Sierra Leone

The adventures of the young. My youngest son Richard is in Sierra Leone with the WHO contingent fighting Ebola. He is a data manager and had set up a monitoring system to track people from suspected Infection to either recovery or burial..they have to track past death to make sure that people are buried in a safe manner.

 He was staying in a hotel but has now moved to a tent city as he and his supervisor got fed up with there being no food and atrocious living conditions in the local hotel. 

When Richard arrived he asked for light globes as his room had none. After a few hours they found some and he discovered why there were none in his room. The electricity isn't wired correctly and the only way to turn them on or off is to literally turn them.... as in screw them in or out of the sockets. 

There was only ever food for the first five people, after that it ran out. 

When you left the hotel in the morning you had to leave you key at the desk as they don't have spares. On the final evening that they were at the hotel Richard and his boss returned home at 8:00 after having been working since 7:00. No one could find the key to his bosses room and there was no food. After two hours they literally knocked down her door as key was still not to be found. So she spent the night in a room without a door. 

In the morning she hit the roof and told Richard they were moving to the Danish tent city. Richard says it is great ...... they have food and vegetables. He hadn't seen a vegetable for almost three weeks. He arrived in Sierra Leone just under three weeks ago. 

Days are very busy. Rise at 6:30. Breakfast between 7:00 and 7:20. One the road at 7:30. Work til 7:30pm. Then home, dinner, bed by 9:00. He looks totally exhausted but has learnt a lot.

They are very happy with his work and wanted him to return to Freetown to draw some graphs for them and then to move to another area and set up the same thing there. He refused as he said it will take him the better part of his remaining time to train some of the Brits to maintain the system. This is the first time  they have been able to get any reliable figures from this region. Once the Brits go it will unfortunately all collapse but hopefully they will be there for a few more months.

Plus he can draw the graphs from his present locality and email them up.