What an Ebola curfew looks like

http://www.theguardian.com/cities/2014/dec/15/ebola-curfew-sierra-leone-freetown-photographs

Version 0 of 1.

Sierra Leone has been severely affected by Ebola. Over the last six months, the country has seen a high death toll, immense human suffering and a wide range of restrictive measures that have hampered economic and urban life. Most dramatically, in Sierra Leone’s capital, Freetown, the authorities have instituted a set of curfews that have forced residents to stay at home, resulting in a seemingly deserted city.

These pictures were taken during the second national lock-down or “stay at home day”, as the government calls them, from 19-21 September. The first such country-wide curfew occurred in August when Ebola surfaced aggressively surface in Freetown. (The virus had been officially acknowledged in rural Sierra Leone since March, yet little preventive measures had taken place.)

President Ernest Bai Koroma announced it in an address, and the information was disseminated by radio and Whatsapp. Government officials made door-to-door visits to warn people. It’s a national manifestation of a smaller set of social prohibitions – nightclubbing, watching football in informal “cinemas”. (Religious gatherings, which can last for hours with several hundred people, are permitted.)

Imagine a city closed for three days. While it sounds not entirely unappealing, in a country where 76% live in poverty and 87% rely on public transport, it becomes hugely problematic. Food prices rocketed; rations were handed out at the last minute, leading to long queues in the streets right before the curfew was about to kick in. Clothing prices doubled: a secondhand T-shirt, normally about $3, went for $6.

The curfew was heavily enforced by the police and military. There were military and police checkpoints at every major intersection. Only individuals and vehicles with a pass were permitted to move around the city: healthcare workers, journalists, officials. Those few vehicles that were permitted took advantage of the lack of traffic and would dramatically emerge from nowhere, flouting speed limits and road safety; motorbikes and ambulances would also break the silence, carrying either Ebola samples to testing centres, or corpses to burial sites.

Residents living hand-to-mouth from street trading of various kinds were worst affected, such as okada (motorbike taxi) drivers. Okada drivers have long been marginalised in Sierra Leone for many reasons, principally for their social status and ability to outrun the police; they have been accused of transporting Ebola victims and increasing the spread of the virus.

The curfew passed for the most part peacefully. Some residents remained on their stoops or porches; in the quieter streets, people continued to cross between households. One unexpected event was that many families with relatives who had died from Ebola (or malaria or other illnesses), fearful of being apprehended by the police as suspected cases, placed their bodies in the streets. The lock-down thus drew the dead out of the city, but didn’t effectively respond to it – “contact tracing”, or identifying where the bodies came from, was almost impossible.

Emptied of people, it is even more clear that the city’s infrastructure is extremely dated. Most regard it as fit for a city prior to the 1961 independence, and for a population half of what it is now. There are simply not enough ambulances to deal with Ebola; the country’s road network is extremely poor; a spasmodic national power supply renders most people reliant on diesel generators. The urban geographer Stephen Graham wrote: “Infrastructures, the largest urban architecture of all, often become most visible when they lie dormant or inactive.” You could see that in Freetown.

This is an edited version of an interview originally published at Failed Architecture