Screening at the Airports

Locals at Lumley Beach

I traveled to Freetown planning to leave from there to Lungi Airport again taking the speed boat.  Lumley Beach is right across from the Family Kingdom Resort where I stayed, however as a beach right in the city it is not very clean and once I saw a rotting dog carcass.  Evening breezes were quite pleasant and despite the Ebola outbreak, the locals took their leisurely evening walks.  In the morning I ran along the beach for a way and a number of fishermen were busy pulling in their nets.  This weekend there will be in a lockdown and there will not be any activities in the whole of Sierra Leone.

The compound of the resort was filled with a number of cars from various NGOs, there seemed to be workshops run by Save the Children and WHO.  For our departure our temperature was taken at each of the stops, at the ticket office for the speed boat, at the gate to the airport and at the entrance into the airport.  There at the health stop we filled out questionnaires on where and what we had been doing in Sierra Leone and for any symptoms.  The gentleman ahead of me set up an alarm in the infra-red thermometer; his temperature was above 38 degrees Centigrade.  The tester used three different thermometers on himself and on him again.  He repeatedly set off the alarm.  He was then pulled aside and taken to some place.  That was a scary moment.  We arrived at the airport at least six hours early.  He did not appear in the waiting area until a couple of hours before departure.

On Leaving Sierra Leone

Our first stop was Brussels.  There we filled out a Public Health Locator Form in case if we got sick the airline could locate us and identified our seat assignment.  Again our temperature was taken.   

The screening at Washington Dulles Airport was much organized compared to last year.  This time I was put in a room again with stainless steel bench and table but no sink or toilet.  The officer kept the door open and told me I did not have to sit on the metal bench and politely offered me a proper chair.  The CDC officers had a lot more questions specifically on Port Loko District where the American healthcare worker got infected.  I did not make it clear to them that Lunsar is actually in the Port Loko District, only a half hour from Marforki ETC.  Since the three healthcare workers came down with Ebola we have not heard what happened to them, except the American's condition has been upgraded from critical to serious.  Several more people returning from West Africa had a shorter time at the office bypassing the CDC officers as they were there for reasons other than Ebola.

An hour later, I was able to get my bag through customs and onwards to my next leg of the journey back to good old Boston.