Global health interventions in Africa are often shaped by narratives of exceptionalism, portraying epidemic emergencies such as Ebola, cholera, HIV/AIDS and, most recently, Covid-19 as extraordinary crises that demand urgent foreign interventions. However, such framings risk obscuring complex lived realities of affected communities and the broader socio-political conditions that shape epidemic emergencies. Jonah Lipton’s rich ethnographic study makes an incisive contribution by examining how young men and women in Freetown, Sierra Leone’s capital, navigated the ongoing precarity, kinship obligations and social transformation before, during and after the Ebola outbreak. How, he asks, do epidemic emergencies unfold among people and in places where crisis is not an exception but an enduring condition?
Based on extensive ethnographic fieldwork and participant observation, In the Time of Ebola foregrounds ordinary interactions unfolding within the realms of home, work, kinship relations, illness and death. Lipton explores what he calls the ‘extraordinary ordinary’ to capture how routine aspects of life persist, and even gain new significance during emergencies. By juxtaposing officially sanctioned emergency protocols, including lockdowns, travel restrictions and quarantines, with the lived realities of Freetown residents, Lipton reveals how the rhythms of everyday life endured and sometimes resisted the framework of exceptional time. Lipton thus challenges dominant scholarly narratives that cast epidemics as either ruptures or mere extensions of existing inequalities; instead, he pays attention to both continuities and changes. While Ebola brought significant disruptions, ordinary routines and responsibilities continued, albeit in altered forms. Lipton explains how young people and their families continuously renegotiated and modified the contours of daily existence, including life course rituals, kinship obligations and expectations, under these prolonged conditions of crisis.
One of the most significant contributions of the book is its portrayal of the home as an ambivalent space. While it functioned as a locus of care and support, it was also a site of conflict, competition and potential exploitation. This framing challenges prominent discourses about domestic spaces as inherently private, orderly and protective. On the contrary, familial relations also imposed obligations and hierarchies that potentially entrenched precarity and youth ‘stuckedness’. The paradox in the social logic ‘you need family to make it in business, and you need business to make it in family’ (p. 56) captures how young people navigated ‘contrasting yet overlapping’ social orders of kinship and business in their pursuit of ‘respectable’ social mobility. Lipton illuminates what he terms the ‘crisis of the youths’ in which precarity, limited economic opportunities and familial dynamics constrain their transition to adulthood. Lipton’s attention to the microdramas – including food sharing, witchcraft accusations, disputes over land, housework, and many ordinary interactions around the home – demonstrates how the stakes of domestic life are heightened during epidemic emergencies, what he calls ‘home truths’. Yet, Ebola did not introduce these dynamics; rather, it amplified existing ambiguities in social relations. Thus, experiences of Ebola and meaning making were entangled in the ongoing relational dynamics as many young people in Freetown were preoccupied with negotiating overlapping social orders and ‘contradictory sets of expectations’ (p. 72).
Lipton’s attention to Sierra Leone’s complex history offers an alternative reading of the ‘crisis’, one that reframes the ‘time of Ebola’ in multiple and layered temporalities. Ebola does not unfold within a singular and linear timeframe; rather, it embodies layers of crises, ‘one unusual and temporary, the other one familiar and ongoing’ (p. 9). The ‘time of Ebola’ intersects with much longer historical trajectories, including the enduring legacies of colonialism, civil war and neoliberal restructuring that define everyday life in Freetown. While the ‘emergency time’ is compressed and urgent, often imposed by international agencies and national governments, Lipton’s interlocutors made sense of this time within the existing and ongoing continuum of uncertainty and precarity. Lipton demonstrates that young people had long-term priorities beyond merely containing the epidemic; as such, Ebola offered avenues and clarity on the ‘ambiguities and inequalities of life’ (p. 10). For many youths, Lipton argues, Ebola offered forms of ‘normality that are normally absent’ (p. 124) through waged employment opportunities and openings for ‘honourable’ upward social mobility. Thus, young people reshaped the Ebola ‘crisis’ to their own needs and priorities.
In the Time of Ebola offers compelling insights into the lived experiences of young people caught up in layers of crises. Lipton underscores the importance of engaging with multiple layers of the ordinary as well as questions of care and agency in emergency conditions. Nonetheless, while enriching the narrative, the dual portrayal of Ebola as both rupture and continuity creates ambiguity about the extent and nature of the social transformation the epidemic engendered, leaving readers uncertain about how profoundly the crisis reshaped daily life. This limitation, however, should not obscure the book’s contribution. Undergraduate students, scholars of African Studies and anyone interested in global health will find the intersection of crisis, youth and familial dynamics refreshing. Many readers will agree with Lipton’s call for studying epidemics to understand ‘the range of what people find to be pressing concerns for themselves and those around them’ (p. 125).
