Freetown - To find Andrew Kondoh, walk through the gates of this city’s largest cemetery, where teams in moonsuits bury more than 50 bodies a day in white plastic bags. Look for the man with the wispy goatee and big belly who is overseeing one of the world’s most chaotic, dangerous graveyards as if he’s done it all before.
That’s because he has.
Twenty years ago, when he was 13, Kondoh took it upon himself to guard a heap of bodies, people killed by rebels during the country’s civil war. For three years, as the pile grew, he protected them from being trampled or picked at by dogs. When that conflict ended, Kondoh made a promise to himself. He was done with working with the dead.
Then Ebola surged in Sierra Leone.
“It’s like I’m back there again,” Kondoh said.
In Sierra Leone, the war drove away doctors and destroyed the infrastructure, leaving a decrepit medical system. But it also produced resilient men and women like Kondoh, who have felt compelled to act as the Ebola death toll mounts.
The fighting began in 1991, when Kondoh was 11, and ended when he was 22. Rebels swept through the country, murdering civilians, raping women and abducting children. The army pushed back, committing horrific abuses, as diamond mining rights hung in the balance. Between 10 000 and 50 000 people were killed.
In the eastern district of Kenema, rebels killed suspected government sympathisers and left the bodies. The army eventually picked them up. Without a functioning cemetery, soldiers dumped them in an alley, near a shuttered mortuary.
From his home, 350m away, young Kondoh watched them decompose. He saw people step over them. He couldn’t take it. He stole rope that his father, a butcher, used to hang cuts of meat. He created a makeshift barrier around the bodies and started spending his days guarding the area.
“It wasn’t just about respect, it was that I worried about disease and infection spreading,” he said.
He was concerned that the militants would get angry with him. He’d seen how they would grab children, chop off their arms and then release them, just to demonstrate their power. But when the fighters saw Kondoh, they only chuckled and shook their heads.
He recruited other boys to join him. They became accustomed to the sight of bodies.
“But when I saw kids or pregnant women, it was just too much,” Kondoh said. “I can tell you that our war … was the worst war in the history of the entire world.”
When it ended, the leaders of the fighting forces were tried. The mortuary reopened. Kondoh went to high school. He got a job at an internet café and then an aid organisation. He met his wife, and they had a son. The economy started improving. The dying was over, Kondoh told himself.
In May, Ebola came to Sierra Leone. In September, Kondoh saw an advert for a “burial welfare supervisor”. He sent in his résumé.
“It’s not something I wanted to do again,” Kondoh said, “but I felt I needed to be on the frontline.”
A new horror is unfolding. More than 2 000 Sierra Leoneans have died of Ebola. Organisations like Unicef, which once tended to war orphans, now care for Ebola orphans. Soldiers enforce quarantines at homes and man checkpoints. These days, they wield thermometers instead of guns.
The National Ebola Response Centre was created in a modern compound in Freetown. Until 2012, it had been the Special Court for Sierra Leone, established by the UN to try rebels, soldiers and others for war atrocities.
In the former courtroom, British, American and Sierra Leonean officials review daily death counts.
“Right over there is where we tried men for the worst atrocities,” said Palo Conteh, the head of the response centre, pointing towards the courtroom 18m from his office. “And now we’re here waging a different war. It’s painful.”
Burials in Sierra Leone typically involve large gatherings in which relatives and friends wash, touch and kiss the bodies of the deceased. Such actions are seen as a critical way to show respect.
But they also hasten the spread of the disease. Fifty to 70 percent of Ebola cases stem from traditional burials, according to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
In August, to stop the chain of transmission, the government of Sierra Leone mandated that anyone who died be buried as if they had Ebola – in body bags and by teams in protective gear. Families may attend the ceremonies, but they can’t go near the dead.
Kondoh started the job in September, as Ebola centres in Freetown began to overflow.
People here remember how during the war the dead were left to rot or were sometimes incinerated in mass cremations. This was deeply painful to the victims’ relatives.
Today, families sometimes attack burial teams whom they see as disrupting their religious practices and attempts at closure. Five of the trucks that Kondoh’s teams use have been damaged by mourners.
Kondoh comforts grieving families, assuring them that they are invited to attend the burials, as long as they cover their shoes with garbage bags and stay a long way from the graves.
“No matter how careful we are, it’s a shocking experience for families,” said Fiona McLysaght, the country director for Concern Worldwide, an Irish organisation and Kondoh’s employer.
“Andrew is able to navigate his way around these complex issues.”
Kondoh’s days are a blur. He races across Freetown behind an ambulance. He checks for holes in his team’s protective gear. He ensures Christians are buried in coffins and Muslims under a stack of wooden sticks, as the religions demand here. He looks for signs that fellow workers – many in their late teens and early 20s – may be depressed or sick.
His wife, Basasatu, makes him change his clothes before he enters their home. She knows he is at risk of contracting Ebola. Last month, she moved their son to her sister’s house.
One day last month, Kondoh travelled with a team to pick up a body. As the ambulance arrived, the family began to wail. Kondoh tried to console them while keeping his distance.
“All these people could have it. There’s no way to know,” he said.
Relatives started shouting that the dead woman was pregnant and had died in childbirth.
No one wanted to admit that she had Ebola.
“That’s always what happens,” Kondoh said. “They deny it.”
After the body was carried to the ambulance, his team made another stop a few hundred metres on, for the body of a 4-year-old.
Kondoh tries to project an image of strength in front of his team. After his experience during the war, he can handle almost anything – except for the bodies of children or pregnant women.
“I know it’s painful to see your loved one being put in a bag,” he told the child’s family. “But it’s government policy.” The father nodded, crying.
The boy’s body was loaded into an ambulance. Kondoh watched, his arms crossed and his lips pursed.
“This is when my nights are not okay,” he said.
*Sieff is The Washington Post’s bureau chief in Nairobi. He was previously bureau chief in Kabul and has covered the US-Mexico border.
The Washington Post