Read Online Spillover: Animal Infections and the Next Human Pandemic by David Quammen - Free Book Online

close range. They were bivouacked, awaiting the helicopter. Now the supplies had arrived—including even some beer! This allowed for a relaxed, genial atmosphere around the campfire. Quickly I learned that two of the crewmen, Thony M’Both and Sophiano Etouck, had roots in Mayibout 2. They were present when Ebola virus struck the village.
    Thony, an extrovert, slim in build and far more voluble than the other fellow, was willing to talk about it. He spoke in French while Sophiano, a shy man with a body-builder’s physique, an earnest scowl, a goatee, and a nervous stutter, sat silent. Sophiano, by Thony’s account, had watched his brother and most of his brother’s family die.
    Having just met these two men, I couldn’t decently press for more information that evening. Two days later we set off on the next leg of Fay’s hike, across the Minkébé forest, heading southward away from the inselbergs. We got busy and distracted with the physical challenges of foot travel through trackless jungle terrain, and were exhausted (especially they, working harder than I) by nightfall. Halfway along, though, after a week of difficult walking, common miseries, and shared meals, Thony loosened enough to tell me more. His memories agreed generally with the report of the CIRMF team from Franceville, apart from small differences on some numbers and details. But his perspective was more personal.
    Thony called it l’épidémie , the epidemic. This happened in 1996, yes, he said, around the same time some French soldiers came up to Mayibout 2 in a Zodiac raft and camped near the village. It was unclear whether the soldiers had a serious purpose—rebuilding an old airstrip?—or were just there to amuse themselves. They shot off their rifles. Maybe, Thony guessed, they also possessed some sort of chemical weaponry. He mentioned these details because he thought they might have relevance to the epidemic. One day some boys from the village went out hunting with their dogs. The intended prey was porcupines. Instead of porcupines they got a chimp—not killed by the dogs, no. A chimp found dead. They brought it back. The chimp was rotten, Thony said, its stomach putrid and swollen. Never mind, people were glad and eager for meat. They butchered the chimp and ate it. Then quickly, within two days, everyone who had touched the meat started getting sick.
    They vomited; they suffered diarrhea. Some went downriver by motorboat to the hospital at Makokou. But there wasn’t enough fuel to transport every sick person. Too many victims, not enough boat. Eleven people died at Makokou. Another eighteen died in the village. The special doctors quickly came up from Franceville, yes, Thony said, wearing their white suits and helmets, but they didn’t save anyone. Sophiano lost six family members. One of those, one of his nieces—he was holding her as she died. Yet Sophiano himself never got sick. No, nor did I, said Thony. The cause of the illnesses was a matter of uncertainty and dark rumor. Thony suspected that the French soldiers, with their chemical weapons, had killed the chimpanzee and carelessly left its meat to poison the villagers. Anyway, his fellow survivors had learned their lesson. To this day, he said, no one in Mayibout 2 eats chimpanzee.
    I asked about the boys who went hunting. Them, all the boys, they died, Thony said. The dogs did not die. Had he ever before seen such a disease, such an epidemic? “ No ,” Thony answered. “ C’etait le premier fois. ” Never.
    How did they cook the chimp? I pried. In a normal African sauce, Thony said, as though that were a silly question. I imagined chimpanzee hocks in a peanutty gravy, with pili - pili, ladled over fufu.
     
    Apart from the chimpanzee stew, one other stark detail lingered in my mind. It was something Thony had mentioned during our earlier conversation. Amid the chaos and horror in the village, Thony told me, he and Sophiano had seen something bizarre: a pile of thirteen