No, I don´t want to forget because my trip to Sierra Leone has been overrun with feelings, emotions, bewilderment and special vibrations. That emotional variety that made me to wish to stop the transience of life to discover and delve into why these internal trembling, wanting to stop time to savor the contradiction and paralyze life to understand suffering. There were so many emotions that even the moments of difficulty I would have liked to turn them into eternal. But time passes and again I have to face this consumerist world and lack of empathy with the suffering, so I want to remember in order not to distort the reality of life.

Every day I looked eagerly every corner of Makeni. Every morning on my way to the Pastoral Center to carry out training I was capturing images with the camera on my mobile because I didn´t forget any detail of the city.

I don´t want to forget the sealed homes because someone has died of Ebola and survivors cannot leave their homes during quarantine. I don´t want to forget their feelings in these days of isolation I have to live.

I don´t want to forget the bustle of people in town trying to sell a mango fruit or gain coins with the “magnificent business” of its fruits, I don´t want to forget it every time I will go to a supermarket to fill my shopping cart.

I don´t want to forget as they told me about the days of lock down, where the bustle becomes solitude, silence, where no one can go outside except those with special permission and therefore cross the threshold of the door is forbidden and if someone does, is arrested.

I don´t want to forget the full alarm information we had in Spain when a person was infected by Ebola in the hospital Carlos III of Madrid. Too much confused information about the transmission of the disease. I don´t want to forget it because there, in Sierra Leone, to inform in many cases, it´s necessary to be with families one by one because communication through television, newspapers, etc. it´s neither possible nor accessible.

I don´t want to forget the children soaping in a bowl on the street with an open smile to life, I will not forget them every time I go into the shower in my house … and those children who have been nine months without school as prevention and a few days ago began their lessons with orders not to touch each other. Is this possible?

I don´t want to forget the deep glances got into my heart while Bro. Luca drove through the streets towards the pastoral center, eyes full of questions, curious, unfathomable, eyes that are within me. Glances I have robbed and kidnapped from their faces and are now in my soul. Gazes ownerless, without faces now… but inside me. I don´t want to forget those eyes that reflected universal fear, dreams and hope. Sometimes there, in Sierra Leone, I did not interpret properly its meaning, I needed to enter into the silence of my heart to perceive them deeply.

I don´t want to forget the participants of the training, because they are the ones who will bring comfort and hope to families with orphaned children by the viral Ebola outbreak, those families earning less than two dollars a day, those families who are grieving because of Ébola, those kids full of fear believing that Ebola is an evil spirit that can catch them at night. I don´t want to forget, neither participants nor families because they are the meaning of my effort and with them I feel an alive part of suffering humanity.

I don´t want to forget Bro. José Carlos Bermejo, who trusted me and so I went to Sierra Leone, or the camillian like Bro. Luca, or father Aris, father Sam, father John, father Anthony or Anita and Marco and also father Natalio, Xaverians as father Luis and … I don´t want to forget them, because as a broadcaster of Cadena Ser in Spain said, these people working for this humanitarian and economic catastrophe, are the real Heritage of Humanity. I don´t want to forget them because they rescue my fears, they drive my spirit, they give meaning to my solidarity and they are an example for my life.

No, I don´t want to forget that while in Sierra Leone there are 72 doctors in the country, one psychiatrist and no studies of psychology to attend so many mourning and so much suffering, here in Spain we have access not only to psychological and psychiatric care when the pain attacks against us without pity, but to aesthetic units and body beautification in order to feel younger or transform our body aging into one “Best viewed”…

I don´t want to forget the poverty of the church whose altar cruets are small tomato jars or throw small wine directly from the bottle or have as hyssop a broom with a short stick. No, I will not forget this poor church, despite suffering from the “evil spirit” called Ebola, cheerfully sings and dances in their celebrations to praise God.

No! I don´t want to forget that in the world there are so many differences, because I would not let myself get caught up in the clutches of injustice, if only to put words and remember them forever.

Dr. Consuelo Repiso
psychosocial support trainor from Madrid