pickThis slim volume details the 2014-16 Ebola outbreak in West Africa. As the story of an epidemic, it is told in brief vignettes, loosely following the spread of the virus and narrated by the people effected. With so many brief glimpses into so many lives, Tadjo is able to touch on several issues contributing to the severity of the outbreak, as well as depicting the modernization of African villages and how humans have caused their own destruction.
pickI picked up this polyphonic fable because it won the LA Times Fiction Award. Wow! Each brief chapter is in a different voice: doctor; patient; baobab tree; researcher; grieving orphan; volunteer from overseas; and even the virus itself. Very moving. Veronique Tadjo based her book on real accounts from Ebola outbreaks & Covid makes it feel even more relevant. Tadjo translated her own writing with the help of John Cullen.
What humans don‘t seem to understand is that I have no predilection for them. They die too fast, too awfully. They‘re not useful to my goals. If our paths happen to cross, why not, but if they don‘t, I won‘t seek them out. It‘s they who come to me.
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But then, one day, I started feeling unwell again & I had to return to the hospital where I had been admitted the first time. The doctors discovered that Ebola had not been completely eradicated from my body. The test results showed that the virus had lodged itself in my left eye. Before I had the disease, my iris had been blue but afterwards it turned green. Ebola had gone into hiding where no one would expect to find it.
I am Baobab, the first tree, the everlasting tree, the totem tree. My roots reach deep into the belly of the earth. My crown pierces the sky. I seek the light that brightens the universe, illuminates darkness and soothes hearts.
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There was a time when men used to talk to us, the trees. We shared the same gods, the same spirits. If one of us had to be cut down, our pardon would be begged first
pickI received this as a review copy from Edelweiss. Set in the Ebola epidemic, the reader gets snapshots from various people and nature itself. A study of man‘s effect on nature and nature‘s effect on man. The different viewpoints give a complete view of the Ebola crisis on those involved; however, there are so many viewpoints it is difficult to feel an attachment to any. The writing is beauty itself.
In the Company of Men | 
