LE COMMENCEMENT

I
Do, go. Go to your aunt’s house in the capital. The village is cursed. Never come back again.
She stuffed some clothes in a bag and took the money he was handing her. She knew that he
gave her everything she had left. When the bus stops at the central station, there will be
people everywhere. Don’t worry, your aunt will be there to welcome you. Don’t tell him
anything. Above all, don’t tell him that we are dying here. She would be afraid. Don’t tell
him that your mother and your two little brothers are seriously ill. She wouldn’t understand.
Speak little. Observe. Do everything she asks of you. This is your chance. He hugged her
briefly and left without turning around.

II

Two mischievous children in a village on the edge of the forest went hunting. Village with
large round huts, earthen walls, conical roofs and layers of thatch going up stairs to the sky.
The forest, this imposing presence that is both protective and nourishing. Kingdom of
mysterious forces that do not allow themselves to be discovered with the naked eye. The
villagers lived in the most total beauty and destention. In the morning, the mist covered the
territory until the arrival of a warm and humid sun. Armed with slingshots, the boys shot
everything that moved. Then they raised their heads and saw a colony of sleeping bats, upside
down, in a large tree with a rough bark. The freshness of the foliage formed a bulwark against
the sun’s rays. One of the children aimed and touched a beast. She fell and several bats flew
away, uttering piercing screams. He is still aiming. A muffled noise was heard in the carpet
of dead leaves. In turn, the second boy succeeds in his shot. A bat crashed at his feet and
began to crawl. The little hunters took their prey and returned to the village in a glorious way.
They prepared a wood fire, impaled their game and grilled it after seasoning it with chilli and
spices in their mother’s kitchen. There was not much to eat. Hard bones and a flesh with a
wild taste. But it was their loot.

Less than a month later, they were in agony. Blood flowed through all their orifices.
When the nurse was alerted, he quickly went to the scene and stopped. He looked at the
children twisting on the bed, the blood and mucus staining the ground in clay. The stench in
the air. He said to the father: above all, do not touch them, do not wipe their tears. Don’t take
them in your arms. Get away, you’re in danger, I’ll call the team. He briefly described the
scene in his notebook and ran to alert his superiors. But the mother stood at their bedside. She
cried while caressing her children’s faces, giving them some water to drink.

One after the other, in the red earth house and the corrugated sheet metal roof, the small
bodies carried their suffering. No one knew. The team was slow to arrive. The mother could
no longer stay there without doing anything. She went to the healer to look for the plants that
heal. The man said: there are far too many deaths, it’s not normal. This evil comes from
elsewhere. Someone is attaching us. It’s a bad spell that exceeds my knowledge. You have to
clean the village, do purification rites. But he had pity on her and gave her decoctions for her
children. The father was still waiting, standing in front of the door, for the health team. He let
the mother do it, carefully observing the village go about its business. The farmers, with the
hoe hanging from the shoulder, went to the fields in single file. Women came back from the
river, basins full of water on their heads. The kids clung to their loincloth while trotting
behind them, their feet covered with dust. Cabris grazed on a pile of garbage, while the
chickens dug the ground of their legs in search of earth worms. He looked at the yellow sun,
the heavy clouds of rain, and thought that misfortune had insinuated into their lives.

The team arrived. The men took out their equipment. They began by spraying the soil with a
chlorinated solution. The father moved away. They ordered the mother to go out. She refused.
They set up a cord of

Security all around the house. Neighbours were now rushing in front of the stage. It was
morning, they still had their faces crumpled, their loincloth knotted on their chest.

The villagers were watching from afar, crowded silently under the trees. They told
themselves that the father and mother were already ghosts. One more family was leaving.
Usually, every death was announced in fury. The news of the death was spreading throughout
the village to the rhythm of the screams. The women rolled on the floor and pulled their hair
screaming. Yet, this time, nothing, absolutely nothing. Everything was unfolding in silence.
A thick and threatening silence, heralding an even more painful tomorrow. With the death of
the two boys, the village was tetanised by a bad premonition. The mother went up with her
children in the ambulance. The father never saw them alive again, none of them. He only had
time to make his eldest daughter leave. Not a tear was shed. Already, he was struggling for
his survival.

THE WORD TREE

III

We, the trees. Our roots plunge to the heart of the earth whose pulse we feel beats. We
breathe his breath. Let’s taste its flesh. We are born and die in the same place without ever
moving away from our territory. Both prisoners and time winners, frozen and slender. We
adapt to rain and good weather, thunderstorms and harmattan winds. Our comes marry the
cottony dreams of the sky. We are the link that unites men to the past, the present and the
uncertain future.

We are the ones who breathe the fresh breath of the morning. Our sap is a vital force. Our
century-old soul. We see everything. We feel everything. Our memory is indivisible. Our
consciousness beyond time and space. We have known the most beautiful and saddest stories,
and we will witness other life cycles. This is how the passage of days is played out.

We were here to last. We were here to spread our shadow over the most remote countries. We
were here to whisper in our foliage the secrets of the four corners of the world. But human
beings have destroyed our hopes. Wherever they are, they attack the forest. Our trunks crash
in a sound of thunder. Our naked roots mourn the end of our dreams. We don’t decimate the
forest without pouring blood. Today’s men think they are allowed everything. They think
they are the masters, the architects of nature. They consider themselves the only legitimate
inhabitants of the planet while millions of other species have populated it since

Millennia. Blind to the suffering they inflict, they are mute before their own indifference.
Impossible to stop their voracity. They devour even more even when they already have
everything.
And, when they are full, they turn to other desires: food, money, tine. They’re wasting.
Between them, they are tearing away natural resources. They dig into the belly of the earth.
They dive into the oceans. They will go all the way.

Ah, if they knew how heavy our sentence is! The energy collapses, the force dissolves. We,
the trees, harbour a rainbow universe alone: birds and insects, vines, flowers, mosses and
lichens come to take refuge in our arms, along our soft or rough bark. Other creatures rest in
our summits, hunt or eat there. Buds, fruits or tender leaves. Our breathing spreads in the
oxygen-thirsty air.

I am Baobab, first tree, eternal tree, symbol tree. My peak touches the sky and offers a
refreshing shadow to the world. I am looking for soft light, carrying life. So that it illuminates
humanity, illuminates the darkness and appeases the anguish.

Unfortunately, too many of us have left to make way for shrubs that are struggling to assert
themselves. Plants and flowers also lose their most beautiful attire. Animals can no longer
find refuge. Men burn our branches, bleed our trunks. To reach and exploit an area where
trees of great wisdom rise, they cut mercilessly. They see in us only a value of exchange.
Watch how our soils crumble and lose their substance! The rich and fragrant humus dries up.
The rock with a hard face surfaces. I saw animals dying of hunger, depriving us of their
friendship.
And yet, do you know that the forest is the territory that houses the largest number of living
beings? Did you know that? Our roots will look for water. Our leaves call the rain. Not a
torrid and devastating rain, but a shower embracing nature. Without us, avalanches,

Landslides and mudslides go to war and sweep vast expanses.

We, the trees, like to believe that we are the guardians of rivers, rivers and seas. Even far
from their mouths, we make their bed and preserve them from overflows that would drown
men. We dare to believe that we are talking about flowing water, dancing water, singing
water. If only men could see further! If only they could predict their decline, exhaustion,
degradation. Perhaps they would finally understand that they depend on us, and that in this
century of disaster hundreds of peoples who had sheltered in the forest have disappeared with
their languages, knowledge and beautiful customs. If only men could realise their mistake,
they would certainly stop their bumps, machete and axe. They would silence the chainsaws,
stop their bulldozers, put in the garage their heavy trucks carrying wooden beads, these giant
monsters of iron and death. All this does not bring them anything good, does not make them
happy.

Men are fighting on our bodies. They oppose those who, among them, want to continue living
near us, with us.

We cannot go beyond the sky, because there is no longer existence for us. If we go too far
into the subsoil, we encounter molten magma, the core of the earth. There is no existence for
us in this place either. If the temperature of the air we breathe rises too suddenly, then we die.
All, as much as each other. Because the space we live in is limited. Nothing in the ice of the
North Pole. Nothing in the desert dunes. Life, the real, the richest, the most beautiful, is still
in the forest. Keep what remains of the planet. So that we can continue to live on a land that
resembles us.

I am Baobab, first tree, eternal tree, symbol tree. My peak touches the sky and offers a
refreshing shadow to the world. I am looking for soft light, carrying life so that it illuminates
humanity, illuminates the darkness and soothes anguish.

I’m old now. The natural death of trees is a renewal. I witnessed one day the noble end of a
thousand-year-old tree. The forest knelt. Time has stopped. The lightning fell from the sky.

I’m ready. When my time comes, I will lie down on the earth to offer my body to rodent
insects, mushrooms, who will feed on my flesh. I’m ready. Death does not scare me, it is
linked to life.

But, when they murder us, men must know that they break the chains of existence. Animals
can no longer find food. Bats can no longer find food. No longer find the wild fruits they love
so much. They then approach the villages, where there are mango trees, guava trees, papaya
trees and avocado trees with a sweet and sweet flavour. They are looking for the company of
men.
I know that not all human beings are the same. Not all are looking for rare wood species,
exotic woods in order to sell them at the highest price to shameless merchants. Not all of
them burn the bush to make their ends meet. Not all are great growers of oil palms, heeas,
cocoa trees, coffee trees or eucalyptus to grow their rent. Harvests bought and transported in
huge container ships that split the seas, they will empty their cargo ships somewhere in the
West, after the London, Paris and New York Stock Exchanges have decided on world prices.

No, there are also the poor, refugees, barefoot people who are massing in camps to flee a
fratricidal war or to escape the drought and famine that follows. They enter the forest, clear it
and plant cassava, yam, corn. They hunt game, the big agoutis, the

Palm rats always pressed, small shy deer or laughing monkeys frequenting bat trees. This
allows them to eat to their hunger. But a great misfortune falls on them. They begin to die of
an unknown disease. Alone in the forest, far from everything. Sometimes, the news reaches
the country’s authorities, and it is quarantine. Those who must die die. Those who must
survive survive. In the capital, city dwellers know nothing about it. The city doesn’t know
anything about it. Nobody talks about it because it doesn’t matter. Because it’s far away.
They are left behind, forgotten.

This has not always been the case. There was a time when men talked with us, the trees. We
shared the same gods. The same minds. If someone were to cut one of us, he first asked him
for forgiveness. He poured libations on the ground whispering a prayer: beautiful tree, soul of
our life, fresh shadow of our dreams, root of our future, friend of all seasons, we invoke your
leniency. With all our heart, we thank you for your generosity. We will remember your
presence in our lives.

It was the time before, the time of the past of the founding ancestors of the village who had
planted me at the heart of their lives. Over the centuries, they had made my presence the
symbol of the link between nature and men. I was the tree of wisdom, the one to whom we
turned when we had to find an answer to the torments of existence. On my branches, the birds
conversed freely. During the celebrations, balafons and koras punctuated the dance of the
mask. The feet moved the earth, the heads marked the pace of time that dies and is reborn,
dies and is reborn. I was laughing with them. I was crying with them, when sadness invaded
the village. And, when a venerable old man returned to the kingdom of the ancestors, as a
burial, I offered the hollow of my colossal trunk in order to bury it for eternity.

Today, everything is different. No one wants to talk about death. They say of their deceased:
“They are no longer there”, or: “They have disappeared”. However, they don’t wonder where
they went. At the cemetery? In the sky? Underground? They prefer to deny death because
they no longer have time to thind about it. Death is a fault because it interrupts their unfrantic
running.

Before, it was not at all like that in my village. We had always welcomed death. We accepted
it, because we knew that the earth had to sleep for the next crops to exist. You should never
leave a deceased alone with himself. He had to be accompanied. The villagers gathered, ate,
drank, sang, cried and danced around him. They were talking to him. Reassured him about
the burial that awaited him. They whispered the words of the heart to him. They asked him
for a final advice. They touched him, rearranged his ceremonial clothes so that he was always
beautiful. Celebrated his passage on earth. Death was part of their daily lives, they were
talking to it. She was familiar to them.

When life was in full swing, I was their confidant. The one to whom they spoke of their joys
and sorrows. The difficulty of living. They laid offerings at my feet and gathered under my
deshy foliage. I was the Palaver Tree. Long and complex discussions respecting the pre-
edences. Someone asked for the floor, stood up and expressed his opinion. He was sitting
down. Another stood up and continued the thread of thought. Thus, important decisions were
taken jointly. If a conflict was preparing, mediations were taking place around me. The
conciliabules of the chiefs too. Long deliberations could not end far from my freshness. I
encouraged appeasement. The villagers gave themselves time to listen, to defuse the quarrels
that threatened to divide them. Very often, after assessing the problems, they ruled out the
punishment and sought to rebuild the suddenly broken ties. Life was decided in the cocoon of
my embrace. Marriages, births, funerals, good or bad harvests, drought, reprehensible attitude
or

Admirable of a young man or girl, protection of the gods, protection against witchcraft and
alliances with neighbouring villages. Everything revolved around my affection.
There was a great wizard. He often came to ask me for advice before creating his powerful
grey-greys. All the villagers wore them, around the neck, around the waist or at the chest,
wrists or ankles. The babies were ready to ward off the bad spell. The girls were looking for
them to find love and fertility. The hunters obtained it to protect themselves from the dangers
of the forest.

Behind what is visible is a parallel and underground world in which vital forces are scattered
energies, said the sorcerer. He was the one who knew how to tame them to benefit the village.

Nevertheless, he could also invoke the destructive side of nature when circumstances
required it. Life became tormented and unpredictable.

This is how I lived with the men of my village. I listened to them, they heard the murmur in
my leaves. Each in his place, but all together.

I am Baobab, memory of the centuries, whether they are bruised or blessed by the gods.

I loved human beings and I still love them. But, over the years, I have lost my illusions. My
leaves have tarnished. My bark darkened. Overnight, when gold was found in the region, my
village changed. Disfigured. Wild gold. The men began to plunder everything in order to get
as quickly as possible to the cursed metal. Stir, dig in the water of the rivers the golden
sediments that would suddenly make them rich. One ounce of gold was worth two thousand
dollars at the time. Impossible to resist! They fought hard on the trees and made the void to
build large ponds in which they sorted the pebbles. Mud, mud everywhere. Madness in
minds. Even the women abandoned their pottery and

Set to work with the help of their children. Perched on their fragile heads, buckets filled with
earth. The mercury poured into the rivers to better identify the golden particles killed fish,
small crustaceans, plankton and dark green algae. Water that has become acidic. Bad. Water
turned into poison. Life has become poison. Prostitution. Bars. Arms trafficking. Drugs.

The villagers turned into an army of Magnan ants, formidable predators, determined to
destroy everything in their path. We had to make a clean table of the past. Overnight, they
abandoned their fields, their legends, their customs, their beliefs. When the trees collapsed,
they took with them the climbing animals and teeming creatures. It saddened me deeply
because I knew that the imbalance was settling in, and that many animals had to be saved at
the bottom of the forest. I didn’t understand how the situation had deteriorated so quickly, so
brutally. I would have liked to stop them in their excesses, however, I was not able to do so.
They had irretrievably turned their backs on me, despite generations of mutual respect.

Over time, the men fell ill. At first, they thought it was malaria. Fever, chills, stomach ache.
Aches, great fatigue. They went in search of neem leaves, this tree with a thousand virtues,
this generous tree that treats malaria and hunts mosquitoes. A proud and resistant tree. Not
demanding and accommodates all soils, meagre land, stony or sandy land. They then
remembered that, in their rage, they had destroyed hundreds of them. Now they had to sink
even further into the forest. Walk, although tired and weakened; finally, they found the tree a
benefactor. They stripped him of a large part of his leaves and fruits, which they carried in
bags. Upon their return, the women made infusions that they gave to the sick to drink several
times a day. They crushed the almonds of the fruits in order to extract an oil that they passed
on the bodies of men. A handful of them regained their health after a few days.

But for the others, the majority, the temperature did not go down. Total Weakening. Came
the blood spit, the blood in the vomiting, the blood evacuated, the blood breaking all the
dikes of the flesh.

Until the last moment, miners refused to let go of the coveted gold nuggets. They held them
firmly in the palm of their hands. The construction site had become a battlefield. A field of
devastation. Gold had sown disaster and mourning. I witnessed the meteoric progression of
the disease helplessly. Nothing seemed to be able to stop him.

What makes the wealth of men, that of the heart or that of money? My village was rich in a
beautiful wealth. He disappeared wanting to own the fortune.

I remained a desperate tree for a long time. I was nostalgic for the clear laughter of children,
the rough hands of old people when they caressed my trunk, the beauty of women asleep
under my shadow, men with bodies sculpted by the ground. I wanted to become a tree
without roots to be able to leave this arid place. Transporting me to a more lenient country.
My life had become useless and poured drop by drop on memories.
What was supposed to happen happened in spite of me, far from me.

An Ebola outbreak suddenly broke out and crossed the region from side to side, becoming the
largest ever documented in the history of the virus. And, for the first time, Ebola had also
travelled to the metropolis.

It takes between five and twenty-one days for fever to occur, acute and haunting. Stab blows
in the temples, intense pain in all muscles, lightning headaches, vomiting and diarrhoea,
rashes, burning sore throat. Towards the end, a haemorrhage carries the last sign of life.

It is enough for humans to touch each other to contaminate themselves. Worse than war.
Now, the mother, the father, the son can become a deadly enemy. Pity is a death sentence.

I saw the destruction that the epidemic triggered in the country while the rest of the world
was trying to isolate itself. Africa has become the cradle of all suffering. The place where the
future of the human species was played. Threat of extinction if the virus jumped, took the
bus, train, plane. If he crossed the borders, he travelled by boat. If he hid in the tears of a
child, the kiss of a lover or the embrace of a mother. Beings had become flesh and viscosities.
Anonymous bodies, spread apart on the asphalt, collapsed in the crowded streets of the
capital, hit hard. How can we forget the fury that spread with an incredible fulgurance?

But I saw the courage. Men, women, young people caught in turmoil. Feerce fighters for the
survival of others and for their own survival. I’ve seen people rushing for help. I have seen
people coming from all over the world, to volunteer and fight the disease.

Despite the chaos, the dawn continued to rise and the twilight to announce the night. I saw
the morning shudder with impatience. And it was then that, after the bitterness and sadness,
the hour of tenderness returned. Gradually. I held out my ear. I listened to men again. Of all
men. My branches have expanded and have grown to an extraordinary extent.

Nothing that makes human beings has escaped me. I want to tell their stories, give a voice to
all those who have risen above fear. Ordinary beings with extraordinary acts. Whatever the
place, I want to honour their bravery. The earth is a story that we have not finished telling, a
story of castaways lost on an island. Who once sang the stars of the world? Who once opened
the doors of all galaxies?

I am Baobab, first tree, eternal tree, symbol tree. My roots plunge into the belly of the earth.
My summit enters the sky. I look for the light that illuminates the universe, illuminates the
darkness and soothes the hearts.

FIGHT WITH ALL YOUR STRENGTH STILL FIGHT

IV

The earth is sometimes more distant from men than the moon. The astronaut’s doctor in
combination discovers a new universe.

The first time I entered the room in the high-risk area, a patient emerged from the corridor
and collapsed in front of me. His body covered with blood and fluids. On it, millions of Ebola
particles. My heart like a drum under my heavy suit. He had to be brought back to his bed.
With the help of a nurse, we lifted the man by the arms. He was very restless, trembling
violently. His look was imbued with an unfathomable fear. He had to be given a sedative.
Gradually, he stopped struggling. We were then able to leave him in order to go and take care
of the other patients.

At night, I have nightmares. I am still among the sick. The tent is an oven. It’s the middle of
the day. The sun hits the canvas hard. I can no longer breathe, my head is buzzing, I don’t
wear my jumpsuit, I’m naked, I have the virus. My gums are bloody, my soul escapes. I feel
it coming out of my belly. Wake up with a start.

My room, in the dark. The window is cut out in the wall. The purring of the fan, the stirred air
is hot, I am soaked in sweat. My eyes close heavily.

But now the morning is coming. It’s another day coming. I get up, spray my face for a long
time with fresh water and look at myself in the bathroom mirror. I’m alife. It’s nothing, a bad
dream. I must ignore it, go back to the sick. This is where I have to be, in this makeshift
centre, nowhere else is there a more desperate struggle.
Early in the morning, I pass the entrance reserved for staff. The majority of employees arrive
by minibus. They got up very early, leaving the house while the children were still sleeping.
Among them are nurses, so determined in their mission, psychologists with a difficult task,
team members - water, sanitation, body burial. Also arrive cooks and launders at modest but
essential work, and finally administrators and logisticians, who very quickly go to their
offices at the other end of the centre. Local or foreign volunteers, they feel united by a
common desire to eradicate Ebola. There are also, of course, the other doctors, my closest
colleagues.

I go to the meeting tent with the staff members who provided the night guard. The team
leader gives us the report. Number of deaths. Number of new arrivals. The flow continues to
increase. The paramedic manager explains that several patients are waiting to be transferred
to the centre. But there are no more beds available. We must hasten the tests of suspicious
patients. The nurse points out that patients whose tests have returned negative remain treated
in the centre because of other pathologies. They should be transferred to the central hospital.
Someone replies that it has been closed since six medical staff members died of the virus.

We move on to the tasks of the day: a woman refuses to eat and take her malaria medication.
She lost her baby and husband only three days ago. Cases to be closely monitored. A young
man who was very communicative when he arrived has now fallen. He no longer reacts to
anything.

Many patients are in advanced condition and need to be rehydrated urgently. A little girl’s
arm swelled disproportionately. It’s probably sepsis. She received a dose of antibiotics. A
doctor asks that special attention be paid during bites, thick gloves making the manipulations
dangerous for patients and staff. A nurse reports that a patient vomited in the yard. A knife
was found under his pillow. He says he prefers to kill himself rather than succumb to Ebola.
The team leader asks how the knife could have been hidden. The nurse doesn’t know. The
occupant of bed number 6 will be able to be sent home. Five patients seem to be doing better.

I’m going to the locker room. I’m being helped to get dressed. I’m wearing my plastic suit. It
is thick, waterproof, closed at the wrists and ankles. My body must be completely wrapped, I
am added the transparent plastic apron. It is an additional layer of protection. I put on two
pairs of gloves, I slip my feet into the rubber boots, they are heavy but comfortable, easy to
put on and take off. In front of the mirror, I check that my face mask is in place and that my
vision glasses do not move. I am entering the high-risk area.

Those who are already seriously affected arrive on stretchers. The others walk painfully. We
can already see the mask of death on their faces. Eyes widened, body emaciated.

Leaning over a patient, I have to find the vein. Prick. Place the catheter gently, very gently,
because the skin is dry and dehydrated. The almost non-existent pulse. I apply, I am precise.
My gloves are the only dam. A moment of inattention and the needle will sink into my flesh.
Inside my suit, I sweat with big drops. I can’t speak, my voice is muffled. I make gestures to
tell the nurse what I want her to bring me, I point to the instruments with my fingertips. There
is fog on the visor. No more than forty minutes, it’s time

Bearable. Afterwards, we risk fainting, falling. Forty minutes during which I breathe my
breath. My sweat drips along my arms, chest and legs. It’s atrocily hot. The rainy season is
slow to come and the sun’s rays seem more and more intense. I raise my head. I am thinking
of my wife and children. When will I see them again? Why expose me to such risks? Ebola
pushes us to our limits, puts our backs to the wall. I don’t want to let the virus win. I don’t
want the disease to take control, spread and threaten my family. Fighting is the price to pay
when you live on the same planet.

I am aware of the immensity of the task that stands before us. Patient care is only supportive
treatments. There are no effective drugs against the virus. The important thing is to rehydrate
the patient. A lot of liquids, as much as possible. Also feed orally and, if not possible,
intravenously. Tablets must be given to control fever and monitor gastrointestinal problems.
Treat pain, reduce anxiety. Patients have become easy prey. Diseases that are grafted onto
their affected bodies must be treated: bacterial infections, malaria, typhoid, tuberculosis. We
must not stop caring, even when the sick seem to be close to death. Give the maximum of
ourselves. Above all, not to attach myself to them because it would be to take the risk of
making me vulnerable to the suffering of my patients to the point of not being able to do
anything anymore. I just have to continue my work hoping that the horror will soon end, that
I will be able to come home one day, to forget and relive.
It’s so much more difficult when it comes to a child. I remember the baby who came one
afternoon. His mother carried him in her arms. Wrapped in a thick blue blanket from which
his face protroved. Closed eyelids, fine hair down on the forehead, half-open lips, thin skin

Like tissue paper. The woman had to be supported at each step by two nurses in combination.
We took turns feeding the little girl with a syringe, because she was separated from her
mother, a confirmed case. His tiny body was fighting, struggling. She digested the food well,
seemed to gain strength. But, three days later, she began to wander. She didn’t sleep all night.
The next morning, the milk no longer went down her throat, she no longer swallowed. She
was vomiting. At one point, she breathed very hard, then she died.

Could we have saved her?

This is the question I have asked myself so many times and that still obsesses me. Among
children, the mortality rate is devastating. No paediatric room. They are as contagious as
adults. The same rules apply. Yes, they are no longer children before they die.

Could we have saved her?

The anti-Ebola centre was set up in a hurry to counter the emergency of the epidemic. Huge
trucks brought boards, sheets and tarpaulins. The technicians set up the work and set up a set
of prefabricated rooms and tents. In a few weeks, everything was in place and operational.
Two generators, always running, provide electricity. The purring of their engines rhythms the
days. The camp is separated into two zones. One for suspected cases and the other for
confirmed cases. But one side of the centre is reserved for medical staff rooms and offices.
No entry without permission. An orange plastic barrier encircles the centre. No guards. Street
lamps all along. It looks like a prison. The ground all around has been flattened, a perimeter
that no one approaches without fear. Triage under the large tent. Those waiting for the results
of their tests remain in the transit area. They pray, they cry, they make promises to their god,
they remember the great events of their lives.

What are we doing on earth? Why did you put us there if everything is only suffering? There
are lives that count for nothing like the fruits damaged at the end of the markets. Abandoned
in crates or thrown to the ground, fruits that no one wanted and yet a few hours before
adorned the shelves.

I am an intruder in the territory of death. This is his empire. She is the empress with absolute
power. I am like an astronaut who floats in space a thousand leagues from the earth. The
slightest tear in his suit, and he is lost. The slightest tear in mine, and, like him, I’m lost.

Few patients will heal. There are some who will never leave their bed or the treatment tent.

Who will survive? We give them all the same care, yet, two weeks later, one patient will die
while another will return home. A patient will feel better, regain strength, smile and then,
suddenly, he gives up and dies. Impossible to know. Despite our efforts, too often, it is the
virus that wins.

In truth, the outcome is not in our hands. The fight that patients fight against Ebola depends
on the defences they have at their disposal: their immune system or perhaps the dose of virus
that infects their body. Were the survivors healthier than the others before being infected?
There is something mysterious. What if it was simply due to a survival instinct, more
powerful than anything? The virus confessing to being defeated and giving them the freedom
to live a little longer. We don’t know what we have in our stomach. I, who am a doctor, if
Ebola infects me, how will my body react? I may not do better than my patients. A woman
survives, an old man survives, a teenager survives. And me? The virus does not respect
anyone, makes no exception for anyone. It cannot be reasoned. Such an enemy has
hegemonic impulses. The human race would not be enough for him.

Even in death, Ebola continues to be hard. The corpses are devastating bombs.

At the beginning of the epidemic, panic threatened to spread. The army had not yet been
mobilised. The soldiers were not yet ready to shoot the sick who wanted to flee. But how to
accept the idea that his body will be put in a plastic cover, sprinkled with disinfectant and
buried by masked men in a mass grave? No traditional rite to prepare the deceased to enter
the other world. No funeral to honour their memory. No time for recollection or tenderness.
Some people returned home despite the diagnosis. They “evaded” with all the consequences
that this entailed; bringing the virus back to their family, their village, their city.
When my task is finished, I go back to the locker room. I am being helped, this time, to
remove my combination. Long and meticulous process. I stay for a while with my feet soaked
in the chlorine-filled tank so that the soles of my boots do not carry any contaminated fluid or
debris. Now I am being sprayed with a disinfectant product. I put my arms in the cross so that
the solution goes everywhere. I must avoid any physical contact. I’m going to take a
chlorinated shower. Everything I have worn will also be washed in chlorinated water and
dried in the sun. What cannot be disinfected will be burned.

When a patient goes home, I am happy. He is given new clothes, because everything he wore
when he arrived at the centre was incinerated. He receives food, vitamins, a small amount of
money and a certificate of good health that will be useful for him to resume a normal life.
When I see a smile on his face, I tell myself that I have done my duty. What I live in this
Ebola centre is trying. But I have never known anything more rewarding than to alleviate
suffering.

I’m thinking of my children. I’m think about what we’re going to do when we’re together.
I’m going to buy them bicycles. One red and the other

Blue. I’m going to teach them how to race by bike. They will like it. They will be happy. I
just want to spend time with them. Stay at home, play in the garden, watch TV. I miss their
mother. I think she is the most beautiful woman in the world.

V
The nurse’s courage is a jewel that she carries with pride and kindness on her chest.

I take care of my patients by showing them compassion because I try to put myself in their
place, and understand their torments. They are no different, it is the circumstances that
separate us. I’m on the other side of the barrier. But they didn’t do anything to deserve what
happens to them. We are wasting time. Our life is wasted in futility. Now that everyday
reality has changed, we must all start from scratch. More opportunities to cling to the past.
Women are the most affected by the epidemic. Perhaps because they often stay at the bedside
of the sick. Maybe because they are the last to leave the house to go for treatment. Maybe
also because, until the end, they want to maintain balance; arrange things.

Before the epidemic was officially declared, when the first infected people came to public
hospitals, medical staff treated them with their bare hands. We didn’t know. We were only
protected by a white cotton blouse. It was after we got the information. Among us, many died
while bringing the disease home. I was terrified. Now that the Ebola virus has been identified,
I

Know that it is a question of caution: you must follow the rules of hygiene to the letter, never
underestimate the danger, never lower your guard.

I saw a very close colleague getting infected in front of me. A child arrived in very bad
condition. He was bleeding everywhere and had diarrhoea. His chest was shaken by a terrible
hiccup, deep and painful. She cleaned him and bent over to give him a drink. He suddenly
vomited on his shoulder. I saw that my friend’s blouse was wet and stuck to her skin. That’s
how she caught Ebola. She died a few weeks later.

When people from outside learned that we were working in an anti-Ebola service, they no
longer wanted to get close. We had no more friends. When we got home, we found ourselves
alone with the family. My daughter had problems at school. No one played with her at recess.
His comrades had all heard the rumours circulating in the neighbourhood: the medical staff
are responsible for the many deaths, the President of the Republic would have given them
large sums of money to reduce the country’s population and get rid of the poor. Ebola did not
exist.

Despite all this, we continued to fight against the disease. It was really hard to see my
colleagues die without any real help, abandoned by the authorities.

In the morning, before meeting the sick, we pray. We get together and pray. We sing
religious hymns, with our eyes closed, our hands outstretched towards the sky. We implore
God’s pity. Lord, give us the wisdom to know what to do. Give us the will to be able to fulfil
it. The courage to resist.
Patients are in pain, they need attention, need to be reassured. For those who believe in God,
we tell them to keep the faith, and recommend them the essential; continue to eat, drink, even
when force leaves them. We rub their backs, hold their hands. We to them

Let’s speak in their mother tongue with words they know. I would have liked to take off my
mask so that they can see who I am, so that they can make sure, in my eyes, that I share their
suffering. But it is not possible.

On whom to focus our efforts in the face of the uninterrupted flow of patients? Will our
decisions, taken in the heat of the action, determine whether they live or die? There is no one
to tell us.

Sometimes, even inside the hospital, patients doubt us. They think we poison them with the
needles we plant in their arms and the solutions we make them drink. Otherwise, why don’t
they heal? Why so many deaths among them? So, they ask me to taste this liquid that I give
them. They say: try a little yourself, if it’s that beneficial! They also ask why they do not have
the right to have masks and suits when everyone who approaches them wears them. I
understand them. How can we inspire confidence when our equipment takes us away from
them? The distance between us is that between life and death. We can’t lie to them.

In our hospitals, we have always worked with the means on board. Always missing the
essential, missing the minimum. Budgets poorly managed. Insufficient budgets. Deplorable
working conditions. Paying staff. We’re used to it. Long hours in buildings with flaked walls.
Iron beds with worn mattresses. Damaged furniture. Broken devices stored in storage rooms.
Smell of wounds. We’re used to it. But, this time, it’s worse. This time, our shortcomings
have taken on a gigantic dimension.

One day, I heard a young man pinch the strings of his guitar singing in a dreary and cynical
voice:

Come and accompany me!

Let’s go to the C.H.U. of the capital,

The global disease market

Let’s go buy cholera

In the toilets that vomit faeces! Let’s go buy malaria

In the stagnant waters of the courtyard! Let’s go buy AIDS

In undisinfected waste! Let’s go buy the madness

In the bags of corruption and pride! Come and accompany me!

Let’s go to the capital’s C.H.U.

The arena of reversed values

Let’s go treat the doctors

Infected by administrative negligence!

Let’s go vaccinate the nurses

Gripped by poverty and garbage!

Let’s go save pregnant women

Giving bear on broken beds without mattresses or sheets! Let’s calm the employees

On strike to improve their working conditions! Do you see this university hospital centre?

This is our global disease market!

This is where the sick treat the doctors! This is where the sick get more diseases! This is
where the culture of unhealth is acquired! 1

I still remember the day I “returned home” with my specialised nurse diploma. I was the first
woman in my village to go so far. I had spent two years of training abroad, I had

Did internships in the best hospitals. I was coming back to serve. To do my job. I was ready
to take over, replace the expatriate staff. The country was going in the same direction. At the
time of independence, hospital centres, turnkey thanks to loans from international banks, rose
proudly in the main cities. Education and health were declared priorities of priorities! We had
sophisticated equipment. Too sophisticated. When a breakdown occurred, technicians had to
be brought in from abroad. The training did not go fast enough, as if the designers of our
health system had not thought of everything. From one Minister of Health to another, the
same mistakes, the same unfulfilled promises. Yes, the devices would be repaired as soon as
possible. Yes, a rehabilitation program would be put in place. Yes, medical care remained
free.

I don’t know how this happened. How, little by little, my colleagues and I accepted
mediocrity. We accepted the compromise. We accepted the negligence. We had to tell our
patients that there was no more cotton, no more alcohol to disinfect, no more syringes, no
more suture threads. You had to buy everything. Their family members had to go to the
nearest pharmacy to take the necessary. However, we knew very well, just by looking them in
the eye, that they could never pay half the costs. They were going to go to the pharmacy and,
in front of the cash register, buy only the minimum or the cheapest by disposal. We
demonstrated in the street to force the government to make reforms. It was only a waste of
pain. Too often, the demands turned into negotiations with our union for a salary increase and
the payment of our overtime. And then, there were scandals.Money disappeared from the
coffers of the Ministry of Health, millions stolen from international aid flew away, which
were to be used to restore hospitals, to order more efficient devices, to train more staff

Competent, to improve hygiene. With each reorganisation of the government, it was the
same: with each new appointment, a new hope was born. But the status quo gradually came
back. How is it that, little by little, we have accepted that the country’s senior executives will
be treated abroad? Wasn’t that proof that they didn’t believe in their own health system? How
could we accept that the President of the Republic was evacuated in his private plane at the
slightest pain? When I finally realised that everything was wrong, I learned to harden myself
to continue my work. I could have gone private like many of my colleagues. However, I
always knew that it was in the public that I would be most useful, despite the feeling that a
disaster was coming.

No one was ready when Ebola emerged in our lives.

Ministers have talked a lot about the economic problems facing the country. They denounced
the fall in commodity prices on world markets. They invoked the aftermath of war and the
destruction of infrastructure.

Human beings die in different ways. In foetal position. Arms crossed. The torso wedged
against a wall. Lying, the limbs well positioned on the bed. Some have a calm face, others
grimacing in pain. Our heart is a clock whose mechanism escapes us. Our veins are vessels
that swell and break. Our flesh is destroyed by crazy cells.

A poet once told me - no matter how much we know that all roads lead to death, that life is
only a stopover and eternity a dead end, that man must die to mature in the memory of his
heirs, the evidence remains the obvious: death is not beautiful 2.

Despite my resentment at our inability to manage the crisis, today, we must admit, our needs
are too immense to

Imagine a solution. All people of good will, all those who want to help us are welcome.
Without exception. They take extraordinary risks for us. For months, I have been working
with volunteers who come from far away to fight with us. I see how they fight. I see how
much they give by themselves. It was by rubbing shoulders with them that I built this
opinion. They are my colleagues, my friends. I work even harder when I see solidarity.
Because I wonder what others would think if we were not on the front line? We never do
enough. I don’t want to miss the challenge we have to challenge. I want to be there so that
future generations know that we have fought to prevent the reign of the unacceptable. We
fought like soldiers on the battlefield knowing that every minute mattered. But that every
minute could also sound the end of our existence. We have done our duty on earth.
1. Kenneth Toa Nsah, World Disease Market, 2015.

2. Gabriel Okoundji, Learning to give, learning to receive, 2014.

VI
Death accompanies life on the rocky path. A bridge connects them until the end of time.

When you fight against Ebola, you can only do that. You must be totally focussed on your
task. You are in the present, a point, that’s all. If you want to survive, you don’t have to think
about anything else. You don’t have to think about the house, about your normal life. You
must give yourself entirely, because you are witnessing terrible scenes and it can completely
destabilise you. It’s not about you. You are there to help defeat the disease, to do a very
specific job. So, you have to leave all your personal problems behind. You must be as calm as
possible when you put a body in the grave. Your head must be clear.

When a patient dies, he is immediately disinfected with chlorine. It is then placed in two
plastic body bags. Each bag is also disinfected. Once it’s over, we take him to the morgue.
That’s when I can take care of it. Masks, plastic suits, gloves, protective glasses. There are
sometimes ten of us on our team. We transport the corpse on a stretcher. The cemetery was
laid out behind the treatment centre. The ground is red and hard.

The man I’m going to bury today went crazy towards the end. He no longer knew who he
was or what he was doing. He was completely disoriented. A

Chlorine asparagus sprayer the path we take. The grass becomes bright, it looks like it
illuminates our passage. I didn’t want to be with the dead. But this is where there were the
most needs. When the epidemic was officially declared, the funeral teams of the government
and the International Committee of the Red Cross took care of the burials. But there were not
enough arms. Sometimes it was necessary to wait several days before the bodies were
removed. This increased the risk of infection in families. I learned that we were recruiting
and training staff. When the centre opened its doors in the neighbourhood, I did not hesitate, I
introduced myself and I was retained. My mother didn’t approve. I reminded him that I was
available since the university had closed. I explained to him that if we young people did not
respond to the call, there would never be an end to the epidemic. I concluded by saying that it
was not because of the money I was given that I volunteered. I love my country.

I hear many people say that Ebola will kill us all. I prefer to fight rather than stay in my
corner and do nothing. My mother ended up supporting me.

When we descend a corpse into the freshly dug grave, the sprayer approaches and pumps
chlorine into the hole and on the ground all around. No prayers. No crying. Just a white
wooden cross.

On the way back, the sprayer is still on our steps. The first time I saw a corpse, I almost gave
up because it was in bad condition. I was told that, if I had accepted this job, I now had to
assume my responsibilities. I understood that it was a necessary sacrifice. I will therefore
accomplish my task until the last Ebola patient leaves the centre completely cured. In truth, I
didn’t know that I would one day have the courage to take bodies with me to mury them. I am
an ordinary young person, I have never looked for challenges or tried to show that I was
stronger than anyone else. I was rather the shy type, to stay behind while others acted.

During the day, the sun casts its burning rays on us as if to punish us. Is it because we
constantly bury people, sometimes even in the light of generators? I’m obsessed with the
heat. After half an hour, I can’t take it anymore, I’m just thinking of getting out of my
combination. Plastic stores heat, it’s an oven. Each movement during the funeral increases
my perspiration. I have to be very careful when descending a body into the grave with the
help of my colleagues. A sudden gesture, and the bag that contains it begins to sink.

We return to the centre wet with sweat and eager to undress. Only, here it is, this is the most
dangerous moment. I touched secretions with my gloves, if I make the slightest mistake in
removing them, I risk being contaminated. The sprayer helps me disinfect myself completely.
To reassure myself, I tell myself that, if I get sick, the doctors will take care of me, because I
am one of theirs.

What I fear most are ghosts. The other day, I buried a young girl. On my way home, I found
her on my way. It prevented me from moving forward. I told him: let me pass, please. Since
she wasn’t moving, I asked one of my colleagues to help me, but he replied that he didn’t see
anyone. Fortunately, after a while, she left alone. I don’t understand. I didn’t do anything
wrong. On the contrary, we were taught to bury the dead with dignity. It was not me who
ended their lives. I’m just helping. Do they want their family members and friends to be also
infected? No, of course, but they can’t stop harassing the living who, like me, buried the
corpses. In reality, they are lost spirits who do not want to leave the earth, they would like to
be helped to come back. Their attempts to intimidate us are only distress calls. So, if a ghost
comes to visit me day or night, even if I’m scared, I just tell him to leave me alone. Some
funeral teams have to walk for a long time to get to remote villages where they go

Help people to bury their dead safely. They show them what to do and what not to do, how
much it is no longer like in the past and that they can no longer say goodbye to their deceased
according to their customs.
The sprayer is the most important member of each team. Nothing can happen without him. I
get along well with ours. He is older than me, but at the end of the day, we often drink beer
together. Once, I noticed that he drank much more than usual. He had red eyes, looked totally
exhausted. It’s insomnia, he told me. I didn’t ask him why, I knew the answer myself. Just
recently, he had to pulverise the body of a childhood friend, someone with whom he played
ball when he was little. Teenagers, they had attended the same high school and courted the
same girls. But the family of his childhood friend made the serious mistake of keeping the
sick father at home. They have all been infected. To comfort him, I talk to him about
everything and nothing, I invent some nice jokes. I manage to make him a little more
cheerful. But it resumes, always disturbed, we have been fighting against the virus for
months, and yet I have the impression that it is not progressing. We are resisting and we are
united by the same goal, but we have not yet managed to stop it. Will this war end one day?

I talk a lot with him. I consider him my brother. I listen carefully to everything he says
because it is he who holds our life in his hands. He is the one who repels the virus. A warrior
with plastic armour. He explains to me that Ebola is more resistant than many other viruses. It
can remain active for more than two weeks in a contaminated environment. Do you realise?
He says. So I must never lack vigilance. Not a single moment. I have to start my sprays again
every day. Chlorine is my best friend. He knows where Ebola is hiding. He sees it easily,
while for us men, he is invisible. Our eyes are not powerful enough to find it. Yes, the
Chlore is my best friend. I know everything about him. It is the chemical element of atomic
number 17, with the symbol Cl and the most common of halogens. It is a yellow gas shooting
on green. It is much denser than the air. It has a suffocating smell and it is very toxic.

I saw how the sprayer uses his device skilfully by applying precise jets on all surfaces and in
every corner. He disinfects tents, rooms, toilets, garbage cans, ambulances, suits and bodies
with his spear. It disinfects everything Ebola touches. He is also asked to go to the sick’s
homes. It pulverises walls, furniture and floor. He lifts the objects. Nobody likes to see it. He
doesn’t look anyone in the eye when he comes to pass his product, because he is too afraid to
read the disarray, fear or hatred he inspires. Sometimes he no longer knows if he works for or
against the company. He told me several times that he wanted to go back to earth. Plant yams,
cassava and red tomatoes.

I hear him whisper that he has lost his illusions. One morning, he entered a house. For days, a
young girl had been waiting for us to come and remove her parents’ bodies. They were
lifeless, lying in the empty house. She had called the emergency number several times for the
ambulance to pick them up. But nothing happened. All the ambulances were occupied
elsewhere. She had called back three times in a row. When the team finally came, the girl was
in a state of extreme despair and she felt bad. It was too late, she was reached.

There is no certainty. We believed that it would be enough to ally ourselves to defeat Ebola.
But the sprayer is right. The virus only retreats to jump better. I envy people who live
elsewhere, far from this country. They can still believe in happiness. They make decisions for
their future and that of their children. They sleep without nightmares. I envy those to whom
luck offers a certain satisfaction of living. For them, the obstacles are not insurmountable.

What makes me saddest is the humiliation of the sick before death. They become
unrecognisable, lose their identity and past. Yet, they were loved and loved. I have seen many
of these emainated bodies that Ebola had already embraced. They had nothing human
anymore. I understood that we were born with a countdown in the organisation. A kind of
clock that sounds the end of our life on earth. And this clock, who pulls it up? Because I find
no logic to all this horror. I never liked going to church. Even when I was little, my mother
avoided taking me there because I asked too many embarrassing questions. All I know is that
my brother is going to mass. But he categorically refused to work in the centre. He prefers to
listen to what the priest says to the faithful: Ebola is the embodiment of Evil. He came to
punish you because of your sins. Those who have moved away from the word of God will
perish, the others have nothing to fear.

If only my brother understood the importance of what we do! When all precautions are taken
at the time of the funeral, no one contracts the disease.

During our training, we were told the story of this so renowned healer that people from all
over the region came to see her. She knew the best medicinal herbs in the forest and knew
how to make very effective remedies. It was said that her hands had an extraordinary healing
power when she applied them to a patient’s body. But this woman with great knowledge did
not know the danger that awaited her. Or she knew it, but absolutely wanted to find a cure for
this disease. She contracted Ebola from one of her patients and died of it. Hundreds of people
came from everywhere to attend his funeral. The procession followed his remains to the
grave to pay him a final tribute. Today, experts estimate that this funeral is the cause of more
than three hundred deaths. We have learned the lesson well. However, this does not prevent
people from trying to bury

Their dead with dignity. So, since we do not want them to hide them or refuse to give them to
us, we agree to make concessions. If the parents want the body to be in a coffin, we do not
oppose it. If they give special clothes to dress the deceased, we respect their desire. And, if
relatives want to go to the cemetery, we just ask them to stand four metres away. Some want
to dig the grave themselves. There is no reason to say no. We tell them how to proceed. What
we want is their cooperation.

It will take years to recover from what we have experienced. To forget. I tell myself that life
is incomprehensible. It takes death to learn to regain solidarity.

VII
A mother’s love carries death on her wings and travels the turbulent sky.

The mother is dying. His organs abandon him. Death is not far away now. His mind is
scattered. He bumps into the walls of the house and tries to blend into space. The mother is
afraid. Prefers to stay in the narrowness of his world. She would be content with little: the
flowers of her garden, the song of a bird on the sill of her window or the soft coat of her cat.
She doesn’t want to leave her house of which she knows every nook and cranny. The walls
speak to him. The furniture knows everything about her. They kept the imprint of ordinary
days, when she was happy, or more precisely when she could accept life without any worry.
His thoughts are engraved in the cement. The smell of the house is that of its perfume. When
you enter, his presence is everywhere, from carpet to tinkers. Everything looks like him.

She wants to die at home. Close the door with a double turn, she says. Set up the windows, if
you want, I won’t leave home. I want to die in my bed. Burn the house, if you deem it
necessary, but leave me in peace! I don’t want to spend my last days among sick people in
agony. It was in this house that I lived with my husband. It was in this house that my children
grew up. All my memories are there. The good and the bad. The separation. Divorce. The
disputes. The screams

In front of our three crying sons. But that’s also where we loved each other so much. In this
bed, we hugged. Between these sheets, we conceived life. And, when our boys were born, it
was in this bed that I breastfed them, offering my breast to their greedy mouths. My children,
I raised them without refusing them anything. Yes, my life as a woman was lonely, but I felt
filled with affection. When we all went out together, I couldn’t help smiling because I was so
proud to have brought them into the world.

Children must not die before their parents. It’s against the law of nature. They must stay close
to them and help them in their old age, listen to them, bring them food and wash their clothes,
offer them the tenderness they lack so much, when life becomes heavy and every step is a
superhuman effort, every breath burns them and the heart is in free fall.

A mother must not witness the death of her children. Her eyes cannot rest on their body, see
the beings she carried in her belly die without her being able to give them life once again. I
was ready to give up my body to them as before when they ate my bowels and floated in the
hollow of my stomach. I treated them with all my strength.

A mother must not see her children sink, stay there, powerless to stop the haemorrhage. We
were a united family despite our difficulties. The elder is rather shy and closed, but always
concerned about others. The second, on the other hand, cheerful and teasing. And the
youngest, pampered by the protective affection of his big brothers. When he got sick, they
gave up everything and came home to help me take care of him. We were a united family. I
never felt alone. I was a glenished mother.

Ebola strikes blindly. He hits the back and mercilessly. What unknown force guides his hand?
A brute and unstoppable force.

It’s been a long time since God chose to let men live and die without intervening. In his
infinite meekness, the turmoil of our existence does not touch him. Those who implore his
pity are mistaken. It has the oceans, the earth, the sky and everything that light caresses. He
takes a bored look at human beings. Wouldn’t it be a failed attempt? It will take him another
eternity to reshape them. In the meantime, he travels through time in search of inspiration.
Sometimes he will sleep behind the sun and forget who we are. His sleep is infinite. God is
bored and his boredom is formidable. He is blind. His empty pupils pierce our consciences.
He is mute, his cry crosses our bodies, He is unique, his loneliness permeates the whole
universe.

From fluorescent anemones to the Himalayan mountains, nothing can match the splendour of
his works. He thought of everything, with infinite generosity and delicacy. And yet, he
received nothing in exchange. Or so little. So, he felt flouted. Now, everything indifferenties
him and he is tired, until the weariness of his own eternity. Being eternal is what he no longer
wants. How to love endlessly? How to be happy without knowing misfortune?

Let me die in my house! I want her to house my body, the walls to fold down and keep the
secret of our groans. I called God in vain. It’s to you now that I turn, Marie. You alone have
experienced the separation, the absence, the impossibility of changing the world. Only you
can understand my suffering. During childbirth, your belly escaped from the placenta and the
remains of your matrix. The blood gushed out. My red blood like yours. Woman, whose sex
has distented to let the child come.

I confide in you, Marie. Take me in your arms and rock my pain. I will follow you to the end
of your passion.
You suffered from seeing your son die so cruelly. You, incredulous at the disappearance of
the body, you stood on the threshold of the tomb

Empty. I know your story by heart. The Bible by my side. The Bible all my life like a
lighthouse in the night. So goes your pain:

“On Sunday, Mary Magdale went to the tomb early in the morning, when it was still dark,
and she saw that the stone had been removed from the entrance to the tomb.

She ran to meet Simon Peter and the other disciple whom Jesus loved and said to them:
“They took the Lord from the tomb and we do not know where they put him.” So Peter and
the other disciple went out and went to the tomb. They both ran together, but the other
disciple ran faster than Peter and arrived first at the tomb. He bent down and saw the strips
placed on the floor, but he did not enter. Simon Pierre, who was following him, arrived and
entered the tomb. He saw the strips placed on the floor; the linen that had been put on Jesus’
head was not with the strips, but wrapped in a separate place. Then the other disciple, who
had arrived first at the tomb, also entered, he saw and believed. Indeed, they had not yet
understood that, according to Scripture, Jesus was to rise again. Then the disciples went
home.
However, Mary stood outside near the tomb and cried. While crying, she bent over to look
into the tomb, and she saw two angels dressed in white sitting in the place where Jesus’ body
had been lying, one at the head and the other at the feet. They said to him: “Woman, why are
you crying?” She answered them: “Because they took away my Lord and I don’t know where
they put him.”

When she said this, she turned around and saw Jesus standing, but she didn’t know it was
him. Jesus said to him: “Woman, why are you crying? Who are you looking for?” Thinking it
was the gardener, she said to him: “Lord, if it was you who won, tell me where you put it and
I’ll go and get it.” Jesus said to her: “Mary!” She turned around and said to him in Hebrew:
“Rabbouni!”, that is to say master. Jesus said to him: “Don’t hold me back, because I’m not
yet

Went up to my Father, but go find my brothers and tell them that I go up to my Father and
your Father, to my God and your God.”
Mary of Magdale went to tell the disciples that she had seen the Lord and that he had told her
that 1. ”

I believe in you, Mary, so close to us. Help me to accept that my sons have taken the
enlightened path, finally relieved of earthly suffering.

The taste of blood in my mouth. My mind is raming. My body is liquified. The pain binds me
to my children like an umbilical cord.

But there, in the distance, an ambulance siren launches a cry that breaks the texture of the
day. In the streets of the city, passers-by quickly move away in its path, looking with terror
where the machine is heading. They know that death moves at full speed in search of bodies.

Suddenly, the team arrives in front of the house. A sudden kick and the bedroom door opens
loudly. A strong smell of chlorine invades the atmosphere. Already men in astronaut suits are
leaning over the mother.
1. Jean, 20, 1-18.

VIII
When surviving hurts more than living and the sadness is to still walk on the earth.

My father told me: go, go. Go to your aunt’s house in the capital. The village is cursed. Never
come back again. I stuffed a few clothes in a bag and took the money he was handing me. I
knew he was giving me everything he had left. When the bus stopped at the central station,
my aunt was there to welcome me. At her house, I cried a lot. I stayed in my corner, talked to
my cousins from time to time, but refused to go out. A few days later, I started to itch. I felt
like something had entered my blood. My heart was no longer the same, it was beating like a
tired organ. I was out of breath at the slightest movement. And then, I had a violent stomach
ache. My aunt didn’t know what was happening to me.

Finally, one day, the Minister of Health made a statement broadcast on radio, television and
in all newspapers. He informed the population of the outbreak of a disease characterised by a
high mortality rate: “The samples sent to France and analysed at the Institut Pasteur were
positive for the Ebola virus (the Zaire ebolavirus species), he says. These cases have been
reported in three districts in the southeast of the country as well as in some neighbourhoods
of the capital. In addition, several border countries have also reported the existence of the
disease on their territory. In

As a result, all measures will be taken to stop the outbreak of the virus. We call on the
population to respect the hygiene instructions. Any consumption of bush meat is now
prohibited. Violations of this rule will be punishable by firm imprisonment. Washing hands
with bleach. At the slightest appearance of symptoms, you must go quickly to the nearest
hospital. Stay vigilant. Stay calm. A state of emergency is declared throughout the national
territory. ”

Panic took hold of the inhabitants. Ambulance sirens shouted in all neighbourhoods. The
police began to arrest people suspected of having the disease. Infected men collapsed in the
street and no one touched them. The Ministry of Health organised body collection teams. The
deadlines were too long, that was not enough. The media only talked about the disease. My
aunt immediately had suspicions about me. She called the central number, so that an
ambulance could pick me up. When I arrived at the hospital, the results were positive. I was
admitted to a wing of the building reserved for Ebola patients. For a month and a day, my
body swayed between life and death. I was bleeding from my nose, vomiting blood, suffering
terribly. All around, the confusion was astounding, the medical staff, close to despair. Each
corpse left behind body fluids, blood and secretions. Hardly the time to clean the traces of
death that someone else was brought... I saw nurses treating without protection while the tiles
were soiled with vomit and faeces. For fear of approaching us, we were thrown pieces of food
from afar. There were so many deaths that the bodies were stacked in a dark room, some
thrown with their heads first, others legs apart in revolting nudity.
How did I survive? Why was I chosen, when I’m not better than the others? I heard sick
people screaming at the idea of the

Appalling end that awaited them. They didn’t understand. They had always behaved well in
life, didn’t they have to be saved?

I healed thanks to the efforts of the caregivers who gave themselves entirely to drive Ebola
out of my body. I will be grateful to them all my life. But to enter a hospital is to enter an
underground. Everything turns black. There is no more landmark. There’s just one inside and
one outside. Time is master, overwhelming, it is it that must be obeyed. Wait for the
organisation to regain strength, to regain its balance, to regain the place it has lost.

Often, I looked out the window. I saw the big tree that stood majestically in the courtyard. It
reminded me of the baobab of my childhood. Sometimes, in the very early morning, I heard
the birds chirping in its foliage. I found him very beautiful, his presence gave me strength.
Gradually, I began to react to the rehydration treatment. My body has taken over. I was able
to leave my bed and started walking again. With small cautious steps. I went to the tree, to its
comfort offered to us in the depths of our misfortune. When I leaned against him, I felt him
vibrate in deep waves. I put my ear on his rough trunk and he spoke to me, whispering that he
was with me. I have passed my arms around his waist many times.

I was tested several days apart. All turned out to be negative. The doctor then said: “You are
free now, you can go out! I washed myself with chlorinated water. I received new clean
clothes, because mine had all been burned when I arrived. I was given a kit containing
protein-rich food and vitamins to strengthen my body.

When I wanted to go back to my aunt’s house, she refused to take me back. Two of my
cousins got sick. She accused me of being responsible for it. So I went back to the hospital,
where I was housed in a dormitory reserved for the families of patients who do not want to
get away from them

Or who have nowhere to go. There were posters on the walls. The establishment was soon to
close. The patients were going to be transferred to anti-Ebola centres under construction
throughout the country. Volunteers were recruited. A nurse came to see me. She told me to
commit, because I had nothing more to fear about the virus. I had survived, I was now
immune. He couldn’t hurt me anymore. She told me that, because I was young, I could give
good advice to patients my age. I hesitated a lot. However, I thought of my parents and
brothers, whose death I had learned of at my aunt’s. The pain of not being able to do anything
for them was still in me. I told myself that I had the opportunity to fix this. I agreed to be
assigned to one of the new treatment centres.
When sick young people arrive, I welcome them. If I see that they are discouraged and say
that they will soon die, I tell them that they too can survive as I did. They must know that it is
possible. I know very well how they feel when they are alone in bed. They have the
impression that an unknown force has taken control of their existence. They don’t know how
to defend themselves. It’s a feeling that I don’t wish even to my worst enemy. I encourage
them. I tell them that the disease can happen to everyone, that it’s not their fault. I make them
understand that they must never give up the struggle. Even when they feel their energy go
away.

I am part of a group of women survivors of Ebola. We are travelling around the city to
explain that people like us still have their place in the community. They are not dangerous.
They should not be banned. We try to reassure people by talking calmly. In general, we are
accompanied by women who have never been infected with the virus. We hold hands, walk
together, talk to each other, to show that there is nothing to fear.

Yes, it’s true, I was lucky to get by. But, deep down, I can’t help but think that it’s not me
who should have been spared. The man who had to survive at all costs was our chief
physician, who had healed hundreds of patients. He was the only haemorrhagic fever
specialist we had in the country. We all prayed, but he could not be saved. All the newspapers
talked about his death.

I read that one day, in the anti-Ebola centre he had been running for many months, he told
one of his colleagues that he was not feeling well. That same morning, he had made the round
of the sick. Seeing a nurse who had contracted the virus and was now among the other
patients, he said to her: but, my son, what are you doing here? He didn’t know that it would
soon be his turn. The centre was full, there were sick people everywhere, even on mats placed
on the ground. He didn’t want to stop, maybe he couldn’t. He soon had chills, and had to
agree to take a few days off. It was not a malaria crisis, but Ebola.

His colleagues immediately mobilised. They asked the local branch of a large health
organisation to have him evacuated urgently to Europe. “No,” the administration replied,
“because the chief physician is not a member of our staff. A petition circulated, appealing to
the international community to be sent for treatment in the United States or Great Britain.
Without success.
Canadian researchers working in a local laboratory had a small stock of experimental
treatment. This “secret serum” had been shown to be effective on monkeys infected with
Ebola. It had never been used in humans, but it finally represented the chance to save him.
Unfortunately, he had been transferred to another treatment centre. Against all odds, the
officials of this centre replied that in their soul and conscience they considered it unfair to
administer serum to him when there were so many other patients who needed it as much as he
did. By

Elsewhere, they did not subscribe to the use of experimental treatments whose effects were
not yet known, perhaps negative in the long term. Time passed and his health was
deteriorating.

Finally, after many discussions and negotiations, his evacuation abroad was authorised. But
this could not take place because of his vomiting, making his transport extremely dangerous.
This obstacle had to be circumvented first.

Time went by. He died a few days later.

The whole country was deeply upset. For the first time, Ebola had a known face. A young
doctor speaking at the microphone of a radio station explained that the impact of this death
extended far beyond national borders. He revealed the deep inequalities that existed in access
to treatment, as well as the indifference and institutional heaviness of health administrations.
From abroad, a senior political leader announced: “Globalisation brings us closer to our
fellow African citizens as much as it takes us away from them by the media. But also by our
generalised indifference to the major crisis in which these countries are plunged.
Commitment, whether international, national as well as community or individual, seems to
stop at the borders that everyone builds. ”

We needed his courage so much!

We needed his example so much!

He was not alone in dying like this.

We who survived the disease, we suffer in silence. Us

We carry invisible but painful scars. We want to lead a normal life, but the mark of the virus
separates us from others. In the village, my family home was burned, there are only ashes and
dry wood left.

The other day, the rain fell. I was happy. The rain, finally. I went out for her to touch my
body. So that every drop of water tells me

That I was away. So that each drop of water washes my face and shows me that freshness is
always possible.

IX
The uniform does not dress the man, it is the circumstances that make the heart beat with
nobility.

I am prefect, responsible for the awareness teams that travel through my region from bottom
to bottom. They must explain at length. Give information about the disease: modes of
transmission, risks, current care. They must insist on the need to go to a treatment centre at
the first symptoms. The obligation of quarantine in some cases. They must repeat the strict
safety instructions.

To defeat the virus, it takes more than science. Much more. Reduce misunderstanding.
Tensions. Fear. Men are not simple vectors of contamination. So much coldness is
contraindicated. So much scientific rationality only stops efforts.

So, I repeat to my team that we must be able to convince, convince men that we should no
longer visit the sick, that it is no longer possible to go to relatives or friends to support them
in the ordeal.

The patient is slumped in her chair. His clothes are wrinkled, his braids undo. She has a pale
face and trembling hands. People are around her. Young girls are busy in the kitchen to
prepare porridge. Children play in a corner of the house. He is the son of this one, he is the
little one of the neighbours. She’s just eighteen months old and she’s walking

Between adults, relying on them. The patient’s husband is in the room. He’s not well either.
His sisters came to take care of his home. They clean the house. No one knows that the
disease has set its ground and that, when it progresses, it will be at full speed. Among the
visitors, there will not be many people left. But, at all times, solidarity has been expressed
like this. In villages as well as in working-class neighbourhoods. If I help you today,
tomorrow you will help me. This makes them stronger. This is how they were educated.
Show sympathy. Give some money for medication. Bring some drink. One gesture is
important.

My awareness units therefore explain that they must put an end to this way of life, no longer
shake hands, touch each other, hug each other, move away from each other, stay at home,
wash their hands with the disinfectant before entering a public place.

The teams specify that, even if a person does not show any worrying signs, he or she may
already be infected. And, as soon as she gets sick, she continues to be contagious for several
weeks - as well as after her death. In fact, his corpse is the most dangerous. Above all, do not
touch it. Ebola kills at a high percentage and there is no medication to stop it!

The sensitisation units add, to reassure people, that it is not a new virus. Doctors know a lot
about him. They know how it is transmitted. What you need to do to protect yourself. They
know that it is not caught by breathing. This is good news.

Awareness teams must be patient. They must know how to find the right words. Because,
when people are afraid, they act irrationally. Conflicting information and rumours are
circulating about Ebola. The uncertainty is great in the minds, the extent and virulence of
Ebola that is difficult to imagine or hardly acceptable. So, lying to yourself is sometimes
easier. Don’t

Believe even when the proof is there, in his own village. In his neighbourhood. Despite the
warnings, many prefer to hide their patients. Or die with them if the threat proves to be real.
What’s the point, everything is lost in advance, they say. The most fragile, women and
children are subject to the law of elders. Away from discussions, they are not aware of the
dangers that hang over them.

Awareness teams must find the right tone.

I also send other units to remote regions, in 4 x 4 provided by a humanitarian organisation.

They distribute family protection and home disinfection kits. Whenever a team approaches a
village where Ebola cases have been reported, all members are aware of the risks they are
taking. They arrive wearing rubber boots and dressed in their uniform of official agents. They
don’t touch anything. Stay away. They wear gloves when they distribute illustrated leaflets
showing the routes of transmission of the virus. Sometimes people shrug their shoulders
when they are told that they should no longer eat game. It doesn’t make sense, they answer.
How are we going to eat now?

Awareness teams know how not to respond to mockery. In all the villages in the region, they
spend whole days discussing and making it clear that these measures will not last forever.
Just the time for this terrible disease to disappear. Men remain incredulous. They ask: you say
that, if we get sick, we must immediately go to an anti-Ebola centre. However, it is you who
say that there is no treatment. What exactly is it about?

In this merciless war against Ebola, the word is a powerful weapon. At least, that’s what I’d
like to believe. But many heaviness persist. Why do hundreds of public health officials have
to claim compensation in the midst of an epidemic and threaten to

To go on strike? They want financial compensation for all the risks they take. They want to
be assured that their families will be cared for if they die of Ebola. I assured them that I was
going to try to move heaven and earth for them.

It is true that a lot of money is circulating in these times of crisis. I would have preferred the
international community not to announce all the amounts of humanitarian aid loud and clear.
Gigantius figures. This gives a false idea of the situation. The economy is collapsing. The
activities have ceased. Trade with neighbouring countries is interrupted, borders are closed,
infrastructure projects are postponed. Flights of most airlines cancelled. Tourists disappear,
schools, universities close their doors. The shops and markets are deserted. Farmers no longer
cultivate their fields. Ordinary diseases are not treated. More drugs available. Medical
treatments are stopped abruptly. If someone falls on the street because of a heart attack, no
one approaches him. He remains without assistance, until an ambulance takes him to an anti-
Ebola centre where he should not be. Pregnant women have no place to give birth.

Ebola! Ebola! Ebola!

And yet, in the first few months, the epidemic was underestimated. Fundraising was slow.
Instead of creating sympathy and support, the intense media coverage provoked a reaction of
self-protection and rejection.

Infectious disease experts were well aware of the existence of the Ebola virus. But they
thought he would behave as usual. Attack a very localised place and then withdraw after a
few dozen deaths. Since the identification of the virus in 1976, have the twenty declared
epidemics not always been of low intensity? But, as time went by, they realised their mistake.
The virus had changed

Of tactics. He had left the forest to go to the city, where the density and mobility of the
population were greater. From that moment on, on the spot, NGOs give the alert: we must act
quickly! They are outraged by the lack of reaction, say that if the crisis had hit another region
of the world, it would have been managed differently.
Too late, the epidemic is out of control. The virus is moving to three different countries and
threatens to advance even further. It is then that the first cases of contamination occur in the
West. The media are panicling. The international community is panicling. A Spanish priest is
urgently repatriated after being infected in an anti-Ebola centre. He dies of the virus in Spain.
A few months later, another missionary died in a hospital in Madrid, after infecting a
caregiver who had taken care of him. At the same time, an African traveller falls ill in the
United States and dies a few days after his arrival, thus contaminating two nurses. The
concern is at its height when the Americans learn that the second nurse took the plane after
treating the patient. The health authorities are forced to track the 132 passengers who
travelled with it and who must be observed. The world is fully aware of the magnitude of the
threat. How far will the epidemic extend? How long will it last? The possibility of a planetary
epidemic sows psychosis.
Western countries realise that they are vulnerable. Control devices on the arrival of flights
from the geographical area affected by the virus are put in place at most airports. Verification
at the start. Temperature measurement of travellers. Medical forms to be completed. Isolation
of suspicious passengers.

Now, money must be disbursed as soon as possible! International aid is doubled. Tripled.
Quadrupled. Western heads of state are meeting to develop an action plan to stop the health
crisis. The UN Security Council creates an emergency mission, entirely dedicated to the

Fight against Ebola. The organisation asks its member countries “to dramatically accelerate
and expand their financial and material assistance”.

A mobilisation is taking place on all continents, where many sectors of activity participate,
public and private. Yet, money is not enough and the virus continues to move forward.
Experts warn: “The epidemic is far ahead of us, it is going faster than us and it is winning the
race... ”

The American president then proposes a much more aggressive response: war!

Military troops are deployed. The other countries follow, France and Great Britain. Combat-
trained soldiers, capable of facing an invisible and extremely dangerous enemy. Able to
contain crowd movements, secure high-risk areas. Transport equipment, build new
processing centres. Recruit and provide intensive training for health workers. A massive
offensive. A fierce war requiring the sharing of strategic and medical information between all
countries.

Thus, it took the presence of the military for the virus to retreat. But, I who am on the ground,
if I had a remark to make, I would address the international community. I would tell him that
fear can provoke strong reactions that will unlock important resources and calm public
opinion. But the results will not necessarily be the best in the long term. True solidarity is the
one that is conceived to last. In this sense, if I had another advice to give to the international
community, I would ask it to take an interest in how the aid was managed. Have medical
infrastructure rehabilitation projects come about? Is staff training effective? Are we better
prepared for the possibility of another disaster, or has forgetting already settled in the thick of
the days?

X
When the spectre of death divides men, we must not look away.

I was a foreign volunteer employed by an NGO in a treatment centre in the heart of a remote
area when I was infected with the Ebola virus. I was immediately transported to the capital, a
medical team was waiting for me. The repatriation procedure has been put in place. I was
installed in a plastic tent, transparent, pressurised and highly secure. A kind of moveable
insulation chamber. An aircraft specially equipped with an “aeromedical biological isolation”
system used for extremely contagious patients stood back on the take-off runway. Once my
tent was set, the plane took off. And with me a whole medical team. Long return trip during
which I spent my life in review. My desire for Africa. My desire to serve in a country where
everything had to be done. I had found a humanity there that pushed me to restart and greater
humility. But lying in this bubble, I could only thind of the hell I had just left.

Upon landing, I was taken by ambulance, several vehicles forming a convoy, to the hospital
with a service specialised in infectious diseases. Dressed in an insulating suit, I walked,
helped by one of my companions, to the interior of the building. I was very lucky. Most
assistance companies refused to

Take patients as contagious as me. Is it acceptable to repatriate someone who is highly likely
to contaminate his entourage? Under what conditions? And, if it were not possible, how to
justify this refusal and which volunteer would now accept to risk his life in this way?

The diagnosis fell: generalised organ failure. I was put in intensive care.

A few weeks later, from my isolation room, my first televised statement was this: “To all
those who support me and sent me their wishes for a good recovery, I would like to say that I
receive the best possible treatment. I feel stronger and stronger. I had the privilege of working
for years in Africa. When the Ebola epidemic broke out, I wanted to get involved in the fight
against this terrible virus. I saw the devastation and death. I still remember every face and
every name. Thank you for your prayers. May God help us in these times of great
uncertainty. ”

I was released from the hospital, officially cured, after more than a month of intensive care
associated with experimental treatment. Many journalists attended the press conference given
on this occasion. My wife and children were standing near me.

Science had won!

Several months passed without incident. However, one day, I began to feel bad again and I
had to return to the hospital where I was admitted the first time. The doctors discovered that
Ebola had left sequelae in my body. The results of the analyses showed that the virus had
lodged inside my left eye. Before the illness, my pupil was blue. After the illness, she had
turned green. Ebola had managed to hide where it was not expected to be found. He had
lurked in the shelter, in an organ that my immune system was difficult to reach.

I did not know that sequelae were common among Ebola survivors: back pain, inflammation
of the tendons, tingling in

Legs, eye inflammation that can cause blindness, extreme fatigue, cognitive difficulties and
other side effects. Ebola manages to take refuge in the joints, spinal cord, testicles, sperm and
perhaps also vaginal secretions. Thus, human beings in turn become virus reservoirs! No one
knows yet if it is for a short or long time.

The history of Ebola is interspersed with speculations, questions, incomplete answers and
various hypotheses.

I had already been evacuated when the quarantine strategy was imposed in the country I had
just left. How could I have thought that one day men, women and children would be treated
as plague victims and forcibly incarcerated in their own neighbourhood?

Police officers and lattice soldiers deployed by the government are blocking entrances and
exits. The inhabitants of the slum woke up with a start. They have just learned that they are
locked up, imprisoned, exiled. Absolute ban on leaving the limits of the slum in which they
have always lived. In a misery of open-air sewers. Nauseous odours, detritus accumulated
over the years, never removed. Illegal electrical connections, cables dragging on the ground.
Common wells where women go to get water from large plastic basins, cans and buckets
stored inside the huts. Overloaded schools in which kids tighten on shaky benches in front of
worn-out boards. Masters stunned by the weight of their task. Not a hospital around, but
dilapidated dispensaries and private clinics that monetise false cures. Saleswomen go from
concession to concession, their trays on their heads, loaded with expired tablets and pills or of
dubious origin.

The inhabitants of the slum learn that no one enters or leaves anymore. “We want to protect
the populations not yet affected. From the

Food, medical equipment and essential goods will be distributed to you, “shouts an official
voice in a loudspeaker.

Anger breaks out. Gangs of young people armed with stones and sticks try to tear off the
barbed wire installed at night and which blocks the passage. They want to run away. The
soldiers put their weapons in play, shoot at the retreating crowd. A teenager, his face
disfigured by pain, holds his injured leg. We see the flesh raw and the bone broken by a
bullet. Help me! No one comes to his rescue in the confusion and rage that have engulved the
place.

A few weeks earlier, an isolation centre installed in the neighbourhood had been looted and
patients released. The generator, food, mattresses and sheets stained with blood had been
carried away in ignorance of the contamination. Tear gas. Dispersion of marauders. The
government imposed an immediate curfew. The president warned the population in revolt. He
made threats, the time was serious, it was about national security. Anarchy had to be stopped
by all means.

Will the next epidemics, because there will be others, hit forest villages or large cities? Did
we understand that this is not the end but the beginning of a long battle?

XI
Orphaned children are stars that gravitate far from the sun.

Looking at the child who fell asleep, crushed with fatigue, I wondered what the Ebola
orphans would become. At seven years old, he spent months wandering the streets of the
capital without knowing where to go. Months of eating leftovers or not eating for several
days. Months of lying in the dust. And yet he is a miraculous child. He was not infected while
he stayed in the house with his sick parents.

I read in the newspaper that Ebola was particularly virulent in children. The younger they are,
the weaker their immune system and the more vulnerable they are. In addition, strangely, the
incubation period is twice as short as in adults.

I look with great pity at this little boy who witnessed, helplessly, the death of his father and
mother. When the funeral team arrived to pick up the bodies, alerted by the neighbours, he
hid in the kitchen. Through the entrenched door, he saw the men transport the corpses after
spraying them abundantly with chlorine. A tenacious smell suddenly impregnated the air to
freeze forever in his brain. In the early morning, when he got out of his hiding place, no one
wanted him. People refused to let him approach them and asked him to leave the
neighbourhood. Ferm out of here, shouted a neighbour, we don’t want to be

Contaminated! Having entered his family, they all thought that he should carry the virus
inside his body. Fear prevailed over compassion. I think that before he would have been
spontaneously taken in from the neighbours while waiting for his parents to come back. The
street has become his refuge. But what refuge? He remained alone for a long time, then he
lived with other rejected children like him, marginalised that passers-by avoided. They were
doing the trash or stealing what they could, knowing that they would not be run after. It was
only at the end of the epidemic that members of a humanitarian organisation found him
wandering through the meanders of the city and brought him with other boys to a temporary
reception centre. There, he was offered a semblance of normality, a soothing routine. Games
with his comrades from the centre. Tale and riddles sessions. Song contest. For the
volunteers, the important thing was to give them a little smile again, to help them not to think
too much about those they had lost.
Thanks to its family search network, the reception centre found me. One day, men came
knocking on the door of our house. They explained to me that they were looking for a home
for the little one. I am only a distant relative on the paternal side, but it does not matter, the
distinctions between family ties are not rigid in us. And then, they explained to me that there
was nothing to fear because, a year after the death of his parents, he had never contracted the
disease. I agreed to take care of him. It was more difficult on the side of my daughter and her
husband because they have two sons and a young girl, and, at first, they did not agree.
However, everyone has realised that efforts must continue to be made. Ebola, that’s it too...
To help us financially take care of it, we were promised social assistance and put back a one-
seater mattress, sheets, food supplies, some clothes and shoes, as well as some dishes.

The child calls me “grandmother”. That’s what I’d like to be for him. But, for the ten days
that he has been with us, I am beginning to wonder what the future holds for him. It is not
only for him that I worry, but also for these young people who have experienced the
epidemic. They may not all be orphans, however, what they have endured, the horrible
scenes, physical fear, has left bad wounds in them. They have lost their innocence. They lost
their kingdom. They lost their youth. They now know that their parents are not immortal, that
life can change overnight. They are kids, but they are already old. Will they still be able to
live without being afraid that the horror will return?

So many children have been affected by Ebola! There are also those who have been infected
and have survived. Today, some people find themselves heads of families. They have to take
care of their little brothers and sisters alone in the rubble of their house. They have nothing
left. They are called “Ebola children”.

Before falling asleep, the boy asked me if he could go back to school soon. It had just started
when everything broke out. I told him that yes, it was quite possible because the government
had just announced that schools would reopen. I try to be positive, but I’m not sure he’s able
to take lessons. His mind is scattered, he can’t focus on any task. He seems to have forgotten
his past, except when he has memories that suddenly interrupt his thoughts. The story of what
happened to him when he was on the street changes every day. He has trouble unravelling the
true from the false, living in reality.
I don’t know if I will be able to take care of him. I may show him affection, the slightest
thing makes him sad. When he sees my grandchildren with their dad, he retires to a corner to
cry. He says it’s his fault if his father died. He needs time to forget.

Yes, the epidemic is over. And yet we still live in the clutches of Ebola. It comforts me to
know that there are still people who are thinking of us. On site, international medical
organisations stayed to offer care to Ebola survivors who, without it, would never see a
doctor. Because it is the poorest who have suffered the most and who continue to feel the
effects of the epidemic. Several international NGOs also appeal to the generosity of the
outside world. They propose, to those who can afford it, to become godparents in order to
give Ebola children a chance in life.

There is still so much to do in all areas. The country is to be rebuilt.

Since the official end of the epidemic, the decontamination phase of all treatment centres has
begun. It concerns the disinfection of high-risk areas in which patients have been treated and
where it is not possible to enter without a protective suit until the virus no longer has any
place to hide. The task is easier for low-risk areas in which medical staff rooms and offices
were located.

Three categories of equipment remain in the centres and must now be taken care of. Many
beds and mattresses, once disinfected, can be reused, chairs and tables too. Damaged
equipment must be burned, finally, medical instruments such as syringes must be disinfected
and buried.

We must continue to be careful. We need to regain strength, learn to live again.

XII

Poetry offers a little consolation in the face of the absolute power of death.

When she showed the first signs of the disease, I couldn’t do anything. I wanted to keep her
with me, give her care. But I knew it would be useless. I am not a doctor - with me, she lost
any possibility of healing. With me, we were going to die together. I thought about it. Both of
them leave.

In her agony, she begged me: it’s Ebola, kill me quickly, I’m condemned. I don’t want to go
away in horrible suffering. I don’t want you to see me like that. Help me. But if there was a
chance, even a tiny one, that it would heal, I had to seize it.

I called the ambulance to pick us up. In the vehicle, we held hands. Upon our arrival, we
entered the sorting tent through which all patients must go. The medical staff stood two
metres away and took our temperature with the infrared thermometer that looks like a gun
pointed at the forehead. They then asked us very specific questions, do you have vomiting
and/or bleeding, nausea, sore throat, hiccups or other abnormal symptoms? Have you recently
been in contact with someone suffering from Ebola? My fiancée said that one of her office
colleagues had been reached, moreover, she replied

Yes to several questions. As for me, I had a little fever, but no other signs of the disease. I
was directed to the suspected case area while waiting for the results of the laboratory. I was
desperate to see her leave in the area of confirmed cases, accompanied by two caregivers in
combination. This vision froze my blood. I regretted making the decision to bring him to this
place. What if I never saw her again? I resented abandoning her when she had to fight her
greatest battle. If she lost it, there would be nothing left of us.

Now, we have been here for several days. Every morning, nurses take my temperature and
observe me, watching carefully for the symptoms of the infection. Since my initial test is
negative, we have to wait for the next one. Suspected cases have the right to walk in the yard,
read, exercise or even play cards with others. I push a chair against the exterior wall of our
room and, protected by the sheet metal roof that draws a strip of shadow on the red floor, I
hold my notebook open on my knees. I write poems. In fact, these are not my creations, but
poems that I know by heart and that she liked to listen to me declam. I still remember our
poetic evenings. As soon as I have finished copying a poem, I tear the page of my notebook,
fold it into four and give it to a nurse so that he can put it at the foot of my fiancée’s bed. This
is my way of being present with her, to communicate my great attachment to her.

A long time ago

That I like to sing your steps

And listen to your breath

In the middle of the night

Your perfume has all my senses for a long time

And that your voice resonates

From a thousand distant echos For a long time your smile Sketches my thoughts

And that your agile fingers weave my days

For a long time I know the rhythm of your pulse

And the black velvet

From your shaded skin

The second, I had more trouble remembering it. More and more people are coming to the
centre. More and more people are dying. I see the funeral teams taking the bodies in a hurry. I
now know everything about the centre, its operation and most of the caregivers. It is a place
cut off from the world where hope is difficult to bloom. I find poetry futile in such a place.
Rather, I spend my time near the barrier that separates my area from his. I can glean bits of
information. I am told that his condition is always critical and that no one can speak out.

I remember the day we met. It was a party with friends. There was music and a lot of food.
As soon as she entered the room, I immediately had the feeling that she would be someone
important to me. We spent the evening talking, the others no longer existed. After that, we
never left each other again. People say that we are similar because we are used to acting the
same way and laughing at the same jokes. I sometimes believe that we also think the same
way.
We announced our marriage project to our parents and started living together. What I like
about her is her kindness. She is beautiful, but doesn’t care about it. Deep eyes, a solid
complexion, hair

Thick. When she smiles at me, I can’t help falling in love with her again. I can’t stand the
idea that she can hurt, that she can suffer. To die? It’s not possible. She will come out soon, I
am convinced of that. We will leave the centre and resume our life together.

I started writing again. It’s the only thing that binds us, the only way to express my love to
him, to transmit strength to him. My second poem:

I still remember entering

In your eyes

To have observed

The folds of your face

And heard your voice resonate

I remember

To have shared with you

A moment of time

Created a point in space

I remember an eternal place where we baptised

The minutes
She must win this war. She must emerge victorious.

War, yes, war, the country has experienced another, just as devastating. That of men, that of
leaders eager for power.

Hordes of barefoot fighters, enraged mercenaries, soldiers with bloodshot eyes, Kalashnikovs
in their fists, sowed terror in the city trapped in a murderous rivalry. Pillage, rape, massacre,
nothing stopped them. Killer children recruited for their loyalty to their warlord and driven
crazy by alcohol and hemp were unloading

Their weapons on civilians at the slightest annoyance, or rather for no apparent reason.
Killing was not much for them, since they had been found in dark slums where misery held
them by the throat. Everything was destroyed, buildings riddled with bullets, schools with
collapsed roofs, hospitals ransacked. The inhabitants were trying to flee the clashes. My
parents, my sister, my two brothers and I narrowly managed to escape in our sloppy car,
launched in the middle of the night on the roads closed by dams of militiamen armed to the
teeth of pistols and machetes. We slalom, rode on broken tracks, and took long detours. We
were afraid, we were hungry, we were thirsty. On several occasions, we almost came across
troops driving in armoured vehicles. And then, finally, at the end of hell, the border post. Five
days to go on the other side, regain freedom! In exile a few kilometres from us. We led a
transitional life until the end of the conflict.

My fiancée told me that, for her part, her family had chosen, at the height of the war, to hide
at the bottom of the garden. His father had dug a big hole, a bit like a bunker. At night, they
slept in it after closing the opening with a twig roof.

When peace was declared, happy, we set out to rebuild the country.

I’m afraid of death, but more of losing the one I love. The one that made me want to live
again.

The result of my new test is negative, I will soon have to go out, go home. I fear this
separation. Even if I’m not with her, at least I’m not very far away. I’m going back to the
barrier. I’m waiting. A nurse comes to me, he says to me, lowering his head: I’m sorry for
your fiancée...

My last poem is not really one. But it’s the only one I wrote myself. I wanted it like a cry
thrown in the face of the sky.

Pain

In beats, in pulses In slinging

Lightning

Pain

Cold, burning Acid, bitter Tear

Pain

Burning, burning Oppressive, haunting Blinding

Deaf person

Pain

Lightning, lightning To suffer, to die Cruel

XIII

Knowledge is without borders, it has no colour, it is without perfume.

I am the Congolese researcher who discovered the Ebola virus in his own country. When
nothing was known about the disease, I went to the very place where the first epidemic broke
out, in 1976. I collected several samples of the blood of a patient and went to a laboratory in
Belgium to try to identify the new virus. I saw it under my microscope: long, stringy, looped,
and of terrifying elegance.

I have set out to analyse all its facets in order to find the best way to contain it. My research,
say scientific experts, has made it possible to implement “the beginnings of an anti-Ebola
serotherapy currently in development”.

To this day, I am leading my titanic battle in a research institute in Kinshasa.

We must give ourselves the tools to effectively fight Ebola, block him, learn not to waste
time if he returns. A first Ebola vaccine is already being tested. Others are in the development
phase. But further research is still needed. Scientists in collaboration with international health
institutions and local governments have developed experimental serums that

Offer great promises. However, pharmaceutical companies want to ensure that there is a
market, that is, money to be earned in the research and development of all these scientific
methods. Different epidemics occur constantly in one part of the globe or another. What are
the most promising researches? Some work on vaccines never reaches a crucial stage of
experimentation, for financial reasons. We have the ability to prevent Ebola from resurfacing,
but does humanity really have the will?

Or, the other scientists answer, while waiting for the vaccines, we are still better prepared for
the possibility of another epidemic. Surveillance is greater, laboratories more efficient, the
population more knowledgable. At present, medical teams are travelling the regions on the
lookout for the slightest sign of resurgence, ready to intervene. Governments have learned to
collaborate better and share information. If cases of Ebola occur, they can be circumscribed
quickly. A handful of deaths, no more.

This is what we have learned and this is what we want to remember.

Nevertheless, many caregivers have been victims of the epidemic. The consequence is that
there is still not enough. More should be trained. They are the ones that must be protected
above all. If not, how can they do their job? They must be taught to detect cases of infection
very quickly, sort them and deal with them safely. Without their commitment, the system
collapses.

For their part, zoologists announce that they have discovered a phenomenon that increases the
Ebola disaster. Before an epidemic breaks out in a forest region, the virus leaves macabre
traces in nature. He attacks antelopes, deer and rodents, and in particular great apes such as
chimpanzees on which he falls with lightning rage. Hundreds of carcasses

Of animals are found between the trees and on the humus carpet, where they collapsed,
crushed by the disease. When villagers notice an unusual number of wild animal corpses,
they have learned to immediately warn the local authorities, because this means that an Ebola
epidemic is preparing in men.

It is said that I am a scientist, a man who has made science his truth. But I understood one
thing: scientific reason cannot meet all human needs. In the fight against Ebola, men remain
the most important. They are the agents of their own healing, of their own protection.

And, in this race against time, the ancestors also have their say. They are the protectors, the
great allies of the living. The hospital is a failure. An ugly and anonymous death sentence,
without compassion, without soul. A place where the poor end miserable days inside
dilapidated buildings.

In the villages and in some neighbourhoods of the city, the healer has ancestral knowledge.
His reassuring word and ritual gestures are nourished by a past that refuses to give way. Rival
of size. Those who take a contemptuous look at his authority are doomed to error.

For scholars of traditional medicine, it is not only plants and plants that it is about. It is a
whole conception of the world that is expressed, a way of living with fauna and flora. To the
person who comes for consultation, the healer says one of the following four sentences:

It is a disease that I know and that I can treat.

It’s a disease that I know, but that I can’t treat.

It’s a disease that I don’t know, but that I can treat.

It’s a disease that I don’t know and that I can’t treat. There, at this precise moment,
everything can change. History can be rewritten,

Mentalities can change. Cooperation can begin.

At the beginning of the battle against Ebola, healers were ignored. By the public authorities.
By NGOs. By health professionals. Considered ignorant and incompetent in the face of the
disease, they were accused of poisoning things. Yet, despite all the efforts of scientists, the
disease continued to progress. What to do? The authorities understood that they had to
reconsider their strategy; get as close as possible to people. However, healers share their daily
life, their environment, their concerns. They can walk kilometres to treat a patient and, when
they arrive at his bedside, it is to the head and body that they address.

So we had to call on them!

Because their medicine is known to the greatest number.

It is easy to access.

It’s not expensive.

It is part of the culture.

It inspires confidence, reassures.

All these qualities that chemical medicine has lost, or has never

Managed to have, in Africa.

The healers were made to understand what Ebola was, so that they could
Explain and educate in turn. This is how they managed to convince their patients to go for
treatment “where the disease is known”.

Understand me, I am a man of science, I am looking for the effectiveness of all knowledge.
We only have one life, it happens on earth. No other is offered to us. Our thoughts, words and
actions have the ability to rebuild the world. I made it my conviction, my religion, my raison
d’être. I believe in the existence of pure energy.

Every human being is a universe.

Man is water, oxygen, carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen, calcium, phosphorus, potassium, sulphur,
sodium, chlorine, iron, magnesium, zinc,

Manganese, copper, iodine, cobalt, nickel, aluminum, lead, tin, titanium, fluorine, bromine
and arsenic.

The atoms of the body come from the heart of the stars.

Yes, from the heart of the stars!

At the centre of these stars are formed almost all the atoms of the universe.

Furnace. Fusion. Astronomers say that stars shine for billions of years producing billions of
atoms in their boiling belly. Then, one day, the star dies. The atoms that compose it spread
into space to give metals, minerals, water and living beings.

In order to recompose itself, the organisation must manufacture organic matter every day. But
a human body does not know how to get there. Only plants can produce oxygen and create
organic molecules from inorganic matter. Animals also do not know how to make organic
matter. So, they eat plants or, if they are carnivorous, they devour animals that feed on plants.
We are the same. We need plants. We eat animals.

Stars, oceans, plants and animals are inside our body.

The universe is not outside of us. He is in us.

We are the universe.

But, of all this immeasurable beauty, of this infinite enigma, that

Is it left?

DEEP IN THE FOREST

XIV

The icy voice of Ebola slams in the nascent morning.

Okay, it’s very beautiful, it’s very good. But it is not of me that men should be most afraid.
They should be afraid of themselves!

I am a thousand-year-old virus. I belong to the great family of Filoviridae. I have only been
known for about forty years, yet I had been there for a long time, in this extraordinary forest
called “primary” and where everything remained as it was in an immutable time.

I have five brothers:

Ebola Zaire, the most virulent of us,

Ebola Sudan, who follows him very closely,

Ebola Ivory Coast, very discreet, known only to men in 1994 in

From a single patient who did not die,

Ebola Bundibugyo who lives in Uganda,

And, finally, Ebola Reston who has settled in Asia, where he has not yet done
His evidence.

I don’t like to travel. I prefer to stay deep in the jungle

Untouched, where I am happiest. Except when they come to disturb me. Except when we
come to disturb my host. Because when I suddenly get out of my sleep, I go from one animal
to another. I often choose the big ones

Monkeys, gorillas or chimpanzees, but also antelopes of which men are fond of. The animals
of the forest all know each other. They gather in the same places. Around the water points,
under the fruit trees that bats inhabit. The rest is known. A man profanes nature, shoots and
kills a beast. He disbells the carcass. Blood on the hands. Fresh blood on the hands. Red
blood on the hands. He puts the animal on his shoulders and brings it back to the village. He
doesn’t know that I have already entered his body. That I will now be with his family. In his
clan. I advance with low noise, slowly at first, until the apotheosis, the fire, the flames.

I’m not the one who changed. It is the men who have changed direction. The life they lead
today is no longer that of the ancestors. They have become more demanding, greedy and
predatory. Their desires have no limits.

I don’t know anything about their beliefs. I am not governed by any law. I’m only here to
exist. I’m me, that’s all. An organisation that needs to reproduce. No compromise. No
negotiation. I am alive and I will do everything to stay alive. I just need to feed myself and
defend myself. A pile of flesh suits me. Any receptacle, whether an animal or a human
creature. I’m neither good nor bad. Such a judgement makes no sense. I am like a plant that
grows, like a spider that devours.

What men have not understood is that I have no preference for them. They die too quickly,
too badly. They do not serve my objectives. If they pass in my wake, why not, otherwise, I
will not go and get them. They are the ones who come to me.

We, the viruses, have succeeded in conquering the planet. We are in the oceans, in the air.
We are everywhere. We reinvent ourselves, accelerate our mutations, operate our
multiplications. Men can’t understand us. Antibiotics, their great pride, have no effect on us.
We can cross borders and continents at our

Like. We kill microbes and bacteria by the thousands. And yet, no one will have the idea to
thank us for our help, so what’s the point?

If I were given a choice, I would cut men’s wings to prevent them from flying. They would
crawl into the dust and understand life better.

No one can defeat me. No one can eliminate me. If I step back, it’s only a tactical retreat.
When a new opportunity arises, I will come back. The greatest scientists in the world have
tried, but they are not yet able to decipher my code. I am an equation impossible to solve.
When I enter a body, I borrow the blood channels to invade the vital organs: the liver, spleen,
pancreas, lungs, kidneys, thyroid gland, skin and brain. In a few days, I took full possession
of my prey. In a few days, I managed to overcome all the bad obstacles standing in my way!

Men feel sorry for their fate, but they are no better than me. They have no lesson to teach
anyone. They must face the deliberate evil they inflict on themselves and that they continue
to inflict on themselves since they have existed.

Their nature is more destructive than mine. However, they knowingly refuse to recognise it.
They prefer to lullap with illusions, to believe themselves above other creatures on earth.
Dominators, tyrants of the planet, their power is absolute. Arrogance made them forget any
limit. Worse, they kill each other mercilessly, inventing a little more cruel ways to make
people suffer and kill every day. New reasons to make war.
Do you know what my favourite song is, Baobab? It’s Zao’s “Ancient Combatant”. It
illustrates, better than any speech, the grotesque of men and their incurable disease of
destruction. The musician did in the absurd, he understood everything. I can recite to you the
words of memory:

Mark the step, one, two Mundasukiri veteran

Mark the step, one, two Mundasukiri veteran

The world war

It’s not clean, it’s not beautiful

The world war

It’s not clean, it’s not beautiful When the world war will come

Everyone cadavered

When will the world war come?

Everyone cadavered

When the ball whistles, there is no need to choose If you don’t change quickly, my darling,
ho! Cadaveré

With the baton blow

Suddenly, patatras, cadaveré

Your cadavered wife

Your mother corpsed

Your cadaver grandfather. Your cadavered father

Your corpsed children

The cadavered kings

The corpsed queens

The cadavered emperors All the cadaverous presidents The cadavered ministers
The bodyguards of the corpse The corpse bikers

The corpsed military

The cadavered civilians

The corpsed police

The corpse gendarmes

Cadaver workers

The cadavered unemployed

Your darling corpse

Your first cadavered office Your second cadavered desk The cadaver beer

The cadavered champagne

The cadaver whisky

The cadavered red wine

The cadavered palm wine

The corpse drunkards

Music lovers cadavered

Everyone cadavered Me-men cadavered

Make the step, and one, two Veteran Mundasukiri

Mark the step, and one, two veteran Mundasukiri 1

Men need to know: they are not good and have never been good. Of all time! Let them put
this in their heads. They are

Imperfect and incomplete. They are deadly. Everything rots. Everything crumbles.
Everything melts into the ground. Sometimes, their God throws a handful of hopes on the
earth, then goes back to bed in the glowing darkness. The wound of the firmament, the
tumultuous water, the burning wind, the engloyment of the waves, their God observes them
from a distance. He makes them suffer in Him. Out of Him.

Don’t you believe me, Baobab? Are you nodding the top of your foliage?

Know that, at home, horror succeeds barbarism. Even when they proclaim themselves
justices of a good cause, they have dirty hands. The truth is that they are not fighting for an
ideal. They do not kill to bring happiness to all, no, the inhumanity of some simply justifies
the savagery of others. Whether they massacre themselves with a club, knife, spear, arrow or
ax as in the old days, or with machine guns, grenades, shells, bombs and chemical weapons,
it comes down to the same thing, they are atrocities, massacres and genocides. Where and
when will they stop? How much longer will it take for men to rediscover a little common
sense?

Do you want me to stop, Baobab?

No, it’s not over. To this, it must be added that, in their hatred of themselves, there is no
difference in race, human race, religion, belief, level of education or economic development,
one day or another, they start to kill each other again. They themselves cannot conceive that
barbarism inhabits their soul and sows terror in the four corners of the world. Each time, they
are taken by surprise.

I see that your leaves are quivering, Baobab, that your trunk is tarnishing. I swear to you,
don’t shrink from denial!
In their many wars, I do not seek to know who is wrong or right, I just see the extent of their
capacity for self-destruction.

I could continue, but I prefer to stop there, I’ve said enough.

Believe me, Baobab, if men agreed to recognise their intrinsically dark side, they would
learn to better control their destructive impulses instead of being controlled by them. They
should analyse themselves coldly and look for effective ways to stop the carnage. They
should forget their absurd ideas of fraternity and solidarity that they shamelessly flout, and be
more realistic.

Men afflict me so much they strive for their own loss. Soon, I will have nothing more to do.
Human beings should be given as little power as possible. No kings, no princes, no heads of
state, no politicians, but simple individuals in the face of their destiny. Because forms of
government, supposed to restore order, fuel chaos. They are real mafias governed by the rich
who monopolise goods and resources.

To tell the truth, I fear only one thing: to see men go against their harmful nature and help
each other. Because it was not science or money that pushed me back, when I was close to
the goal. No, it is ordinary people who gradually realised that they would be stronger if they
thought together, worked together, fought together beyond their immediate interests and
personal pain. They surprised me. That’s when I had to withdraw and accept my defeat. I
understood that their power was manifested when they were united.

Maybe men are afraid of me because I remind them how fragile and ephemeral life is.
Chance is inscribed in their genes. They were born of chance that existence cultivates.

And then they should know that it is not only I who am able to annihilate them.

A cataclysm could destroy the earth faster than me. The earth could collide with another
planet, be swallowed by a black hole or bombarded by asteroids.

There is of course the threat of an atomic war between “civilised” countries, of such
magnitude that it would be able to sweep life. Unless
Aliens do not destroy Earthlings before. If they escape all this, the sun will not leave them
unscathed. Because he himself is condemned to die. Before it goes out, it will shine with all
its lights. An intolerable heat will rise, water will become scarce. The blood of the earth will
flow into the atmosphere. The globe will empty, become a fruit without sap, an empty shell.

Then the royal star will change into a cold and indifferent mass that will gradually dissolve in
space. And the universe will forget that one day a sun bubbling with energy had reigned
supreme over the Earth.

1. Zao (Congolese author, singer, composer), “Veterant”, Celluloïd, 1984.

XV

The voice of Bat comes to oppose that of Ebola.

I am not bound to Ebola by any obligation, other than that of preserving the well-being of
nature. First of all, we must therefore restore the truth: I am not responsible for this tragedy. It
was in spite of me that all this happened. I don’t want to hurt anyone.

Bat, half mammal, half bird, fangs and fox mouth, translucent wings, I only regret one thing:
letting Ebola escape from my belly. He slept in me before men came to spoil the splendour of
the forest. I had given him the warmth of my blood. I had given him the multitude of my
species. We are shy but welcoming creatures, eating ripe fruits or insects, pacifists and
sleeping upside down, legs clinging to the branches of the trees.

Most of the time, I prefer to stay with my peers, tighten against their soft and lukewarm coat,
breathe the smell of the colony. Our screams such as squeaks permeate the atmosphere when
we take off at nightfall.

Bat, half mammal, half bird, fangs and fox mouth, translucent wings, I only regret one thing:
letting Ebola escape from my belly. Before attacking men, he
Attacked monkeys, friends of the forest, as if he wanted to test his power. I who know them
well, because we are neighbours and sometimes share the same trees, I have seen their
number fall at a dizzying pace. However, they are only asking to live with each other. When
it is not Ebola that attacks them, it is the men who hunt them for their meat, or to sell them in
laboratories, circuses or zoos. I saw monkeys being killed trying to protect one of their own.
The females sacrifice themselves to try to save the young. They raise them for several years
and are very attached to them. In the evening, the monkeys will lie down on top of a tree.
They like fruits like us, tender leaves, succulent flowers and, from time to time, they eat small
animals. They have a language made of screams and grimaces. Like planters, they disperse
seeds in the soil and renew the forest.

I’m afraid for them, because they have lost a lot. They are surrounded on all sides.

Is it my fault that Ebola left my belly to sow terror in men and animals? What could I do
there? I thought we had an agreement, that he was satisfied.

And now I’m demonised.

No, I don’t suck human blood! No, I’m not evil! No, I’m not a wandering spirit! No, I am not
a symbol of death and disease!

I am a good omen creature that is part of nature like all the others.

Because I was born of love.

Let me tell you the story of my origins.

I was born on a deep night, in a beautiful forest at the top of a welcoming tree. My mother
was from the bird family, a dove with brown grey feathers with a beak of great finesse. Its
beauty was legendary and its roaling, a real melody.

However, a wild fox was prowling around in search of fresh flesh. He devoured palm rats,
hares, deer and even birds that made the mistake of going down to the ground. This was the
case with my mother, who was pulling an earth worm when she found herself face to face
with the fox. He opened his mouth wide preparing to bite his bones when their eyes crossed.
It was love at first sight. The fox was dazzled by the plumage of the dove, which shone under
a crystalline light crossing the foliage of the trees to come and land on the two animals. As
for my mother, the ochre and tuffy fur of the fox and her piercing eyes, in which she could
read hardness but also great sadness, plunged her into a wonderful disorder.

Their unlikely love was born in this way, ignoring their differences and the scandal that
would not fail to agitate the people of animals. My mother told me that they had found refuge
between the roots of a tree acquired for their cause. My father was so in love that he no
longer hunted. He had found happiness, something he was desperate to know one day.

At the time of my birth, my mother retired to the top of their tree to bring me into the world.
That’s how I was born, bat, half mammal, half bird, fangs and fox mouth, translucent wings.

Yes, I am a hybrid, and I am proud of it. We are all hybrids. Human animal, animal man. We
all have a light face, a dark side. Our life is not a straight line. She goes in a zigzag, makes
detours, goes in circles and sometimes finally finds her direction. Millions of life forms have
appeared and disappeared over the ages. You have to be multiple to adapt, and not dry as
stone, dry in your head and body. Know how to marry the unpredictable. The universe proves
this every day by the multiplicity of the planets of the cosmos, the variety of earthly creatures
and the infinite possibility of destinies.

Unfortunately, men still dream of a purity that does not exist, of a unity that has never taken
place. That’s why some of them are looking for

Tirelessly superior power through science. “In truth,” men say, “we build more than we
destroy. We save more lives than we kill. We find remedies that cure and vaccines that
protect. New technologies will solve our problems, innovations will reduce hunger and war in
the world. Today, we are all linked by the optical fibre that crosses the planet in all directions.
And even nature will benefit from our discoveries. No need for arms to fulfil a task, the
machines will serve us. No need to exhaust our natural resources, other energies will be
available. We will find ways to purify our polluted waters, to clean the air we breathe, to stop
the melting of ice, the rising of the seas. We can do it. This is how men think. I’m willing to
believe them. They are holders of the beautiful word. They know how to dream, create. By
their only desire to achieve perfection.

But I know that none of this will happen if they do not learn to share among themselves,
between us, between the creatures to be born.

Human beings will never be “demigods”. Like trees, they have roots plunging into the depths.
Like mammals, they are warm-blooded. Their bodies define their longevity and, finally,
disappears by freeing them from the suffering of living.

Men should be aware of their belonging to the world, their connection with all other
creatures, large or small. Instead of wanting to rise above their earthly condition. Instead of
wanting to hide the presence of death, with increasingly sophisticated inventions. Instead of
hiding the sufferings of life, they should learn to prepare for it and accept the pure joy of
being in the world.

Become aware, once and for all, of the danger they pose to their own species and the entire
biosphere and use their remarkable intelligence to avoid the end of the world.

Colonising space with their large rockets will not be a lifeline for men. Because, if they have
not learned to live here, how will they be able to live elsewhere?
L’ÉPIDÉMIE EST ENRAYÉE

XVI
The word tree.

I, Baobab, am the first tree, eternal tree, symbol tree. My peak touches the sky and offers a
refreshing shadow to the world. I am looking for soft light, carrying life. So that it illuminates
humanity, illuminates the darkness and appeases the anguish.

I heard the voice of Ebola, I will not answer her wickedness. He does not understand men and
only considers their flaws in the intention of absolving himself.
I heard the voice of Bat. I agree with her. I would add that men must sign a pact of good
understanding with nature. We must live together and preserve the well-being of the planet.

Everything has been said. Everything remains to be said.

But now, let’s forget all this, the time for the celebration has come. In all hearts, relief flows
like honey into the mouth of a hunter who would have been lost in the forest.

Ebola is gone! Ebola is gone!

The epidemic is officially over. The president of the country solemnly announced it. The
public health authorities have repeated it. The World Health Organisation has confirmed this.
To celebrate this triumphant news, a piece of music is looped on the radio

National, “Bye Bye Ebola”. The miracle of finally being free: “No one wants to see you grow
up [...]. Thank you, God, it’s over [...]. Now, watch me dance the Azonto dance! ”

I learn that the song goes around the world. On television, we see the president in his large
office, making the V of victory. There are doctors in cosmonaut suits, nurses in blue clothes,
soldiers in lattices, schoolchildren in uniform and merchants in front of their displays who
sway, twirl, bounce and clap their hands while following in the steps of the “Azonto dance”.
They stop at times and shake hands laughing, this simple gesture that was forbidden when the
epidemic was raging. They will be able to kiss again. They will be able to hug and touch each
other.

It’s over! It’s over!

In the city centre of the capital, thousands of people gather to celebrate the end of the
epidemic. Scenes of intense happiness. Celebrations. Lighted candles. Fireworks. The crowd
pours into the streets dancing and shouting with joy. She sings and cries with emotion.

In bars, beer flows freely, the music is deafening. Women pitch to the rhythm of languid
notes, artificial lights flashing on their silhouette. They wear tight dresses and high heels.
Customers came to toast to the defeat of Ebola. There is something desperate in their desire
to forget and have fun at all costs. They predict the return of investors to the country, the end
of the economic recession and the beginning of major public works. They think they have
proven their courage, demonstrated their determination to overcome the greatest of obstacles.
They raise their glasses while blowing, we can breathe now, we will finally be able to think
of something else. Death passed near us, but we survived!

Bye bye, Ebola!

On the borders of the country, life has also resumed. In my village, the men have found their
place in the shade of my foliage. Under my protective gaze, they rest on coloured mats.
Previously, they had shared a meal prepared together. Plunging their hands into great dishes,
they savoured rice balls and a few pieces of meat.

Children clinging to their mothers suck the breast. The cabris approach to observe the scene
of the return to normal. I listen to the words of the villagers. An old woman gets up. His
braids are very soft grey and fall on his shoulders. Anxiety can be read in his eyes, but a
smile nevertheless appears on his face. She addresses her companions: peace is with us, but
let’s be careful. We have died several times, we must respect life.

Tenderness, suddenly, invades me. I recognise the survivors, I mourn with them the dead.

At dusk the musicians come out. Poets are beginning to psalm the achievements of the heroes
of the struggle.

Tomorrow, men will return to their activities. To the deserted fields that are waiting for their
attention. To the herds that muggle in their enclosures. To the barns that want to shelter the
seeds of the next seasons.

And I stay alone for the night.

I see the moon finely drawn on a vault paved with stars. I hear the trees growing there in the
forest. From these young shoots, she will be reborn.

The wheel of misfortune and happiness never stops turning. Joy already carries within it the
sadness of wear and tear. From the disaster can arise the tenacity of a renewal. Everything
happens from below, everything happens under the ground. I will give the shrubs the juice of
my roots.

And the destiny of men will join ours.