Locals worried for African relatives amid Ebola outbreak

Hussane Camara used to call home to Guinea once a week, but since the Ebola outbreak has killed more than 2,900 in West Africa, he calls home at least five times a week, he said.”It makes you very anxious,” he said from his home in Salem. “You’re waiting to find out who’s next, when does it happen to us, you think about it every morning when you get up.”According to the World Health Organization, the number of Ebola cases has stabilized in Guinea, but other areas of West Africa are still deteriorating. The Centers for Disease Control reports that there have been 6,263 cases and 2,917 deaths attributed to the outbreak, which took hold in March. Guinea has seen 1,022 cases and 635 deaths. Liberia has suffered with 3,280 cases and a total of 1,677 deaths, and in Sierra Leone there have been 1,940 reported cases and 597 deaths.Lynn resident Sylvester Yarpah is a native of Liberia and, like Camara, is frustrated by the news that is devastating his homeland. His largest concern, however, is that people outside West Africa are unaware of the seriousness of the outbreak.”Food is scarce, there is not work. Just imagine trying to live with all this on a daily basis,” he said.On Saturday, Yarpah, who is a musician, will hold a concert on Lynn Commons from 2 p.m. to 6 p.m. to highlight African music and raise awareness of the Ebola outbreak.In between sets of African music, there will be speakers giving a historical background on Ebola and its impact on West Africa, he said. There will also be information available for people who want to help.”We’re not taking donations,” he said quickly. “But we will encourage people to help and let them know where they can contribute.”His parents are both dead, but Yarpah said he is worried about other close family members still in Liberia. He said he spoke to a friend who has lost seven people in the building where she lives to the virus.”I asked her if she had been in contact with any of them,” he said. “She just got quiet and said, ?just pray for us.’ I was touched.”Camara, a leader in Guinea Conakry United Massachusetts, a humanitarian group, said he believes if officials could get a handle on the outbreak, they could better connect the people, the government and the volunteers.”Medical people are being attacked and killed,” he said.They need to get the villages personally involved and educated, and if they can get the villages on board, then they could begin to control the outbreak, he explained.One thing officials have been doing is placing buckets of water mixed with bleach outside each home and urging people to wash their hands before they enter any home, including their own.”But you have to have people believe in the disease first,” he said. “There are people that see it as the government trying to kill them. They have to go back and get the people involved.”As Ebola spreads through Guinea and Liberia and other West African countries, the concern of it spreading through other parts of Africa is not met with the same urgency.Sidi Diarra, a student at Salem State University who is from the Ivory Coast, a West African country, does not feel the effects of Ebola that other individuals would. Diarra said, “It has no effect on the Ivory Coast, just Guinea, Sierra Leone, Liberia and Nigeria.”Diarra, the former president of the African Student Union at Salem State, does not worry too much about it because his family and people he knows in the Ivory Coast are safe from it. “I don’t know anyone affected by it,” he said.Yarpah, however, said that feeling you are safe from the virus is part of the problem, and, if things don’t change, “pretty soon it will be everyone’s problem.”Salem State University is doing its part to help with Ebola relief. The School of Nursing will be selling wristbands all of next week as part of its Ebola Relief Fundraiser.For more information on the fundraiser, contact Vickie Morrison at [email protected] or at 978-542-7149.Mukala Kabongo, The Daily Item’s college intern, c