“We never thought he had Ebola. He just had fever.” The man speaking looks down at his hands, as if somewhere in his palms lay answers to the terrible questions he is asking himself.
“He was my nephew. But he always stayed with us and played with those children,” he says, pointing to a ragtag group kicking a deflated ball between them, sometimes letting it roll under tables set up between the houses where family, friends and neighbours of the boy with Ebola were lining up to get vaccinated.
“We took him to a clinic. But he got sicker. And weaker. So, we took him to the hospital -- where he died.”
This tragedy is sadly all too typical.
Even though Ebola has been smouldering in the suburbs and villages surrounding Beni for over a year, few people recognise its early symptoms. So many other conditions are heralded by the early symptoms of Ebola -- fever, fatigue, headache, muscle pains -- that people are more likely to go to a local private clinic before calling the Ebola hotline or seeking help at an Ebola treatment centre.
By the time the virus has ‘shown itself’ -- causing severe diarrhoea, vomiting, loss of consciousness, and death -- too many other people have been infected, and it is often too late to reverse the ravages it has caused.
One reason for this has been distrust in Ebola responders, seen as outsiders bringing trouble to the communities in and around Beni.
However, here in Malepe, Beni, there is deep sadness but no sense of wariness or distrust. People are crowding around, anxious to get vaccinated and to talk about what happened.
So why is it different? One reason may be that this vaccination team --team 29 -- is composed entirely of Congolese vaccinators, who come from the region and speak the local languages.
“This is an important part of our strategy -- to recruit and train people from the areas with Ebola, who can explain what Ebola is and what the vaccine is for,” says Dr Abdourahmane Diallo, team lead for vaccination in Beni.
Dr Diallo, from Guinea, was a member of the first teams to give the experimental vaccine to people at risk during the West African Ebola outbreak (in 2014-16). He explains that having local vaccinators increases community trust. It also means that the expertise sorely needed to fight future Ebola outbreaks will stay in the Beni community.