According to Skynews, armed
soldiers and police stand guard at Sima village just outside Kerry Town to
ensure no-one breaches the quarantine.
There is a thin red string
that separates the people who could be carrying the deadly Ebola virus.
Nearly 50 people who lived
here have already been taken to hospital with Ebola symptoms - 10 have died.
Now their relatives, friends and everyone they came in contact with have
effectively been put under house arrest for 21 days - the Ebola incubation
period.
When we see them it is only
day six of their quarantine and tempers are already fraying. They haven't been
allowed to shop or farm - so they are hungry and angry.
An armed guard by the red
string that divides suspected Ebola victims
An argument breaks out as
some of the younger men behind the string barrier complain about being ignored.
"They haven't let us
out for six days and if we complain they beat and shove us," one shouts to
us. "We all feel fine."
As we are there, British
aid arrives. There are huge bundles of food and provisions, including a water
carrier, provided by Plan International but it's piled up in lines just beyond
the red string as the distributors try to match names on their lists with the
hoards of people behind the barrier.
After some delay, they
begin handing it out to the visibly grateful people.
This community is just a
few miles away from the Ebola unit in Kerry Town where the Scottish nurse
Pauline Cafferkey worked and where she may have contracted the virus. Nurse
Cafferkey is recovering in hospital thousands of miles away in London.
Teacher Moses Bangura tells
Sky News: "Every day people are dying, my sister, my friends, even my
two-year-old."
Twelve members of his
family have died from the disease.
The next few weeks will be
tortuous for this community as they wait to find out whether they too are going
to succumb to Ebola.
The scale of this scourge
is evident at the Kingtom burial site - run by the Irish charity Concern. They
dig 50 graves a day and still often can't keep up with the demand. By the end
of the day, all the graves will be filled.
Trevor Jessome from Concern
says he's only been in Sierra Leone for two weeks. He points to rows and rows
of graves.
"These burials here
have all been done in the last two weeks," he says. "We average about
50 a day."
They can't clear this
former dump quickly enough to cope with the dead. Unsafe burials of Ebola
victims are believed to be responsible for up to 70% of new infections - so now
every death is treated like an Ebola death. The authorities don't wait for
confirmation.
The burial teams suit up to
protect themselves but the danger is never far from their thoughts.
Every body the authorities
retrieve is double wrapped and sealed in thick plastic bags with copious
disinfectant used.
Sierra Leone hasn't
resorted to cremations like neighbouring Liberia - they are disliked on
cultural grounds - and people continue to prepare and bury their loved ones
themselves - in secret - to avoid what they see as this indignity.
Alongside the graves, the
burial teams disinfect, burn and then bury all their outer layers of protective
clothing. They know with all their precautions the risk has been greatly
reduced - but they go through this procedure about eight times a day and
complacency could mean contamination.
It has taken just eight
days for a huge number of tiny graves to build up that are all babies or
toddlers. A stick represents a body and some graves have multiple sticks to one
mound. The charity estimates there have been about 300 babies buried here in
just over a week.

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