Disease and Death :: History Journal Diary Essays

Disease and Death may 14th 1963 The jungles of Zaire are untold more intimidating and humbling in person than in the tract at the Peace Corps office. I restrain got been dispatched here to wait on in the quarantine and treatment of the locals and some wild life. While I am over number with the beauty of the flora I cant help unless ponder the sheer amount of insects and mosquitoes that this grade of environment can support... after a 5 hour bus ride into the forest we come to a clearing with clusters of lean-tos and make channelize buildings. What once was a clearing for farm animals to graze and to grow crops is now a make shift graveyard and apparently the process of burying the dead has become in any case much of a burden on the bereaved and a funeral pyre burns day in and day out. The air of the village hangs slump with the stench of death and burnt flesh while the wailing of those that have survived, thus far, greet the ears of the volunteers. The doctors have a lready set up a make shift hospital in the largest of the buildings and the volunteers are shown to the quarters and are expected to work right alongside the doctors as an informal nurse. May 15th 1963 I have estimated that the population of the village before the outbreak of this plague was roughly 500-750 inhabitants with an equal population of livestock. It appears that the cattle were afflicted graduation exercise and were promptly skinned and burnt. The disease then ran its course into the herdsmen who were responsible for disposing of the cattle. The beginning(a) case occurred a month ago when one of the skinners nicked a flip while skinning. As I gathered, from the translator who has been interviewing people since his arrival ii weeks ago, that at first people thought the man just to have a common cold and headache but after a few days his eyes were filled with blood and he became tropical to the touch. Then the skin became horribly bruised as if he had suffered s ome sort of terrible flogging. As the disease progressed his fever steadily increased seeming to cook him alive and the bruises filled with what one could only imagine as his own wretched blood trying to escape the body house it.