Generations ago, families fleeing tribal violence in southern Guinea settled in a lush, humid forest. They took solace among the trees, which offered cover from intruders, and carved a life out of the land. Their descendants call it Meliandou, which elders there say comes from words in the Kissi language that mean “this is as far as we go.”
By 2013, a village had bloomed where trees once stood — 31 homes, surrounded by a ring of forest and footpaths that led to pockets residents had cleared to plant rice. Their children played in a hollowed-out tree that was home to a large colony of bats.
Nobody knows exactly how it happened, but a virus that once lived inside a bat found its way into the cells of a toddler named Emile Ouamouno. It was Ebola, which invades on multiple fronts — the immune system, the liver, the lining of vessels that keep blood from leaking into the body. Emile ran a high fever and passed stool blackened with blood as his body tried to defend against the attack. A few days later, Emile was dead.
On average, only half of those infected by Ebola survive; the rest die of medical shock and organ failure. The virus took Emile’s 4-year-old sister and their mother, who perished after delivering a stillborn child. Emile’s grandmother, feverish and vomiting, clung to the back of a motorbike taxi as it hurtled out of the forest toward a hospital in the nearest city, Guéckédou, a market hub drawing traders from neighboring countries. She died as the virus began its spread.