Ebola's toll forces Minnesotan's family out of Sierra Leone

Peter Andersen knows his family never came close to getting Ebola, despite the toll the virus was taking around them in Sierra Leone.

Still, during the first three weeks back in his native Minnesota, Andersen steered clear of social settings and took other precautions to give peace of mind to friends and acquaintances who might have feared otherwise.

• More MPR News Ebola coverage

Now, after 21 days of self-imposed isolation north of the Twin Cities, Andersen and his family have emerged from the three-week incubation period without any sign of Ebola, which isn't a surprise as they never had contact with anyone with the disease.

Andersen, who grew up in Maple Plain and attended Macalester College, brought his wife and son to Minnesota from Sierra Leone last month. It's one of the three West African nations hit hardest by Ebola, and it's where he's lived on and off for a decade and a half.

There were plenty of signs it was time to leave.

"I said they'll never close the airport," he said. "And what happened was the airlines stopped flying. And it looked for a while like even if we were ready to leave, we wouldn't be able to."

Andersen felt rueful about leaving Sierra Leone, given his devotion to the country. This past spring, the government awarded him a high honor for his online reporting during the country's decade-long civil war.

For Andersen's wife, Mariatu, a Sierra Leone native, Ebola started to seem more dangerous than the rebels who murdered civilians during the civil war, which ended in 2002 and left tens of thousands dead.

"You know the rebels are here, you will move to another place," she said. "But this is the case where you can't tell who [has] the virus. It's very at-risk to stay in that kind of place."

The Andersens say the crisis has made it very difficult to get health care in Sierra Leone — for any reason — because Ebola contamination has closed some hospitals. That's an issue for Mariatu, who needs ongoing care following a serious illness. What's more, schools are closed and crime seems to be on the rise. Two of Peter Andersen's friends have been violently attacked.

In mid-October, when the Andersens finally left Sierra Leone with their young son, Mariatu was heart-broken. But she didn't want her reluctance to put them in jeopardy.

"I'm not too happy because I'm leaving my family behind — not only my family but the entire Sierra Leonian people. They are all my family," she said. "But my husband is American. I don't want anything to happen, and so I said, 'Let's come to save our lives.'"

Since returning to Minnesota, the Andersens have kept a low profile, partly by choice. Peter Andersen says the family never had any contact with Ebola victims so he knew they were not infected. But given that it's the flu season, he didn't want friends who contract illnesses with symptoms similar to Ebola to jump to any false conclusions.

Other friends made it clear they didn't want to come around for a while. One neighbor said he'd just wave at them for a few weeks.

Meanwhile, the Andersens have been taking their 10-year-old son's temperature twice daily.

The boy started school last week, and school officials asked that they take the boy's temperature as a precaution.

Peter Andersen says he finds the school's precautions reasonable and thinks the family has been treated very well. His son, whose name MPR agreed to withhold, also thinks that's the case.

"The school was welcoming to me, and the schoolmates were welcoming," the boy said. "I met the teachers, the principal, the assistants."

Peter Andersen is perplexed by how people in other states are responding to the Ebola threat. He wants people to know the crisis is not here — but across the world in countries like Sierra Leone.

Andersen said if people in the United States don't want to see an Ebola outbreak, they should focus on the real victims in West Africa.

"The biggest frustration for me and for many people has been the taking of the narrative away from the people of Sierra Leone, Guinea and Liberia and making it appear that the epicenter of the disease is Europe and America," he said.

Editor's note: We originally reported that Andersen's son was tested for Ebola and that the results we negative. The son was never tested for Ebola. The story has been edited to reflect that.