The girl’s father was weeping. Four people wearing pale yellow protection suits, surgical masks on their faces, lowered her coffin into the earth. An elderly relative wailed, crouching on the ground. Police officers kept guard in the shade nearby.
This burial – which took place outside Beni, in the east of the Democratic Republic of Congo – was not ordinary. The girl, named Nyetise, had been diagnosed with Ebola, and so her corpse had become a mortal danger to anyone who came near. She was laid to rest in a cemetery for Ebola victims, in a space carved out of the forest half an hour’s ride from town.
