KENEMA: There is little to celebrate in the tribal chiefdoms of eastern Sierra Leone, where the retreat of the Ebola virus is mitigated by grinding poverty worsened by draconian quarantine restrictions.
In Kenema, a diamond exporting hub and the heart of the west African nation's cocoa and coffee industry, no new infections have been recorded since October and the town bustles with trade and traffic.
But the district -- part of the Ebola epicentre straddling Sierra Leone, Liberia and Guinea -- remains isolated by a largely unsuccessful lockdown imposed in August to keep Ebola from spreading elsewhere.
"The trauma is still there and business is difficult," says Mohamed Basma, sitting in shorts and flip-flops behind a desk blasted by over-zealous air-conditioning.
A leading diamond trader in Kenema, Basma hasn't even the most tiny rock to show off.
"We can't say we're finished with Ebola, although here we've done a better job in controlling the virus than elsewhere and no new cases for almost 21 days is encouraging," he says.
Yet the authorities continue to prohibit public gatherings, preventing locals from working with spades and sieves the diamond-rich flood plains to the east, thus Sierra Leone is certain to miss its goal of exporting $200 million (160 million euros) in gems in 2014.
An ethnically-diverse, Krio-speaking city of 190,000, Kenema already has the highest incidence of Lassa fever -- another viral haemorrhagic disease -- in the world.
Ebola has killed more than 5,000 in west Africa since it emerged in southern Guinea in December, spreading first to Liberia and cutting a swathe through Sierra Leone since May.
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