For Aisata

Last Sunday was my worst day in Freetown so far. I had to attend a funeral of one of my female reporters who had succumbed to a severe bout of typhoid. No one in the world should have to die of typhoid. But in one of the poorest countries in the world, you’d have to be pretty privileged to be able to say that.

I last saw Aisata a month ago when she attended my first workshop. She was already ill and showed me some Chinese pills she was taking. Going to the hospital is prohibitively expensive for most people—you have to pay 20,000 leones just to be seen. After that I kept hearing reports about her but was convinced that she’d be back soon. I’ve had typhoid and I was fine in a few weeks.

But then the other day one of her colleagues told me that she’d put her faith in a traditional healer and her condition was critical. I slapped my forehead and thought that was the worst possible thing she could have done. A traditional healer’s first instinct is to tell you that you’ve been shot by a witch gun. Then they proceed to remove these ‘bullets’ by making ugly incisions on your arms and legs. Aisata claimed she was feeling better once these so called bullets had been extracted.

Of course, without proper medical care she got worse very quickly. I’m told at this point the traditional healers whisked her off to Waterloo, a suburb in Freetown and told her that she must not see or speak to anyone. A few days later, Aisata had passed away.

I attended her wake and watched her two young children stare blankly at the crowd of people gathered in their house. I know that traditional therapies are very popular in Sierra Leone, but are also very dangerous in a lot of cases. One of the reasons for the country’s high rate of maternal mortality is women’s reliance on midwives who use unsterilised equipment resulting in infections and death.

Medical care in Sierra Leone is pathetic to put it mildly. A fake drugs market thrives on people’s desire for cheap medication. You have to be really careful buying even Aspirin in Freetown. In one of my drawers I have a whole catalogue of rip-off drugs that are available on the streets.

Aisata was a reasonably educated woman who lived in Freetown. When she opted for traditional treatment she knew her options. I shudder to think of the scores of people in the provinces that don’t even know any better.