The inhabitants of the shantytown were told they could no longer come and go as they pleased. “We want to protect the part of the population that’s not infected. Food, medical supplies, and essential items will be handed out to you,” an official voice cried through a loudspeaker.
People were angry. Groups of young men armed with stones and sticks tried to rip out the barbed wire that had been put up during the night and was blocking their passage. They wanted to run away. The soldiers took aim and fired into the crowd, which started to back away. A teenaged boy cringed with pain and grasped his injured leg. A bullet had pierced his flesh and shattered the bone. Help me! In the chaos and fury that engulfed the place, no one came to his aid.
A few weeks earlier, an isolation center that had opened in the same part of town was ransacked and the patients turned out. The generator, food, mattresses, and bloodstained sheets were carried off with no inkling that they were infectious. Tear gas was used to disperse the looters. The government imposed an immediate curfew; the president issued a warning to the rioting crowds. He made threats, explained that the situation was very serious and that national security was at stake. Anarchy had to be stopped by any means necessary.
Will future outbreaks—and they will inevitably occur—strike the villages in the forest, or the big cities? Are we aware that this isn’t the end, but only the beginning of a lengthy battle?
XI
Orphaned children are like celestial bodies whose orbits lie far from the sun.
I’m looking at the small boy who has fallen asleep from sheer exhaustion, asking myself what will become of the orphans left behind by Ebola. At the age of seven, he has spent months wandering around the streets of the capital, not knowing where to go. Months of living on scraps of food, or eating nothing at all for days on end. Months of sleeping in the dust. And yet, he is a miracle child. Even though he stayed at home with his parents, both of whom had the disease, he didn’t get infected.
I read in a magazine that Ebola is particularly virulent in children. The younger they are, the weaker their immune system tends to be, and thus the more vulnerable they are. Furthermore—strangely enough—the incubation period is only half of what it is for adults. I feel great pity looking at this child who had to watch helplessly as his father and mother died. When the burial team, alerted by the neighbors, came to collect the bodies, he hid in the kitchen. Through the partially open door, he watched the men pick up the corpses after drenching them with disinfectant. Suddenly, the air was permeated by an overpowering smell, a smell that would stay fixed in his memory forever. When at last he came out of his hiding place, very early the following morning, no one wanted anything to do with him. The neighbors didn’t let him come near them and told him to leave the area. “Get away from here,” one of them yelled. “We don’t want to get infected!” Since Ebola had invaded his family, everyone thought he must be carrying the virus inside his body. Fear prevailed over compassion. I’m convinced that before, he would have been immediately taken in by the neighbors until relatives came to fetch him. But under the circumstances, the street became his refuge. What sort of a refuge? For a long time, he was completely alone; then he joined some other children who’d been cast out like himself, marginalized, avoided by the passersby. The children resorted to scavenging in the dustbins, or to petty theft, in the knowledge that nobody would run after them. It was only toward the end of the epidemic that members of a humanitarian organization found him wandering around aimlessly in the backstreets of the city. They took him and some of the other boys to a provisional reception center. There, he was offered a semblance of normality, a calming routine. He could play with the other children, and there was storytelling, guessing games, and singing contests. What was important to the charity workers was to see the kids smile again, to offer them distractions from thinking too much about the loved ones they had lost.
* * *
—
Thanks to its family reunification network, the reception center was able to track me down. One day, some men came knocking at our door. They explained that they were looking for a new home for the little one. I’m just a distant relative on his paternal side, but that’s irrelevant, since in our culture, the degree of proximity of the family ties basically doesn’t count. The men said there was nothing to fear, since a whole year after his parents’ death, he had remained untouched by the illness. So I said yes. I had some problems with my daughter and her husband, who have two young sons and a baby girl. Initially, they were against it. But on the other hand, everyone understood that we had to keep trying to do our part. Ebola is about that too…To help us financially to take him on, they promised us social aid money, and we also received a single mattress, some sheets, food supplies, some clothes and shoes, as well as some tableware.
The child calls me “Grandmother.” That’s what I’d like to be to him. But, since he came to live with us ten days ago, I’ve been wondering what his future may hold. I’m not just worried for him, but for all young children who’ve had to experience the epidemic. Maybe they’re not all orphans, but what they had to go through—the dreadful scenes, the palpable fear—has left them deeply scarred. They’ve lost their innocence. They’ve lost the kingdom of their childhood. They’ve learned that their parents aren’t immortal, that life can turn upside down from one day to the next. They’re just kids, but they’re already old. Can they hope ever to live a life free of the fear that the horror will return?
Ebola has touched the lives of so many children! And let’s not forget about those who were infected and survived. Some of them are now heads of a household, which means they alone are looking after their younger brothers and sisters in the ruins of their home. They have nothing else left. They’re called “Ebola children.”
Before falling asleep one night, the boy asked me whether he could go back to school soon. He’d just started when everything fell apart. I said yes, that was perfectly possible, since the government had just announced that the schools were about to reopen. I try to be positive, but I’m not sure he’ll be able to follow the lessons. His mind is all over the place, he can’t concentrate on even the simplest task. He seems to have forgotten his past, except when sudden flashbacks interrupt his thoughts. The story of what happened to him when he was living in the street changes daily. It’s hard for him to distinguish between what’s true and what’s not, to live in the real world.
I’m not sure I’ll be able to look after him properly. However much affection I show him, the smallest thing makes him sad. When he sees my grandchildren with their daddy, he withdraws into a corner and cries. He says it’s his fault that his father died. He needs time to forget.
Yes, the epidemic’s over. However, Ebola hasn’t loosened its grip on us yet. It comforts me to know that there are people who are still thinking of us. Right here, there are some international health organizations that have stayed on, hoping to offer their services to the Ebola survivors who would otherwise never be able to see a doctor. Those are the poorest people, they’re the ones who have suffered the most, and they continue to feel the effects of the epidemic. In addition, a number of international NGOs are appealing to the generosity of the global community. They’re suggesting to those who have the means that they sponsor these Ebola children and thus create opportunities for their future.
So much remains to be done, all across the board. We have to rebuild our country.
Since the epidemic has been officially over, the decontamination phase of all the treatment centers has now begun. This means that all the high-risk zones where the sick were being treated, and where one cannot enter without a protective suit, will be disinfected until the virus no longer has anywhere to hide. The task is easier in the low-risk zones, which is where the rooms and offices of the medical staff were situated.
Three different categories of equipment have been left behind in the centers, and now is the time to deal with them. Many beds and mat
tresses can be reused once they’ve been disinfected, and so can some tables and chairs. But damaged items need to be incinerated, while medical instruments like syringes are disinfected and then buried.
We must remain vigilant. We must build up our strength again and relearn how to live.
XII
In the face of death’s absolute power, poetry offers a little solace.
When she showed the first signs of the disease, there was nothing I could do. I wanted to keep her by my side and care for her. But I knew that would be senseless, I’m not a doctor—if I tended her, she’d have no chance of recovery. If I tended her, we’d both die. I did give it some thought. The two of us, going together.
In her agony, she pleaded with me: “It’s Ebola, kill me quick, I’m doomed anyway. I don’t want to end my life in horrible suffering. I don’t want you to see me like that. Help me.” But if there was even the slightest chance she might recover, I had to grasp it.
I called an ambulance to come and pick us up. During the drive, we held hands. When we arrived, we went to the triage tent, which all new patients had to pass through. The medical staff stood two meters away and took our temperatures with an infrared thermometer that was like a pistol pointed at our heads. Then they asked us very specific questions: “Are you vomiting and/or are you bleeding? Are you experiencing nausea? Do you have a sore throat, hiccups, or any other abnormal symptoms? Have you recently been in contact with someone suffering from Ebola?” My fiancée remembered that one of her colleagues at the office had been infected. She also answered yes to several other questions. Since I had just a bit of a fever but no other signs of the illness, I was sent to the area for suspected cases, where I was to wait for my test results to come back from the laboratory. I was distraught when I saw two nurses in protective clothing leading my fiancée to the area reserved for confirmed cases. The sight sent shivers down my spine, and I instantly regretted my decision to bring her to this place. I might never see her again! I was angry with myself for deserting her at the very moment when she had to fight her greatest battle. If she lost, there’d be nothing left of us.
* * *
—
We’ve been here several days now. Every morning, the nurses take my temperature and assess my health, checking me carefully for any symptoms of infection. My initial test was negative, and now we need to wait for a second one. Suspected cases like me are allowed to walk up and down in the courtyard, read, exercise, and even play cards with the other patients. As for me, I prop a chair against the outside wall of our ward, sheltering from the sun under the corrugated steel roof that casts a thin shadow on the red soil. I sit with my open notebook on my knees, writing poems. Actually, they’re not really my own creation. They’re poems I know by heart, poems I used to recite to my fiancée, who loved listening to them. I do miss our poetry evenings. When I’ve finished writing down a poem, I tear the page out of my notebook, fold it in two, and hand it to one of the nurses. I ask them to leave it at the foot of my fiancée’s bed. This is my way of being at her side, my way of expressing my great love for her.
For a long time now
I’ve loved to sing your footsteps
And listened to your breath
In the middle of the night
For a long time now your scent
Has invaded all my senses
And your voice sounds in me
A thousand far echoes
For so long, your smile
Has sketched my thoughts
And your nimble fingers
Have woven my days
So long that I’ve known
The rhythm of your heartbeat
And the black velvet
Of your shadow skin*
I had trouble remembering a second one. I see more and more people arriving at the Ebola center. And I see more and more people dying. Burial teams appear and take away the bodies in a hurry. I’ve become familiar with this place, with the way it’s organized, and with most of the caregivers. It’s a place cut off from the rest of the world, a place where there’s but little room for hope. I find poetry futile in such a setting. All I want to do now is spend my time next to the fence that separates my area from where my fiancée is. There I can gather some information about her. I’ve been told that she remains in critical condition and that it’s still not possible to make any predictions.
I remember the day we met. At a party at a friend’s house. There was music and plenty of food. The moment she came into the room, I knew she’d play an important part in my life. We spent the evening talking to each other as if nobody else existed. And after that, we never parted company. People say we’re very much alike, because we have the same mannerisms and laugh at the same jokes. And I’m fairly certain our way of thinking is the same too.
We told our parents we were planning to get married, and started living together. What I love most about her is her gentleness. She’s beautiful without being obsessed with her looks. Her eyes are deep, her skin is smooth, her hair is thick. Whenever she smiles at me, I catch myself falling in love with her all over again. The thought of her suffering is intolerable to me. Of her dying? Impossible. She’ll soon be discharged, I’m sure of it. Then we can leave this place and resume our life as it was before.
I started writing again. It’s the only link left between us, the only way I can express my love to her, the only way I can send her strength. My second poem:
I remember
Diving into your eyes
Discovering each of your features
And listening to your voice
I remember
Sharing with you
A moment in time
Creating a point in space
I remember an everlasting place
Where we baptized
Each minute
She’s got to win this war. She must emerge victorious.
This war, yes, this war. Our country has known another, just as devastating. A war between men, between chiefs greedy for power.
Hordes of barefoot fighters, rabid mercenaries, and soldiers with bloodshot eyes, brandishing Kalashnikovs, terrorized the city, which was caught in the middle of a murderous feud. They raped, pillaged, and massacred people; nothing could stop them. Child soldiers, recruited for their loyalty to their warlord and maddened with alcohol and weed, emptied their firearms on civilians at the slightest provocation, or even without any apparent reason. Having spent their childhood in shacks and in abject poverty, they considered killing no big deal. The result was wholesale destruction—office blocks riddled with bullets, schools with caved–in roofs, ransacked hospitals. People did all they could to escape the clashes. My parents, my sister, my two brothers, and I narrowly managed to get away in our beat-up old car. In the middle of the night, we found ourselves on roads blocked off with checkpoints manned by militiamen armed to the teeth with pistols and machetes. It was like an obstacle course, having to drive along rutted tracks, being forced to make lengthy detours. We were scared, we were hungry, we were thirsty. By the skin of our teeth, more than once, we avoided colliding with troops in armored vehicles. And then, at last, the end of hell: the border post. Five days it took us to get to the other side and be free! We were in exile, just a few kilometers away from our own country. Until the conflict ended, we led wandering, unsettled lives.
As for my fiancée, she told me that when the war was at its peak, her family went into hiding in the bush. Her father had dug a huge hole, a bit like a bunker. That’s where they slept at night, after having covered the opening with twigs. When peace was declared at last, we were all overjoyed. We set to work, eager to rebuild our country.
I am scared of death, but not so much for myself. I’m more afraid of losing the one I love. The one who gave me back my will to live.
My second test came back negative, which mea
ns that soon I have to leave the center and go back home. I fear this separation. Even if I’m not actually with her, at least I’m not very far. I decide to go back to the barrier and wait. After a while, a male nurse walks toward me. He lowers his gaze and says: “I’m so sorry about your fiancée…”
* * *
—
My last poem isn’t a real poem. But it’s the only one I’ve ever written myself. I wanted it to be like a scream, aimed at the sky.
Pain
Throbbing, pulsating
Stinging
It goes right through me
Pain
Freezing, burning
Acrid, bitter
It tears me apart
Pain
Burning, blazing
Oppressing, haunting
Blinding
Deafening
Pain
Lightning flash
To suffer, to die
So cruel
* Extract from Red Earth / Latérite, by Véronique Tadjo, translated by Peter S. Thompson, Eastern Washington University Press, 2006.
XIII
Knowledge knows no borders; it has no color and no smell unknown to Man.
I’m the Congolese researcher who discovered the Ebola virus, right here in my home country. At a time when absolutely nothing was known about the illness, I decided to seek out the place where the first outbreak had occurred in 1976. I harvested several blood samples from a woman stricken with the disease and took them to a laboratory in Belgium to identify this new virus. There it was, under my microscope: long, thin, curled strands of a terrifying elegance.
I strove to analyze it in all its facets in order to find the best way to keep it in check. Scientific experts consider my research “the early phase of an Ebola immunization therapy that’s currently being developed.”
In the Company of Men Page 7