Free No Time to Lose: A Life in Pursuit of Deadly Viruses by Peter Piot Page B

inform the sisters that the virus had in all likelihood been amplified and spread by their own practices and lack of proper training. In the end I think we were far too polite about it: I’m not certain at all that it really sank in when we told them our preliminary conclusions.
    OUR THERMOSES WERE full of blood samples that we needed to deliver to a lab for detailed analysis. After great persuasion, the two survivors, Sophie and Sukato, agreed to come with us to Kinshasa for further testing and, assuming that their blood did indeed have antibodies to the virus, plasmapheresis. It was time to head back to Bumba for our rendezvous with the pilots who had agreed to return us to Kinshasa.
    Pierre Sureau and I argued that there was no need for all of us to leave. We felt that a continued presence could be useful, if only as a placebo—a totem that could relieve the sisters (and to some extent, also the villagers) of their fear of being alone with the epidemic. There were still some active cases of the virus around Yambuku, and no way of knowing whether the epidemic would flare up again to full strength. However, although Pierre radioed Karl Johnson his most strenuous recommendation, our orders were to return.
    But when we got to Bumba no plane came. A day went by and an airplane engine rumbled the sky, but when we scrambled out to the airfield it circled overhead and flew off without landing. Another day went by, and another. We were told there was no fuel for the airplane. Then it was a national holiday. Then the weather was not good. Meanwhile we were running out of carbon dioxide canisters to manufacture the dry ice that we had packed around our blood samples. We had to drive over to Ebonda from the mission in Bumba, where we were staying, to persuade the Unilever plantation officials to accept these small potential bombs of contagion into their freezer and then hope against hope that their generator wouldn’t fail.
    You learn to wait for things in Africa. Initially you are overcome by a swell of irritation, but after a few days it wears off, as most things do. You learn to sit on a veranda or under a tree and talk, or nod in silence, knowing that when the plane comes, you will hear it. It’s a good life lesson.
    I spent quite a lot of time with our convalescent Sukato, who spoke some French and could translate, too, for Sophie, who was already missing the children she had left behind in Yambuku. Neither of them had ever been to Bumba. Sophie in particular was a deeply modest and devout Christian, and to both of them this ramshackle townlet seemed to represent the fearful temptations and corruptions of the big city. They felt humiliated by the knowing sneers of the locals, who looked down at them as primitive forest folk, and Pierre and I bought them clothes from Noguera so they would feel more at ease. I was a bit anxious when I thought of how they would react to the truly chaotic metropolis of Kinshasa.
    I also spent time with Father Carlos, who really was a most curious character. (He still lives in Bumba, and we correspond, now by e-mail!) He must have been in his early thirties—slightly older than I—but though he drank beer and wore Jesus sandals and colorful short-sleeved shirts made of local cloth, he seemed from an entirely different generation. He had inherited money from his family in West Flanders (I gathered that his father had been a banker) and he spread it around Bumba, paying for projects, helping people out. He was totally acclimatized to his environment, preaching in what seemed like fluent Lingala, deploying skills of diplomacy and negotiation that were truly admirable; he was a figure of authority almost equal to the local Commissaire .
    With Carlos, as with the sisters of Yambuku, I perceived aspects of my own Belgian culture far more clearly than when I was actually living it. The dialect they spoke; the heavy, traditional winter food they enjoyed despite the sweltering heat: all of it seemed so