Paper short abstract:

The paper offers a different kind of Ebola story (to borrow from Caroline Nordstrom’s famous "A Different Kind of War Story") that stresses the continuity of suffering and the recurrence of disappointment in Sierra Leone, rather than adhering to notions of unprecedented emergency.

Paper long abstract:

Based on phone conversations with long-time friends and informants in Sierra Leone through which I have been seeking to follow epidemic and humanitarian processes "on the ground", my paper offers a different kind of Ebola story. More precisely, it will sketch out a narrative that does not adhere to the notions of unprecedented emergency which appear to be typical for medical and humanitarian accounts. Rather than unprecedented emergency, my friends and informants have often stressed the recurrence of disaster in Sierra Leone - war-time violence, enduring poverty and post-war struggles for life-chances and survival and now Ebola − and with it the recurrence of multifaceted disappointments: in oneself, in one's fellow Sierra Leoneans, in the government, and in the "international community". I will use our conversations and combine them with materials from Sierra Leonean newspapers (inasmuch as they are available online) and from my own field research (in 2009, 2013 and early 2014 prior to the official onset of the epidemic) in order to assemble a different kind of Ebola story that seeks to highlight continuity and recurrence rather than exceptionality. Acknowledging experiences of enduring struggle could open perspectives on local perceptions and behaviors that have been depicted as puzzling or even as disturbing and irrational. However, the very idea of suffering as an ongoing process and/or an oft-recurrent experience works against the logics of exceptionality and exceptional action that inform humanitarian action and attract donor and media attention.