This is a story of the 2014 Ebola outbreak, written from the perspective of a European entrepreneur, based in Lagos, Nigeria. It’s the full 12th Chapter from my book “Chasing Black Unicorns. How building the Amazon of Africa put me on Interpol Most Wanted list.”
When he came in, the whole restaurant went quiet. All you could
hear was the hum of the air conditioning and the clinking of cutlery
being slowly placed on the tables, as if everyone was trying to do
this as quietly as they could. ‘I’m not here’ was the message to be
understood from their gazing straight at the floor.
He, however, pretended not to notice. He walked right through
the middle of the room, straight to a free table. He had a tired face
and a dirty creased shirt, with huge sweat stains under the armpits.
He sat at the table and froze without the slightest movement.
The impasse lasted several minutes, until eventually a particularly
brave, perhaps particularly cowardly, restaurant guest got up and sat
two tables away.
None of the waitresses came over to him. I sighed deeply and got
up from my chair. I walked over to him and asked: “What are you
drinking, Abioye?”
“Whiskey on the rocks,” he immediately replied. This confirmed
my suspicions that he knew exactly what was going on around him.
He must have known. I went to the counter and shouted to the
waitresses hiding in the kitchen to immediately serve two double
whiskeys on the rocks. They did as I asked, although it was difficult
to find any trace of good humor on their usually smiling sunny faces.
I waited until they handed me the glasses. I didn’t kid myself that
they would want to come out of their foxhole.
When the whiskeys were ready, I brought them over to Abioye’s
table. I placed them on the table, pulled back a chair and sat down.
As Abioye looked at me, perhaps I noticed some kind of gratitude in
his eyes.
“So it’s already happened?”
“Yes,” he replied.
“My sympathies.”
Have you ever wondered which river in the world engenders the
greatest fear? Sometimes I ask my friends this question. Without
really thinking about it, they usually throw out the Amazon, as
everyone knows about the piranhas and anacondas which live there,
as well as the enormous numbers of natives all around, who are just
waiting to hunt down white men. Or the Nile, because of crocodiles,
floods, rhinos and whatever else is there. Once, someone suggested
the Ganges, as they throw dead bodies into it, as well as it being the
filthiest river in the world. Which is bullshit, to be honest, as the
Mississippi, the river beloved of all Americans, is actually more
polluted than the Ganges. Some clever guy will say the Jian, a
famous Chinese river whose water is the color of blood. True, this
may indeed arouse unpleasant associations, despite the fact that the
Jian gets its unusual color purely from the pollution which dyeproducing
companies have thoughtlessly poured into it.
However, the truth is entirely different is my view. The scariest
river in the world is a short one, just 250 km long, which flows
through the Democratic Republic of Congo. About the same as the
Western Neisse in Poland. It’s barely a tributary of the major artery
which the Congo undoubtedly is. Not too wide and not too deep.
Neither especially inaccessible nor unprotected by spears and arrows.
The name of this river is the Ebola.
When I was a spotty teenager, just like half the teens in Poland, I
collected a magazine which you had to put into special binders. My
choice was The X Factor, a series of magazines about how aliens had
built the pyramids, that a world government of lizards was poisoning
us with chemicals in airplane contrails. I lapped it all up like a hungry kitten.
Among all these kinds of subjects, I also recall Ebola.
It was supposed to have been a virus created in special top secret
laboratories, intended for controlling the world’s population.
I already told you that, before my departure for Africa, I got a
super-combo dose of vaccinations, but apart from that I also got a
super-combo dose of knowledge on the subject of all the kinds of
microbes which love killing people on the ‘Dark Continent’. The most
important advice was given to me by my mom and went something
like this: “Use a condom. There’s HIV there.” Well, going deeper into
the matter, I also found out a lot about a certain microscopic son-ofa-
bitch which causes a horrible bleeding fever. It was first discovered
near the Ebola river, now in the Democratic Republic of Congo, then
Zaire. As Ebola is spread through fluids and not by drops traveling
through the air, good personal hygiene virtually eliminates the
threat. In addition, it has an inclination towards suicide, because it
kills so quickly that it doesn’t manage get to another host. To be
frank, it’s no biological weapon. Theoretically, it could be used to kill
off some of the poorest countries in the world, but is basically useless
on a global scale. Maybe someone’s working on a mutation which
will delay the symptoms of Ebola for several days. Then we’re
Finished.
It had all started on Monday.
“Jesus Christ!” one of my employees exclaimed, looking at his
laptop.
“What’s going on?” I asked.
“It’s nothing,” he replied calmly, after which he clicked off The
Guardian webpage and feverishly got down to work. They always
feverishly got down to work when I caught them slacking.
I brought up the same article and read the headline. And went hot
and cold at the same time. My eyes lit up, my heart started
thumping and then, completely unexpectedly, I felt I needed to take
a dump:
EBOLA PATIENT DIES IN GUÉCKÉDOU HOSPITAL
Where the hell was Guéckédou? Uncle Google soon told me that it
was a town in Guinea. Just 1,500 km from Lagos. So just a stone’s
throw away. I just went crazy then. I had no idea how to react. After
all, I knew that as long as there was no Ebola there was no problem,
but once it appeared in the neighborhood it was better to get the
fuck out of there. And so I got the fuck out of there. Meaning, I felt
like shit, I had stomach ache and went home, where I spent two
hours on the john. A few people still make fun of me today for being
the only case in the world of someone contracting Ebola merely by
reading about it. They can laugh all they like, because they hadn’t
visited Mali just two weeks previously, while I had. I was in
Bamako, which was not 1,500 km from Guéckédou, but 500 km. In
fact, I should have told them about it. Firstly, due to safety reasons
and, secondly, because it would wipe those stupid smirks off their
Faces.
Although I was sick for two days, I really was sick. While some of
my friends joked that I had an anti-placebo, the fact that I used five
rolls of toilet paper during those two days should count for
something. When I eventually returned to work from what had been
just normal food poisoning, the media had already published several
cases of death in Guinea and Sierra Leone. So things started to get
serious. Despite this, life in Lagos seemed completely normal.
“Because you know,” one of my associates explained, “it’s a poor
man’s disease. Those from the bottom of society who usually don’t
even have running water. They live somewhere in the jungle or
elsewhere. They eat monkeys which they hunt and when someone is
close to death, they keep them at home for several days. Their level
of education is zero, but because they are poor above all, they don’t
travel by plane. Thanks to Ebola’s virulence, they generally die
before they get to hospital. So you can’t get it that easily. Ebola is
not infectious during the incubation period. Only those with its
symptoms are infectious. You can’t catch it by accident. Maybe you
could be bitten by a some monkey or bat or other piece of shit. So
you were in Bamako two weeks ago. If you had caught Ebola, you
would have certainly known about it by now. There’s nothing to
worry about.”
Well, that calmed me down a little. Just to be sure, I reminded the
Samwer brothers during our monthly call that we had Ebola on the
horizon, but they politely ignored me.
One was made to understand that Ebola doesn’t make us money.
I knew that in the case of other epidemics, 20,000 people in the
whole country had usually died. 20 million people lived in Lagos
alone. Indeed, it was the perfect place for Ebola. An enormous city,
masses of people on the streets, the lack of normal public
transportation, very mediocre levels of hygiene. But despite
everything, I recognized that I, a white guy living in circumstances
luxurious for Nigeria, and being careful, aware and well-informed,
would be able to ride it out.
Life went on. Ebola was with us, but as they say more in spirit
than in body. People spoke about it a little, while blogs and social
media wrote about it a little. And people joked about it too. And
they joked more and more often and more and more intensely.
Because you know yourselves how this works: when someone is
afraid of something, they try to fend it off with humor. And there
was something to be afraid of. Already it wasn’t individual cases,
with 8,000 victims in Guinea, 6,000 in Liberia and another 6,000 in
Sierra Leone. The whole world was yelling not just of an epidemic,
but a pandemic. The World Health Organization (WHO) established
a crisis team, while airlines from Europe, Asia and North and South
America cut back their flights to Africa. And even in Nigeria, people
started getting nervous.
Eventually, July saw news arrive that the first patient with Ebola
had been admitted to a hospital for contagious diseases in Lagos.
And then it all took off. A 24-hour hotline to Rocket HQ. Everyone
wanted to know about the developing situation, the threats, their
impact on the business and so on. All of the white guys on my team
suddenly felt like shit and went on sick leave. Only officially, of
course, as no-one even attempted to hide the fact that they wanted
to high-tail it out of Africa for some time. Headquarters was upset.
Motivational emails, assuring all possible aid and any other whistles
and bells. Eventually, however, they understood that they couldn’t
conquer human fear and announced that anyone who wanted to
return could. People started booking flights, which wasn’t all that
easy, because let’s just say that it wasn’t only Rocket that had
European or American employees in Nigeria. Since the number of
flights had been cut back, finding a free seat proved to be a miracle.
At a certain moment, I also thought about bugging out, but I
quickly calmed myself down. I just acknowledged that my thinking
things through had been right up to that point, and that I had a
greater chance of avoiding infection in a wealthier part of Lagos than
spending five hours in an airport bursting at the seams with people.
Even more so, since it was already officially known just how Ebola
had found its way here. It had come from Liberia. Obviously by
plane. So I finally informed everyone that I was staying on in Lagos.
We had to spring into action. We bought hand sanitizers,
thermometers, soap dispensers and other utensils. The guards at the
entrance to the office measured the temperature of everyone
entering the company. They received as their weapon modern
infrared thermometers, and their task was to send everyone whose
temperature was higher than 37°C home. Which was a mistake,
because in the summer the temperature in Lagos can hit 40°C. If you
walk to work in such heat for half an hour, your body simply heats
up. So basically we should have sent everyone home. Therefore, we
raised the temperature to 38°C, which was sort of pointless. If Ebola
had been ravaging the neighborhood, the guards with their
thermometers would have protected us from nothing.
One day, I came and saw a line of people at the entrance. The
guards were measuring temperatures. I awaited my turn, came up to
a huge goon and he said to me: “Well, what’s this, boss. You don’t
have to, with you being the boss and all.”
And of course he didn’t want to be convinced that everyone had to
be checked. He thought it was very nice of me that I wanted to be
like the ordinary employees, that I was giving a good example and
so on. He just didn’t get it that a white guy could get Ebola as easily
as a black guy. And besides, he clearly thought he was doing me
some kind of favor: “Boss, you just go through to one side and
remember that I’m an accommodating fellow.”
Meanwhile, the city was gripped by paranoia. I think I have
already mentioned that it is common to see someone injured on the
streets here. And that seldom does anyone offer any help. But now
things went beyond the absurd. One day, a man was found on the
streets of one of the city’s better districts. The man, although
seriously injured, was still alive. Not only did he not receive any
help, but the police additionally evacuated the entire neighborhood
and would not allow the emergency services to treat the injured
man. In the end, the man died and his body was left there for many
hours. Eventually, a team of specialists took his body to the morgue,
where an autopsy discovered that he had many internal impact
injuries. To be frank, he had probably been hit by a car. In turn, at
Lagos airport, just after leaving the aircraft, a man fell unconscious
while still in the air bridge. The airport was closed and evacuated.
Specialists were brought in who, while dressed in their ridiculous
hazmat suits, came to the site of the incident and confirmed he was
dead. Tests confirmed that it had been a not-very-serious heart
attack. Meaning something that could have been treated, had the
man received medical attention immediately.
The big money-makers from all this pandemonium were the
pharmaceutical sector, to be understood in a broad sense. A very
broad sense. Within three days since the first news of Ebola had
broken in Nigeria, a human tsunami had washed everything there
was to be had from the drugstores. And the most money was made,
in my opinion, by the cell phone operators. At my company, phone
ringtones were playing their melody practically non-stop. Wives
called their husbands and lovers while husbands called their wives
and lovers, parents called their children and their own parents, and
children called their own parents and grandparents. Constantly.
Every quarter of an hour there was a report: “Is everything okay?”;
“How do you feel?”; “What’s your temperature?”; “Oyewole’s
temperature is a quarter of a degree higher than normal”; “If I took a
dump already twice today, does that mean I’m sick?”. Non-stop.
Apart from that, one of my first crisis directives was not to visit any
hotels until it had all blown over, because it wasn’t known whether
they had any guests from Liberia, Guinea or Sierra Leone. I ordered
all matters to be sorted out over the phone, which only brought
about chaos.
But the thing which really got to me during this time was the
complete lack of health awareness. Fine, there were guards at the
entrances to shops ordering people to wash their hands in a bowl
and spraying their hands with sanitizer, but the number of idiotic
myths about Ebola would bring you to your knees. And here I’m
overlooking those with a religious basis, such as if you prayed three
times a day you would be fine, or you had to hire a witchdoctor who
would protect your company from evil spirits. One of my employees
suggested doing the latter. But, for instance, at a certain moment
someone said that the best way was to wash your hands in the
Nigerian equivalent of Domestos, as it was the most effective killer
of infection. Or that it was enough to drink two liters of salt water a day in order to avoid infection. And then my people landed in
hospital with stomach problems. The level of misinformation was
enormous. Although almost everyone in Nigeria has a smartphone,
not everyone uses it to follow up current information. And often
those who even come across information about Ebola had no idea
either what it is or why it’s dangerous. Apart from that, there are
those who are really poor, with hordes of them to be seen in Lagos.
Such people lived as before, wandering the streets barefoot, eating
what they could find in bins or hunting it. And it’s not true that they
didn’t realize the danger. Actually, they risked their lives merely to
survive. Whether there’s Ebola around or not, you still have to eat.
I thought then that of all people I had the opportunity to change
something. I was working with dozens of hotels and thousands of
other companies, not only as part of Jovago, but within the whole
Jumia group. I estimated off the top of my head that we had access
to over a million people, which really was something. So together
with my people, we decided to run an education campaign using our
own resources. My graphic artist prepared a guideline, which we
almost lifted entirely from the WHO website. As we were aiming for
a mass message, it had to be legible, both for geniuses and those
who thought cars were a form of witchcraft. We included
information on what Ebola was, why it was dangerous, how to
avoid and counteract it, how to act when confronted with someone
ill, while taking the opportunity to debunk some of the more
popular myths.
We printed off tens of thousands of them and started to have them
distributed. We sent newsletters to our client and contractor
databases. Apart from that, we rapidly wrote up a training program
for the managers of the hotels working with us and conducted it by
teleconferencing. We recognized that they were the ones most at risk
and that a duty rested with them to inform the health services
should they spot anything suspicious. In line with our assumptions,
the knowledge gained during these training sessions was meant to
be passed on to the hotel staff by these managers.
We weren’t alone in our endeavors, as the Nigerian technology
sector was also very active. An educational app was quickly released,
which the most popular bloggers in Nigeria wrote about, then
celebrities got hold of it and within a week, according to cautious
estimates, all of us working together had reached over 50 million
people. And that really was something.
This had proved my view that Nigerians were a little like Poles.
Although they fought with each other like cats and dogs on a daily
basis, in a situation of real danger they united and were capable of
achieving great things. So if there was a common enemy, it was ‘let’s
charge forward together’. Even if the enemy was a motherfucker no
bigger than a micrometer.
The authorities were also quick to react. One of the first directives
was an absolute ban on the hunting of wild animals. Here, there are
always hunts conducted for all kinds of big cats, apes and snakes. The
result of the ban was tens of thousands of protests, because Ebola is
one thing, but a guy’s got to eat. I heard a funny, but actually
sensible, explanation that you can’t get Ebola from the bite of a
Black Mamba as you are long dead before this even happens. True
story. The Black Mamba can grow up to four meters in length, can
travel at a speed of 20km per hour and is so supple that it can bite
you even on the forehead. And it kills with the same efficiency as
Ebola, only much quicker. Insofar as the government wasn’t
concerned at all about getting Ebola from a snakebite, it was when it
came to eating infected animals. Have I told you that snakes are
eaten here? Although there wasn’t any evidence whatsoever that
snakes could be a reservoir of Ebola, the president and those around
him decided it was better to be safe than sorry.
And in the end, one must say that Nigeria did perform very well
in this regard. The whole world was impressed. 20 people fell ill, of
whom eight died. All of them had been infected from the same
sources. The disease never hit the streets.
And the actions of the Jumia and Jovago groups later found their
way into an academic paper authored by a certain American doctor,
who was writing about infectious diseases in large urban centers.
However, before all this had happened, I had my own moment of
collapse. Even though we had the situation virtually under control, I
was seized by doubt. At the time, I was overloaded with work and
even more stress than usual. Not everything in the company was as I
had imagined it would be, while my vision of Jovago’s development
diverged more and more from Rocket Internet’s own vision for the
company. Thanks to this, I was working more, sleeping less, eating
worse, and in the end my body just said that I could do what I liked,
but it was going on vacation, so all it was leaving me with were
those functions necessary for survival. See you in two weeks, sucker!
I got weaker, my temperature rose, I lost my appetite and was
generally feeling like shit. When I started coughing, I looked just to
see if I was bringing up blood. I must have said the line ‘I think I’ve
got Ebola’ a million times during this period and, at certain moment,
really believed it. Actually, the days passed and although there was
nothing much wrong with me, science has described in great detail
the cognitive error known as confirmation bias, a condition which I
was also suffering from. Although I ignored lots of arguments
concerning the fact that I didn’t have any fucking Ebola, when the
slightest symptoms appeared suggesting that I had, I treated it as a
sure thing. Fortunately, instead of a hospital for infectious diseases, I
went to a doctor friend of mine. When I told him that I thought I
had Ebola, he could only laugh. Then he checked my heart, slapped
me on the back, ordered me to stick my tongue out and confirmed
that I was as healthy as a bull, but overtired, stressed out and
suffering from a lack of sleep. And it would be a good thing if I took
a short holiday.
Well, I couldn’t disobey doctor’s orders, now could I? I checked the
calendar and it turned out that I had several meetings in Abuja
which had been planned well in advance. And it actually even
turned out alright. If I went for a week, had one meeting a day and
planned the rest of my time on doing absolutely nothing, I would
surely get back to my old self. And Abuja was, after all, over 500km
from the danger zone. So I would get a break not only from work,
but Ebola.
I booked a room for a week in the Abuja Sheraton, based on the
assumption that a prestigious hotel would certainly have been made
secure. I packed my things and headed for the airport. Remember
Freddie? As usual, he turned out to be very useful and thanks to him
I got through the crowds in record time, even though my
temperature was checked five times along the way. When, at a
certain moment, it was slightly raised, it seemed that I wouldn’t be
flying anywhere. But in the end, I flew off. And by the way, after all
this hysteria, his trick of saying “Make way, I have a passenger here
who’s sick with Ebola” wouldn’t work again.
I landed in Abuja that afternoon, checked in to my hotel, hit the
sack and did jack-shit. But I soon got tired of it, as I’m just not used
to this kind of thing. So in seeking out some entertainment, I came
up with a great idea.
Basketball. It was just what I needed. The Sheraton had its own
court. The only problem was that the only change of shoes I had
were canvas sneakers with rubber soles. I had bought them when I
was in Croatia for walking on stony beaches. The court was totally
empty. I warmed up with a few epic one-on-one battles with an
imaginary opponent. But after about 20 minutes, my feet were so
sweaty that they were sliding around inside the sneakers. I lost my
sense of stability and was afraid that if I kept on playing I would
twist an ankle. And then I remembered what I had seen on a
basketball court in front of my apartment block in Lagos. A bunch of
youngsters were playing barefoot on the asphalt and it was going
great for them. So I threw off my sneakers, wiped my feet and
sprung into action. I won yet another match against myself, but then
lost the next one, which put me in a bad mood, though I was
generally having a ball. Of course, it wasn’t easy, my feet hurt, but I
was able to manage. Unfortunately, I had forgotten that the
Nigerians who were playing in this way had done so since they
were kids and thus the skin on the soles of their feet was at least a
centimeter thicker than mine. While I… at a certain moment, I felt an
unpleasant burning sensation. I raised my foot and saw that one
large piece of skin from my sole was just coming off. Relax. It’s
probably normal in such a situation. But not for me. I looked at it all
and screamed: “Fuck, it’s Ebola!”
It’s good that no-one heard me, as I would have ended up in the
local hospital. Meanwhile, however, I hid my injury away in my
sneakers and ran back to my room. I feverishly thought about what
to do next and recalled all the instructions that we had put in our
brochures. What was in them? Oh yeah, hand sanitizer. And I
happened to have one with me, after all. I reached into my bag and
without the slightest consideration poured a whole bottle of alcoholbased
hand sanitizer over an open wound on my foot.
“Fuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuudge!” I shouted in excitement from exploring
new levels of pain.
“Hello, sir, is everything okay?” someone from the hotel staff asked
me through the door about three minutes after I emitted a ferocious
Roar.
“Yes, yes,” I replied, swallowing my tears. “It’s the TV. Sorry, I’ll
turn it down right away.”
Since I couldn’t walk, I had to cancel four of the meetings. In the
meantime, my old friend Rafał, who was working in the Polish
embassy, came to see me. He showed no understanding of my
suffering, but cruelly mocked it. Three days passed before it healed
up and since I knew that once again I had evaded a deadly threat,
my mood improved.
“Tell me,” I eventually inquired of him, “If it did turn out that I
had Ebola, what would you do as an embassy? Would you charter
me a plane? I heard that the Italians did this with one guy recently.”
“Forget it. We would have sent you to a hospital for infectious
diseases, the same as anyone else. From where you would certainly
never have returned. And by the way, that Italian didn’t survive
Either.”
“Great. You’ve cheered me up no end. Your good mood surely
results from the fact that you don’t live in Lagos.”
“No, more to do with the fact that I have my own plan. If I came
down with Ebola, I would take an entire packet of paracetamol to
kill the fever and get on the very first plane to Europe. It’s enough to
just to look okay at the airport and not have a temperature. Then, it’s
easy peasy from there. The plane will land, they’ll take me to a
civilian hospital and, if I’m lucky, someone will save my life. I
recommend that you do the same.”
This was the advice I got from an employee of the Polish embassy.
If anyone from WHO is reading this, they’re probably turning grey.
I returned to Lagos on the 19th of August. It was on that day that
Dr Ameyo Adadevoh died.
‘Patient zero’, the person who brought Ebola to Nigeria, was
Patrick Sawyer. He was a Liberian lawyer who had become infected
in Monrovia, before performing the maneuver which Rafał had
described. In backward, impoverished Liberia he had no chance of
survival. And Nigeria, in comparison with Liberia, is like Germany in
comparison with Moldova.
Anyway, that’s what they say ‘in town’. Officially, Sawyer was
flying in for a meeting of the Economic Community of West African
States (ECOWAS). In fact, a member of this organization was waiting
for him on his arrival in Lagos. He immediately noticed that
something was not right with Sawyer and brought him straight to a
private hospital, the First Consultant Medical Center (FCMC), where
diagnosis of malaria was confirmed and treatment commenced. The
senior registrar of the endocrinology department there was Dr
Ameyo Adadevoh, a woman universally respected due to her
significant input in limiting the spread of the swine flu epidemic. A
woman who hailed from the upper echelons, she was the granddaughter
of the first president of Nigeria. It was she who during her
evening rounds discovered the unsettling case of Sawyer and,
following a short interview, confirmed a suspected case of Ebola
hemorrhagic fever. She placed the patient in quarantine. Things got
very nervous, everyone in Sawyer’s immediate surroundings was
evacuated, although no Nigerian hospital was prepared to fight
Ebola. There was a lack of equipment and qualified personnel. Dr
Adadevoh dealt with the patient personally, along with a small
team. In the meantime, although the Liberian government put
pressure on her to discharge Sawyer from hospital due to him
possessing a diplomatic passport, Dr. Adadevoh did not agree to this.
Shortly before his death, Sawyer, now probably unaware of his
actions, tore off his hospital tubes and connectors and demanded to
be discharged immediately. This having been rejected, he decided to
break free using force. He urinated on terrified personnel and spat
saliva and blood at them. He was almost at the point of succeeding,
when Dr. Adadevoh dragged him back into isolation herself, which
was no easy task since Sawyer weighed a good 150 kg. But he was
already very weak and died four days later. And Dr. Adadevoh
herself died just less than a month later. It is said that it was only
due to her devotion, due to putting her own life at stake that Nigeria
managed to avoid the most deadly attack of Ebola in world history.
If Sawyer had got out of hospital, he could have infected thousands
before being apprehended. The FCMC is surrounded by slums.
Nigeria could have shared the fate of other west African countries,
where 30,000 were infected, of whom over 11,000 died.
Today, Dr Adadevoh is regarded as a hero. She was posthumously
awarded the highest state honors. CNN named her Woman of the
Year in 2014. Recently, a movie was made based on these events, and
even though it was produced by Nollywood, Danny Glover was a
member of the cast. If you ever get a chance to see it, do. It’s called
93 Days and it will have you on the edge of your seat.
Abioye drank his whiskey in no particular hurry. The waitresses
had closed the restaurant. The fucking idiots. They more than anyone
should have known that Abioye was the person most tested for
Ebola in the country. A few minutes moments earlier, I had felt a bit
odd. Now, however, I wanted to show this boy some friendship.
During recent times, no-one in Lagos had offered to shake anyone’s
hand. Indeed, that had been one of the recommendations included in
our brochure. As Ebola maybe transferred by shaking hands, it was
better to give up this form of social contact for the time being.
But we had known each other a fairly long time. We had started
off working together at Rocket in the same office in Lagos.
He was an old buddy.
“Your mother was a wonderful woman,” I said, shaking his hand.
“I know,” he quietly replied, but with pride in his voice, Abioye,
the well-known Nigerian entrepreneur and son of the heroic doctor,
Marek Zmysłowski Blog 
Leave a comment