The Quarantine Chronicles: Volume 3

As often happens in Sierra Leone, things change quickly and without warning.  Life was far from normal as we struggled to deal with the implications of having a staff member test positive for Ebola, but some things hadn’t changed.  I still got up each morning and headed to work and was free to move about as I pleased.  Within the space of about an hour, that all changed.

I was sitting in our Country Director’s office strategizing our response to the situation when she received a call that the Quarantine Security team was in our lobby.  We all looked at each other and she said, “Well, they’re probably here for you, mate, so I would suggest you make yourself scarce.”

The use of quarantine in Sierra Leone has been under considerable criticism over the past month or so.  The view of most people, myself included, is that it is used far too liberally.  As a result, there have been instances of people fleeing quarantine and actually causing the virus to spread more quickly than it would have otherwise.  A big part of the problem is when you have someone like myself, who had very limited contact, undergoing the same quarantine procedures as someone who was a close contact with the patient.  The level of risk for someone who had casual contact with a victim is extremely low, and since an Ebola patient is only dangerous to others after becoming symptomatic, the quarantine of low risk contacts is a considerable waste of resources.  However, as we struggle to make it through the last mile of this epidemic, the pressure to be seen as taking a strong long against complacency is intense.  As a result, we are seeing mass quarantines.

It turns out that our Country Director was indeed correct and they were looking for me.  In no uncertain terms, they said that I needed to be quarantined and if I didn’t do it voluntarily, they would take actions to make sure I did so.  So I came out of hiding and went to the ground floor apartment, which would be my home for the remainder of my 21 day observation period.

As I arrived home, I found myself somewhat in shock over everything that had happened over the past week or two.  Life in Sierra Leone is nothing like life in Boston, but up until all of this started, it had still been a normal life, albeit with its own quirks.  Now, somehow, within the space of two weeks I had watched my friend be carted off in an ambulance by people in space suits, learned that I colleague had Ebola, and been threatened with forcible quarantine.  The level of normalcy that I had started to feel here had been completely shattered.  I knew that my level of risk was very low and didn’t find myself worried about actually having Ebola, but I could just hardly believe how quickly the life I had built since January could be dismantled so quickly.  I had been displaced from my home, my freedom had been taken away, and I felt like I was losing control of my own life.