In the early hours of Tuesday morning, as a cluster of men with Ebola cases spread through a densely populated neighborhood, a man in a yellow raincoat walked into the family’s home in the capital, Freetown.
The man was not wearing a mask, and his eyes were black.
He asked the family for a cup of coffee.
The family refused.
“He was shaking,” the elder daughter said, sitting with her family in the living room.
They did not ask for any medical attention.
He was still there for several hours.
The woman was shaken too.
Her brother and sister-in-law could not believe what they were seeing.
“I was shaking with fear,” she said.
“My brother had never seen this man.
He never had the fear.”
The family was in the process of moving out of the area and moving to another area of the city when the Ebola epidemic struck.
They had moved to a safer neighbourhood in the city, where they would have avoided the outbreak.
They moved back to the village because the virus was still very low, and the neighborhood was very safe.
The elder daughter was not afraid of going outside, but she feared being isolated.
It was not the only case that she was worried about.
“When I got home I was very scared,” she told Al Jazeera.
“There were people who were hiding out in the bush.
I was scared to go outside, because I knew the police would be waiting there.
I knew there would be no one around to help me.”
The woman, whose surname is Amadou, told Al-Jazeera that her family was very close to their neighbours.
“If you were in a hurry, you could go to the market.
But now there are no people to go to and there are many people who have Ebola.”
When she returned home from work on Tuesday morning and went to her home, she could see that her house was not well-kept, and there were no locks on the front door.
The house had been empty for weeks, and she noticed the children’s belongings scattered in the yard.
“What is happening in the house?” she asked.
“It is very strange.”
The elder daughters told her to call the family doctor, who arrived later that evening.
“At the doctor’s house, they said we are not infected,” she recalled.
“They said we should not go out or even talk to anyone.”
“We were very scared, and I was afraid that he would not come to our house.”
On Wednesday, the woman went back to her house and asked to see her mother.
She was shocked to see that she had not heard from her mother for three days.
The mother, who was in her 60s, told the elder daughters that her husband had gone to a hospital to check if he had Ebola.
“She said he was too weak and sick to come home,” Amadoud said.
The younger daughter said she was also worried that she would not be able to return to work because the family did not have a car.
“We do not have the money to hire a car, and if you have a disease like Ebola, then the cost is huge,” Amodou said.
She also asked her mother to call her husband and tell him she would like to see him.
The husband called his wife from the house on Tuesday, and he told her that he had to go home.
The two women had already been staying with their aunt in another area.
“The family did a very good job for me, so I did not worry,” Amidou said, adding that her aunt did not understand why she was so worried.
The older daughter also said that she did not feel that the family was doing a good job, since the family has not moved out of their house for more than three weeks.
“Because I am scared, I have not been able to go out to the markets, and we have not had any contact with anyone, either.”
“My husband is very weak.
I do not think he has Ebola.”
In addition to Amadoux, the two other sisters and their mother have not seen their mother since they returned to the family home on Tuesday.
The eldest daughter is still recovering from the Ebola infection, and Amadous and her sister are too.
“Our mother has no feeling, she cannot even move her legs,” Amadiou said about her mother’s condition.
“In a few days, she will be in the hospital.”
A senior health official told Al Arabiya that the two older sisters were isolated because they were close to the house and did not know anyone.
The senior health officer said that the sister and mother had visited Amadouni and her family several times in the past, but were not allowed to leave the house because of the fear of Ebola.
She added that AmadOU had not left her home in Freetoun for two days.
“This is a very dangerous situation,” she added
