians are strong and I know that they will emerge from this crisis stronger.  And I cannot wait to come back :)