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Health workers transporting the body of Taylor Okito, a truck driver who died suddenly after vomiting blood, in the village of Marabo, one of the areas affected by the Ebola epidemic in the Democratic Republic of Congo.Credit...
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Matthew Mpoke Bigg
Visuals by Arlette Bashizi
Reporting from Marabo, a village in the Democratic Republic of Congo
The dead man lay in a pool of blood, a few yards from the truck that he had parked in the village.
Witnesses said the driver had stopped on a recent Friday night to repair a burst tire, intending to continue east the next day along the unpaved highway that connects the cities of Bunia and Kisangani in the Democratic Republic of Congo.
The next day, they saw him buy juice from a kiosk in the village, Marabo, and sit down on the broken tire. He stood up, staggered a few paces, collapsed and threw up blood, according to Etienne Sanyobo, the leader of the village youth council.
A crowd gathered to stare. Nobody knew who the man was. But they kept their distance. Vomiting blood can happen in the final stages of Ebola, and his blood was still seeping into the dirt.
“I heard that a driver died so I came,” said Esperance Nganabo, a mother of nine. “I don’t know how he died, but it’s important to fear Ebola.”
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