The Marburg Virus

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The Marburg Virus

Why did I decide to choose to study Kongolese Art? Why didn't I just decide to study something safe, like British watercolours? If I had, I would have never had to spend the past three days in isolation in a hospital in Germany to ensure that I wasn't harbouring the Marburg virus.

My experience with Marburg started about three weeks ago in early April--April 1, 2005 to be exact. I had been in Angola for the past seven weeks conducting an intense study of Kongolese art in the rural villages of Uige Province. Angola is not exactly the safest place in which to conduct research so instead of identifying myself as an Art Historian I had been traveling with a group of volunteers who were building schools in remote villages. During the day I would help with the construction, and at night I would conduct my research. At the end of March, we arrived in the town of Uige to build a new two-room schoolhouse. When we arrived, as we did every time we entered a new village, we went to the local authorities to make sure they were OK with what we were going to do. Instead of the normal warm reception that I was used to, the Police Chief, Constable Sammy, warned us that many of the folks in the town were sick, with an unknown illness.

Illness was nothing new to us, so we set about our business. Later that evening we met up with Dr. Smith, a British doctor volunteering in the local hospital. He showed us some of the infected patients--he said that most of them appeared to have malaria, as they were presenting all of the classic symptoms: fever, chills, horrible headaches, and an overall feeling of being unwell. (CDC Marburg Fact Sheet) But, we didn't worry as we were all taking malaria pills.

Two days later, when we met up with Dr. Smith again, he was a different man. He was not the cheery man that we had met two days ago; instead he was in a frantic situation. He told us that his patients were not responding to the typical drugs used to fight malaria, and to make things worse they had developed "nausea, vomiting, chest pain[s], a sore throat, [and] abdominal pain." (CDC Marburg Fact Sheet) In addition some of the patients had developed a rash on their torso.

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