Ebola and Civil War Has Left Sierra Leone Bruised - But Far From Broken

In some ways a politician chatting to a group of children about school and football is unremarkable, but these were Ebola orphans and I was in Sierra Leone.

We sat in the afternoon sun, they were shy and sleepy from the heat but smiling just as any child should. Yet the circumstances that had brought them to where we were, are so far from what any parent would wish.

At the start of the month I returned to Sierra Leone after more than two decades away. As the country of my mother's birth, I spent a lot of time there as a child and my memories centred around the people, their energy and enthusiasm. The civil war and Ebola have undeniably taken their toll on these things in my absence, it certainly hasn't destroyed them.

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