Rollin Gabon Transcript

Rollin Gabon Transcript

I was in Gabon, but that was in '96. I went to Mayibout. There was a small outbreak in a village that was up the river, so you have eight-hour pirogue on the river to arrive that. This outbreak started with young kids in the forest had found a dead chimpanzee or gorilla--I think it was chimpanzee--and then they cut it in pieces. No, they went back to the village to get some help, cut it in pieces, and every, more or less, family in the small village had a piece of the chimpanzee to eat. After a while, everybody that was involved in the cutting, transporting, and preparation of the meat started to be sick, and some of them died. The Gabonese army came to help, and there was also some group from the French Grande Endemie.

So they went there, they built some tents to have the patients, and then some place. And then it started to be too difficult to handle, so they decided to move the complete village further down with the pirogue to a hospital, so they could have the patient in the hospital, and then all the family, all the contact, the village there, and they fed them, gave them some protection from the sun and rain and everything. It was really well done because you had not only your patients but you had all the contacts that were there. It was easy to handle. Then when that was finished, they put everybody in pirogue. The Red Cross Gabonese were there, and they gave goodies to everybody, and it was a big fest, to go back. I have some pictures of that. It was nice. So we went to that village and I stayed one or two nights before the people were moved down, sleeping on cots from the military, and that was nice.