Painting a picture of Ebola

IN THE COMPANY OF MEN

Veronique Tadjo Jacana

Review: Beryl Eichenberger

IN THE light of the recent Ebola (September 2022) cases in Uganda. this slim volume of stories shines a light on the struggles dealing with the terrible virus.

While the recent Covid pandemic should have made us more aware of the plight of the African countries exposed to Ebola and the losses incurred, it seems to be so far removed from our own daily lives as to be a headline down the pages of our news items.

Véronique Tadjo is a writer, poet and painter from the Ivory Coast, who has lived all over Africa. She was visiting professor at Wits University. She is a prolific writer with many awards and the release of her latest novel in translation, In the Company of Men: the Ebola Tales, draws on real accounts of the Ebola outbreak in West Africa in 2014.

And while all this might sound depressing the book is far from that.

Tadjo’s ability to weave folk tale and reality brings together an almost magical yet harshly honest series of stories – moving insights into the devastation and effect on those closest to the virus. She has a measured voice, the poetic quality is sorrowful, sad – an elegy to those who have passed and a hymn for those who have survived.

In West Africa, the deforestation has affected the biodiversity in such a way as to allow disease to spread fast. Tadjo illustrates this effect as she follows two young boys through the stripped woods as they hunt bats for food; the baobab speaks to us; the whispering trees echo the broken chain between man and nature; a doctor; nurse, survivor, the virus itself – all have a story and whether it is the stigma of having had the virus, the absence of supplies, the bravery, the fear, each has a voice. It is the simplicity of the stories that enthrals. And cuts to the heart.

I must mention the cover as this is something that also sets the book apart. The baobab tree with all its intricate appendages is both unsettling and intriguing.

Tadjo uses poetry, fictionalised testimonials, and beautifully constructed prose to paint this picture of a disease that in 2014 claimed more than 11 000 lives. She points to the effects of pandemics and epidemics and how man contributes to this cycle. And she brings the reality of this crisis into focus.

As the giant baobab say: “But when men murder us, they must know that they are breaking the chains of existence. Animals can no longer find food. Bats can no longer find food, can no longer find the wild fruit they like so much. Then they migrate to villages, where there are mango, guava, papaya and avocado trees, with their soft sweet fruits. The bats seek the company of men.”

Tadjo has presented us with sobering stories that have an important place in this world we inhabit – they remind us of our hand in the destruction.

♦ This book won Veronique Tadjo the Los Angeles Times Book Prize 2021.