That baboon’s fever is what? Yellow….

On Thanksgiving evening while walking home after masticating Zach’s famous chicken fajitas and imbibing my share of Cowboy’s not so famous boxed white wine I ran into Nick, a borehole driller from Australia. Nick was in his Toyota pickup with I’d say no less than 10 of his Ugandan employees. As I participated in the obligatory local handshake (normal shake, rotate at the thumbs, grip and repeat until someone gets tired or extremely uncomfortable) with all on board I asked Nick what they were doing out and about.

“We just dropped off an employee at the hospital. He’s become super sick, mate,” said Nick.

Assuming the employee probably had a bad case of that most common of Ugandan afflictions, malaria, I repeated handshakes and parted ways to go and sleep off my holiday nosh.

That Saturday I ran into Nick again and he told me his employee had passed away hours after they had dropped him at the hospital. He said he had gone from feeling fine to death in less than 24 hours and he was concerned about his other employees. He was obviously upset and confused by what had happened.

Throughout the rest of that weekend I started to hear stories of people getting violently ill in the villages around Kitgum. Strange symptoms were also being reported; vomiting blood, blood in uncontrollable bowel movements and bleeding from the eyes. Something out of the ordinary was definitely happening and people were starting to talk.

I work for ACET (Aids Care Education and Training) a village health organization that operates in all of the areas where sickness was being reported. In our Monday morning staff meeting the possibility of Ebola was brought up for the first time. My thoughts immediately went back to me shaking hands with every one of Nick’s employees after they had dropped off their colleague. ACET’s employees started discussing what, if any, their role should be in this potential health disaster. Many were scared, rightfully so, but it was overwhelmingly decided that as a health organization they should be prepared to go into the village and pass on relevant knowledge about sanitation and interacting with others. An emergency meeting was called for fist thing Tuesday morning at the district office for all health NGO’s working in the area.

Tuesday I received an email from my supervisor highlighting the information disseminated during the meeting. In Orom sub county 10 cases were reported with an 80% fatality rate while Agago reported 32 cases with eight deaths. The report shows Dr. Layoo of Kitgum government hospital as saying, “the strange disease is believed to have originated from Abim district when two hunters ate a mountain baboon.” We had another meeting and the employees of ACET decided that they would definitely be helping in the effort to educate villagers on what was starting to look and sound more and more like Ebola. I was told that some shopkeepers in town were starting to wear rubber gloves to avoid doing business and that using 1,000 shilling notes were discouraged (the bills most commonly used by villagers), I never saw this first hand so it may have been rumor.

Peace Corps office had been in touch with me a couple of times asking questions, as this news had already made its way to Kampala. At this point I sent an email to Goretti with the information from the emergency meeting attached. I also told her the plans of my organization and my apprehension in working in such conditions so closely. In an attempt at levity and humor I also told Goretti that I would, “abstain from eating any more baboons until further testing was done.”

Goretti responded that she had passed the email onto Gary, as Ted at that point was out of the country on vacation. As I waited for instructions on how to proceed my supervisor returned with hand sanitizer, rubber gloves and masks. The teams were divided and they headed for the field to begin discussions with the villagers on staying safe and healthy from this “mystery” disease.

I quickly received an email from Gary thanking me for my email with the attached report from the district; he would be passing it onto the CDC and U.S. Embassy. My first thought when reading this was my email being passed along the chain of command with my snarky comment about eating tainted baboon until it landed squarely on the desk of the big man himself, President Barrack Obama. Probably not, but in my head I could see him thinking; “Who is this jack-ass and who let him into the Peace Corps?” In any case there is apparently a time and place for trying to be funny. Lesson learned.

The CDC and Embassy at this early stage were stumped and Gary decided that the best course of action was to have the volunteers in Kitgum and Pader leave site until more testing in the area could be done. I told my organization that I would be leaving temporarily and one of the ladies in the office pointed at me and said, “This one fears the disease.”

The comment made me angry for a couple of reasons: 1) I was a little frightened of an unknown disease making people bleed from their eyes, but I didn’t want to show it and 2) I felt guilty about leaving my coworkers to do the “dirty work” while I got escorted out with a pocket full of per diem.

So, us volunteers left that afternoon in a private hire (P.C. didn’t want us using the bus system at that point) for Gulu where we would be picked up by a Peace Corps vehicle on Wednesday morning. The following morning as we were piling into the Landcruiser Rasheed our driver said, “Travis, you are making us all laugh!”

“What? Why?” I asked, confused by his remark.

“We all read your email about eating baboon! That is funny, seriously.”…I guess I’m glad that some people can appreciate my humor.

So we took off for the city, at this point not really knowing what would happen. If this truly was Ebola would we ever be allowed to return? How long would we be gone? Did we bring all the stuff we need if we’re not allowed back? What would Peace Corps do with us if we can’t go back?

We moved out as the CDC moved in. All in all it was just a shade under a month before the tests were conclusive identifying the mystery illness as Yellow Fever. Why it takes that long to identify something that there is a vaccine for I’m still a little foggy on, but I do appreciate the fast actions of Peace Corps. They worked quickly in making a decision (which at the time was correct) in what to do with volunteers stuck in an area plumb full of tasty, tasty monkey meat.

(published in the P.C. Uganda newsletter)