At the airport in Freetown, Sierra Leone, Aliea Kamara could not hug her friends goodbye or even shake their hands.

It was only then that the reality of the Ebola epidemic hit home, despite having been there for several months supervising the building of Hope Academy for Girls, a charity school funded largely by Bermudians.

“I just broke down and cried,” she said. “I didn’t feel fear when I was there. I did my daily chores. My daughters were calling me saying ‘Mummy don’t tell me you went to town again today, don’t you understand the danger?’ but things were normal to me.”

When she did decide to leave last September, it was hard to find a flight out because of the panic.

“At first they only had one Brussels Airlines flight going out and that was full,” she said. “Then I was able to get a place on the Morocco flight.”

Hope Academy was scheduled to open in October, but the Sierra Leone government closed all schools in the summer, due to the spread of Ebola. Schools may open again in January.

Hope Academy is based in York, a fishing village on the country’s west coast. So far, it and several surrounding villages are untouched by Ebola. Mrs Kamara is proud to have played a role in that.

“We were able to use some of the funds from Hope Academy to buy cartons of soap and chlorine to distribute to the villages,” the retired teacher said. “I also went to these villages and helped to demonstrate how these things should be used. Ebola is actually a very weak virus outside the body and can be killed with soap and water and bleach.”

Now there are buckets of soap and water distributed around the villages. Residents are encouraged to make any visitors sanitise themselves before entering the area. All shops close at 6pm and residents are encouraged to quarantine themselves in their homes at night and not let anyone in, unless absolutely necessary. When the epidemic first hit Sierra Leone Mrs Kamara said many people were in denial.

“It’s traditional in Sierra Leone to hug when you meet or shake hands,” she said. “When I went out to the school building site I would say to the construction workers, ‘We can’t touch, remember Ebola’. They would say, ‘Oh, there is no Ebola that’s just something cooked up by the government to get money from outsiders’. There was a lot of denial.”

She said Ebola is rife in the cities of Freetown and Waterloo, 20 miles from York. Villagers avoid those areas or stay home altogether if they can.

Mrs Kamara was born in Sierra Leone, but was from a well-off family, and won a scholarship to study teaching, in Cairo, Egypt. Later, while raising a family in Sierra Leone she noticed that several young girls who cared for her daughters didn’t have access to basic education. She vowed to one day help girls in Sierra Leone who hadn’t been as lucky as herself. She became a teacher while living in Kent, England during the 1970s.

It wasn’t until a few years ago, when she was visiting her daughter Ngadi, a Bermuda resident, that her old dream resurfaced. She was asked to talk about Sierra Leone and her dream at Grace Methodist Church.

Then the ball started rolling and she received funding from people in Bermuda and England to build a school. She also received the backing of the Sierra Leone government.

“Not being able to open in October was a real setback,” she said.

She is hoping that against all odds the school will be able to finally open in January.

Mrs Kamara has been living in England for the past three months, and is currently in Bermuda visiting her daughter. She will give an update on Hope Academy and answer questions at the CV Cafe in St George’s at 4pm on Saturday. Call 295-9724 or e-mail info@hopeacademy.sl