Blood River

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,

Ameyo Adadevoh.

Sign up to my newsletter (link) and get a free ebook “Chasing Black Unicorns. How building the Amazon of Africa put me on Interpol Most Wanted list.”