Congo Ebola crisis: To fight disease, an anthropologist heals distrust

The crisis in Butiaba began with a grave.

When a man named Makombela got sick in September in this isolated village in Congo’s lush green eastern borderlands, his family did just what the radio PSAs and awareness posters had instructed. They called an emergency number, and told them they had a possible Ebola case.

And when he died at a clinic, 50 miles away in a town they had never seen, the family swallowed their fear and consented again.

OK, they demurred, he could be buried there, in a cemetery shared by strangers.  

But back at home in Butiaba, a cluster of mud-brick houses huddled at the edge of the rainforest, the message hadn’t gotten through. The chief had already dispatched a group of young men to dig a grave in the town cemetery, a hacked-out clearing a few hundred meters into the forest. And now it sat gaping and empty like a crater.

This was a bad omen, said Moshi Katwakima, an elder. A man with an air of quiet authority, he told the chief that he had seen what happened when graves were left open in the past. Failed harvests. Scores of young people suddenly unable to find work.

The conversation quickly turned barbed. Why do we have to follow their rules, they wondered about the Ebola responders, when they clearly don’t respect ours?

When the young men in the village caught wind of the conversation, they decided on a plan. No more Ebola responders would be allowed in Butiaba, or on the dirt road that passed through the