Rain started after midnight and by the time it stopped, it had been an eight-hour episode of driving under heavy downpour.
The calm that followed was just like a lull before a storm. The copious tropical rainfall that drenches Sierra Leone, Liberia and Guinea from June until October makes this region one of the wettest on earth.
As is inevitable in the rainy season for people like me who sometimes wear shorts on hot days and occasionally forget to pull down the mosquito net when retiring to bed, malaria is a constant threat. Malaria is still the greatest killer in West Africa.
When I recently had a persistent headache, like everybody else, I was apprehensive about visiting a hospital due to the outbreak of Ebola Virus Disease (EVD). My temperature was well below 37 degrees Celsius, reassuring me that probably it was malaria and not Ebola.
But the grim killer that Ebola is, worries everybody. According to national surveillance statistics, Ebola virus had infected 10,141 people and killed 4,922 of them by October 25 2014, almost all of them in Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guinea.
The world is moving to address the Ebola disaster and there has been a considerable increase in volunteers working for charities and military personnel coming to Sierra Leone, Guinea and Liberia to provide treatment, logistics and construction services to deal with the disease.
Médecins Sans Frontières, the medical charity, has done a superb job treating thousands of Ebola infected people. Local doctors, nurses, ambulance drivers and burial teams are putting in incredible hours of work in highly risky conditions to save lives. Funds to fight the virus are increasing.
There is however need to ramp up construction of treatment facilities and laboratories and get more doctors, nurses, contact tracers, epidemiologists and laboratory technicians into the affected countries to address the rising numbers of infected people.
In the long-term, all countries, especially African nations must invest adequate funds in health infrastructure, services, personnel and preparedness as the consequences of a contagion like this can, in a matter of a few months, wipe out many years of progress.
According to the World Bank, in 2012, Kenya which is now a lower middle income country, spent just US$ 45 per person per year for health, much less than least developed countries like Liberia and Sierra Leone, which spent US$ 65 and US$ 96 per person, respectively, in the same period.
Ebola has overwhelmed the health system in Liberia and Sierra Leone and there is danger the same would happen to Kenya and other African countries should the contagion reach there unless the right investments and preparedness are made now.
As my headache got worse, I went to a pharmacy to get over-the-counter medication only to discover everybody else was behaving like me and had decided to visit pharmacies rather than hospitals.
Pharmacies were doing brisk business selling drugs. After a day on the medication from the pharmacy, I decided to go to the United Nations clinic for a check-up. On arrival at the entrance, the ubiquitous infra-red thermometer was pointed at my forehead and returned a reading of 35.9 degrees Celsius. Phew! More reinsurance that maybe, just maybe, it was not the Ebola virus that was pounding my head.
The next chore was to clean my hands with the chlorine-treated water that is now mandatory in virtually every establishment in Ebola-hit nations.
Smart business men who realised early that every dark cloud, even an Ebola one, had a silver lining had imported millions of plastic buckets with taps and huge amounts of chlorine and made fat profits.
If any good news ever comes out of the Ebola disaster in West Africa, it may be that many people now wash their hands regularly.
The doctor questioned me, completed a questionnaire and took down my medical history. She then performed a raft of checks and confirmed that, in fact, I had malaria. She sent me off with proper medication comprising Coartem and Paracetamol. I was relieved.
It was a good reason to be happy though I could not escape the sad feeling that many others were dying from Ebola and children were being orphaned by this deadly disease. The whole affair reminds us all to maintain relentless vigilance and exercise the exacting hygiene standards that can help us to avoid getting Ebola and other contagions.
