some degree amplified by ape-to-ape contagion, but the larger pattern reflects progressive viral establishment in some other group of animals, still unidentified, with which apes frequently come into contact. Leroy, on the other hand, has presented his particle hypothesis of “multiple independent introductions” as a diametric alternative not to Walsh’s idea as here stated but to the notion of a continuous wave among the apes.
In other words, one has cried: Apples! The other has replied: Not oranges, no! Either might be right, or not, but in any case their arguments don’t quite meet nose to nose.
So . . . is light a wave or a particle? The coy, modern, quantum-mechanical answer is yes. And is Peter Walsh correct about Ebola virus or is Eric Leroy? The best answer again may be yes. Walsh and Leroy eventually coauthored a paper, along with Roman Biek and Les Real as deft reconcilers, offering a logical amalgam of their respective views on the family tree of Ebola virus variants (all descended from Yambuku) and of the hammer-headed bat and those two other kinds of bats as (relatively new) reservoir hosts. But even that paper left certain questions unanswered, including this one: If the bats have just recently become infected with Ebola virus, why don’t they suffer symptoms?
The four coauthors did agree on a couple other basic points. First, fruit bats might be reservoirs of Ebola virus but not necessarily the only reservoirs. Maybe another animal is involved—a more ancient reservoir, long since adapted to the virus. (If so, where is that creature hiding?) Second, they agreed that too many people have died of Ebola virus disease, but not nearly so many people as gorillas.
22
After our fruitless stakeout near Moba Bai, in northwestern Congo, Billy Karesh and I and the expert gorilla guide Prosper Balo, along with other members of the team, traveled three hours back down the Mambili River by pirogue. We carried no samples of frozen gorilla blood, but I was nevertheless glad to have had the chance to come looking. From the lower Mambili we turned upstream on one of its branches, motored to a landing, and then drove a dirt road to the town of Mbomo, central to the area where Ebola virus had killed 128 people during the 2002–2003 outbreak.
Mbomo is where Barry Hewlett, arriving just after the four teachers were hacked to death, had encountered murderous suspicions between one resident and another that the Ebola deaths resulted from sorcery. We stopped at a little hospital, a U-shaped arrangement of low concrete structures surrounding a dirt courtyard, like a barebones motel. Each of the rooms, tiny and cell-like, gave directly onto the courtyard through a louvered door. As we stood in the heat, Alain Ondzie told me that Mbomo’s presiding physician, Dr. Catherine Atsangandako, had famously locked an Ebola patient into one of those cells just a year earlier, supplying him with food and water through the slats. The man was a hunter, presumably infected by handling one form or another of wild meat. He had died behind his louvered door, a lonely end, but the doctor’s draconian quarantine was generally credited with having prevented a wider outbreak.
Dr. Catherine herself was out of town today. The only evidence of her firm hand was a sign, painted in stark red letters:
ATTENTION EBOLA
NE TOUCHONS JAMAIS
NE MANIPULONS JAMAIS
LES ANIMAUX TROUVES
MORTS EN FORET
Don’t touch dead animals in the forest.
Mbomo had another small distinction: It was Prosper Balo’s hometown. We visited his house, walking to it along a narrow byway and then a grassy path, and found its dirt courtyard neatly swept, with wooden chairs set out for us under a palm. We met his wife, Estelle, and some of his many children. His mother offered us palm whiskey. The children jostled for their father’s attention; other relatives gathered to meet the strange visitors; we took group photos. Amid this cheery socializing, in response to a few gentle queries, we learned some details about how Ebola had affected Estelle and her family during that grim period in 2003, when Prosper had been away.
We learned that her sister, two brothers, and a child had all died in the outbreak, and that Estelle herself was shunned by townspeople because of her association with those fatalities. No one would sell food to her. No one would touch her money. Whether it was infection they feared, or dark magic, is uncertain. She had to hide in the forest. She would have died herself, Prosper said, if he hadn’t taught