Congo's Lamentations
Joy can be found in the depths of tragedy
For our next concert, the choir that I belong to – The Tudor Consort – will be performing a setting of Lamentations by Robert Whyte. The book of Lamentations, sometimes known as the Lamentations of Jeremiah, is one of the darkest biblical texts, an account of the siege and destruction of Jerusalem by the Babylonian king Nebuchadnezzar. It’s filled with gut-wrenching images of the devastated city - the people starving, sick and taken into slavery, the temple ransacked and its sanctuary invaded, the once-busy streets desolate, now filled only with the dead and dying.
Verses from the book of Lamentations were set by many great composers of the Renaissance, among them Tallis, Lassus and Palestrina. Highly regarded in his time, Whyte never achieved their renown. He held a number of important posts, including Master of Choristers at Westminster Abbey, but his musical career, and his life, ended in one of London’s many outbreaks of plague, in 1574. His entire family died with him.
The tragedy of Whyte and his family was far from unique in those days. Plague outbreaks were common in Europe and Asia – London had nearly 40 in the period of just over 300 years which began with the pandemic of 1347. Robert Whyte would have lived through at least three which were worse than the one which killed him, and he didn’t live much past forty. It was far from unusual for most, or all, of a family to die in such outbreaks. Even living through our own plague era, it’s hard to comprehend the grief and the trauma of living through such times, yet people did. Not only did they continue with their lives, but some of them, as Robert Whyte did, brought the world gifts of exquisite beauty.
The plague outbreaks of the sixteenth century seem a long way away from us today, and in many ways they are. But on a smaller scale, these tragedies haven’t left us. While they don’t reach the scale of the plague pandemics, there are still localised outbreaks of disease which are just as merciless.
I’ve talked before about the Ebola virus, in comparison to Covid-19. Ebola is not the kind of disease you catch from visiting a bar, or sitting in a meeting with someone who is infected. The way that it spreads is through contact with bodily fluids of people who are very obviously sick, or dead. This makes it unlikely to become a global pandemic on the scale of Covid-19. But in communities with minimal infrastructure, where it’s difficult or impossible to isolate and treat the sick, it’s every bit as deadly as the plague outbreaks of old.
Ebola was first seen in the Democratic Republic of Congo (then Zaire), a country devastated by decades of violence and with a brutal colonial history at the hands of the Belgian King Leopold II. Even by the standards of the day, his regime in Congo was considered horrific, and he was condemned by other European leaders. The Congo’s people are now among the most deprived in the world, and yet it’s a rich country in many ways. It has abundant natural resources, including copper, gold, diamonds, uranium, oil and cobalt. Before colonists arrived, those riches supported a wealthy trading empire, the Kingdom of Kongo. Today, more than 200 languages are spoken there, making it one of the most linguistically diverse countries in the world.
The tenth outbreak of Ebola in Congo began in August 2018, and less than a year later it was the second largest outbreak known, with 1300 people dead. That the outbreak got so badly out of control, when Congo had managed so many other outbreaks, was a tragic failure of the systems that should have managed it. By the time Covid-19 was becoming a global crisis, the Ebola outbreak had claimed more than 2000 lives. On June the 25th of this year, when the outbreak was declared over, it had killed 2287 people.
On the other hand, this outbreak of Ebola in Congo was notable not just for its size. It was also notable for the scale of the problems facing the people trying to control it. And for that, the achievement of bringing the outbreak under control deserves more attention than the footnote it received in the world’s media.
After years of conflict, the people of the Congo are – justifiably – suspicious of authority. A survey conducted in affected areas during the outbreak found that 25% of people didn’t believe that Ebola existed, and 36% believed it had been created for financial gain, or with the intent of destabilising the country. More than a third didn’t believe that health workers would act in the best interests of the public. The situation wasn’t helped when electoral officials decided that voting in the presidential election would be suspended in two cities in the outbreak zone. While they said it was to prevent the spread of Ebola, many questioned the official justification, because those cities were also opposition strongholds.
The election, though, appears to have been a turning point in the outbreak. When Félix Tshisekedi took over the presidency, he appointed Professor Jean-Jacques Muyembe Tamfum to be the head of the Ebola response. The article which noted the significance of the change in leadership didn’t say precisely why that was important, so I started turning over stones and found out more about the man in charge of the response. I realised, then, that there is probably nobody else alive who knows more about Ebola than this Congolese microbiologist. He played a leading role in Ebola’s discovery in 1976. When the disease reappeared 19 years later, in Kikwit, he was the one who diagnosed it. He has been present in Congo for every one of their Ebola outbreaks, but he has also worked at the special pathogens branch of the US Centres for Disease Control and the Pasteur Institut of Dakar in Senegal.
And yet, after reading numerous books and articles covering the Ebola virus, I’d never heard of him.
After writing my last two articles, I’m more sensitised than usual in noticing a certain bias in news coverage of Africa. Much of the time, we see foreign aid agencies and usually white aid workers, with the local population as the unfortunate victims. There is no doubt in my mind that groups like Médecins Sans Frontières, the Red Cross and the World Health Organisation play a crucial role in crises such as this. But a huge share of the credit for bringing this outbreak under control must go to the people of Congo.
It’s not just Professor Muyembe, though.
The most difficult and dangerous task in any Ebola outbreak is preparing the bodies of the dead for burial. This work is done by “Medical Technicians for Dignified and Secure Burials” – local health workers who risk their lives to break the chain of transmission. One of these technicians, Kambale Safari Bosco, has been interviewed in a documentary about the Ebola outbreak.
He’s first shown loading equipment into a truck and heading out to collect and bury a body. He is grim-faced and there’s something in his face that strikes me as hardened. Later, he’s shown burying the body of a child, his face stony. But as the documentary continues, and he talks about his work, I see his face soften and even light up with his commitment to this gruesome but critically important job.
“I feel such pity,” he says. “Sometimes I consider maybe giving up. And then I think again and realise that the whole area will die. Even my children will die. No, I have to continue. I find the courage and keep going.”
The courage of the technicians is brought into focus when they are attacked by villagers while attempting to bury a body. One of them is hit over the head with a cross that was intended to mark the grave, and his face is swollen and bruised. The injured worker, who is not named in the documentary, said he thought he was going to be killed. It’s one of hundreds of attacks on health workers during the outbreak. Eleven have been killed.
But it’s the courage of another man which prompted me to write this article. His is the first voice in the documentary, and the saddest. He tells how his son became ill and died, then his wife, and then his mother. He became sick as well and, although he survived, he returned home to an empty house. It’s an almost unimaginable loss, and I cannot begin to comprehend the depth of his grief. He’s shown, alone in his home, looking at photographs of his family, and speaking of how they were everything and he is nothing.
As a survivor of Ebola, this man, Jophet Kamuisa Kasere, has a degree of immunity. And so he accepted a job in an Ebola treatment centre, caring for the children of Ebola patients, some of whom may be coming down with the virus themsleves. Jophet is shown walking into the centre, changing into his uniform and walking towards a ward. A toddler runs up to him and he lifts the boy into his arms. The boy’s father is dead and his mother is sick, but in that moment the tragedy is far away and there is joy on both their faces. As I watch Jophet with the children, playing with them, feeding them, rocking them, and saying goodbye as they are able to return home, I see the human capacity for kindness in the most awful of situations. That kindness, I realise, is like Robert Whyte’s music – in the depths of tragedy, a gift of exquisite beauty.
In case you missed the link in the text - watch the Ebola documentary on YouTube here. And if you are in Wellington, come to our concert.
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