Ghana's bush-meat sellers bear brunt of Ebola scare

By Umaru Sanda Amadu

ACCRA

Although the Ebola virus has not yet been reported in the West African country, almost every Ghanaian has heard about it.

As people are put on red alert due to the spread of the deadly virus across the West African sub-region, sellers of bush-meat appear to have become its victims.

In one section of a popular market in Accra, the stalls are piled with smoked fish.

It is an otherwise boisterous section, where bush-meat is sold. Ghanaians, especially Akans, the country's largest ethnic group, are great lovers of bush-meat, including grass cutters (a kind of rodent), bats and rats.

"Radio stations are announcing that we shouldn't eat all these wild animals, so the market leader here ordered all the sellers of monkey meat, rats and grass cutters not to sell here again," Maame Yaa, a trader at the Adabraka market, told Anadolu Agency.

"Now we only sell cow feet and snails here," she said.

On street corners and offices, banners supplied by the Ministry of Health feature the Dos and Don'ts of Ebola.

"Do Not Touch Or Handle Dead Or Live Bats, Monkeys, Antelopes, Etc With Your Bare Hands," one banner screams.

This banner could be a reason for the woes of bush-meat sellers in the popular markets of Agbogbloshie, Maalam Attah and Kaneshie, where bush-meat sales had at one time boomed.

"Bush-meat providers used to travel from the Volta Region and Ashanti Region to supply them, but they have stopped coming," Mama Korkor, another seller, told AA.

In recent months, Ebola – a contagious disease for which there is no known treatment or cure – has claimed 1,552 lives in West Africa. Most of the fatalities have been reported in Sierra Leone, Guinea and Liberia.

Six Ebola deaths have also been confirmed in Nigeria.

The deadly tropical fever, which first appeared in 1976 in Sudan and the Democratic Republic of Congo, can be transmitted to humans from wild animals.

It also reportedly spreads through contact with the body fluids of infected persons or of those who have died of the disease.

-Popular fish-

Traders of bush-meat have been victimized by their fellow traders, who fear their wares could serve as conveyer belts for the spread of Ebola.

"The market leaders told me point-blank that they would not entertain my sale of bush-meat in the market anymore," a frustrated – and now jobless – Mamle Okai told AA inside her home in Bubuashie, an Accra suburb.

Up until one month ago, she used to sell grass cutter in the market.

"That has been my business for close to a decade, but now I have nothing to do. That's why I'm staying home," the single mother said while cooking lunch for her five children.

Unlike Okai, Korkor has learnt to adapt to the changing circumstances.

She now displays big dried fish on the tables that used to serve as bush-meat joints.

The seller said that bush-meat lovers had been left with no choice but to buy fish.

"When they come, they ask for bush-meat. We tell them there is none, so they think small and buy the fish like that," Korkor told AA. "Some buyers don't come at all because they too heard the news."

Margaret Kyeremeh used to come to the Accra market regularly to buy her favorite bush-meat. Today, however, she is holding her shopping basket and bargaining with the dried fish seller.

"Grass cutter is my husband's favorite meat, so I used to come here every week to buy it for him," she told AA. "But for some time now, every time I come, the [bush-meat] sellers aren't here."

"I hear they have stopped coming," said Kyeremeh. "I don't know why."

While scanning the stalls for the precious meat, she added: "But the dried fish also tastes good, so I buy it."

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