This thread is developed as a series depicting how people can contract the deadly ebola virus.

Please be careful, Ebola is real. I will try to do a daily update of the lives of the characters.

Patient Zero:
The white pick-up truck galloped along the bumpy road towards the main river in the town. The three passengers in the truck and the driver danced along as each wheel fell into a pothole and caused the truck to gallop. Up ahead they could see a silhouette of a man coming up from the river. It appeared to be a young man in his early twenties who was crouched over as he walked up from the river. The driver glanced at his passengers and seemed to ask if they could see the man also.
As they got closer, they realized the man was actually very dark skinned and had just a piece of loin cloth round his waist. As he got closer to the truck, he found it more difficult to walk and staggered to the front passenger door. Kelechi looked up at the man from his iPad he had been busy on, he could see the man’s eyes were bloodshot and had blood trickling from the sides. He was alarmed.
“Are you okay”, Kelechi asked across the wound up glass sealing the air-conditioning in the car. The man whispered something that was barely audible to the occupants of the car. Ahmed stopped the car and the dust settled around them. The man was still clinging to the car and at every attempt to speak; blood came out from his mouth.
“Please, let’s get out and see what’s wrong with this fella”, Ayomide shouted from the back seat. “He seems very sick and requires urgent medical attention”. As Kelechi made to open his door, the man who had been resting on the door fell into a heap by the side of the truck. Ahmed and the other occupant came out through the other side and also rushed to the man’s aid. Kelechi, Ayomide and Ahmed made to pick the man up but noticed he had developed a lot of rash on his torso. Ayomide removed his shirt and began to wipe the dust, sweat and blood away from the man’s body. They noticed that the woman, they picked up from the previous town, came down with Ahmed but had distanced herself from the three helping the dark skinned sick man.
“Madam, abeg find bottle of water from inside the car bring”, Ahmed shouted her out of her trance. The woman stood transfixed and moved a step back. “Can’t you hear”? She moved back a step again, she moved back further to the edge of the bush path as Ayomide made attempt to approach her.
“What is wrong with this madam”, Ayomide queried the others. The dark skinned man breathing became labored and he began to slump in Kelechi’s arms. The woman murmured something and had the look of someone who had seen a ghost in her eyes. She murmured again pointing at the man’s almost limp body. As Ayomide attempted to approach her again, she shouted, “Eboooooola”, and ran as fast as she could down the earth pot-hole ridden road in the other direction the dark skinned man had been coming from.

Kelechi:
Kelechi climbed the staircase a step at a time. Usually when he just came back from inspection trips to the villages, he would take three steps at a time. But today he was remarkably tired. He was not tired from the inspection exercise but from the incident that had happened on the way to the site. He could still see the dark skinned man’s eyes in front of him. He looked through the wound up glass again, in his mind, and saw the level of sickness the man was in. Then he heard the woman’s voice shouting that dreaded disease again and again. He still couldn’t believe it.
He had heard about the disease before and from that information, it appeared to be an eastern African ailment. Certainly, it couldn’t have migrated to West Africa. Out of curiosity he stayed back at the hospital to enquire from the doctor the nature of the man’s illness. With the woman’s declaration of the man’s sickness, he had to summon courage and will to ask the other guys to put the man in the truck. The drive to the hospital had been eerily quiet except for Ahmed who kept asking what the woman meant. He knew if he attempted to explain it to him, he might jump out of the vehicle leaving them stranded as only he knew the way around the villages.
The doctor has laid the dark skinned man on an observation table and asked some nurses to come take his vitals. The nurse approached the man, raised his arm and stuck the thermometer under it. She removed her gloves so she could time his pulse properly from his wrist. As she looked up at the wall clock in the doctor’s office, Kelechi saw sweat from the man’s wrist move to her fingers. She completed her check and wiped her fingers on her brow. She took the thermometer out, put it in her breast pocket and wrote the results on a small piece of paper for the doctor.
“Doctor, we just picked this man up from the road to the village. I’m staying back to ensure he’s okay”, Kelechi gave as an excuse. “Ah, you don’t have to do that”, the doctor replied. “Be rest assured, he’s in good hands”.
“All the same, let me at least know what sickness can give such symptoms”.
“Actually, to be honest, I haven’t seen anything like this in my short career. I have asked the lab techs to come and take a sample. For all we know, it could be some acute form of malaria or typhoid. He probably has not been eating healthy too”.
The dark skinned man suddenly gasped and began to breathe violently. The doctor rushed from his table to check on him. Before he got across, the dark skinned man’s arm fell off the observation table in a lifeless motion.
Kelechi, not being a doctor, knew he was dead.

Ayomide:
Ayomide took the cash out of the petty cash officers hand forcefully. “Ahan, you wan tear the money”, the petty cash officer asked.
Ayomide counted it to ensure it was complete. He ran across the lawn to the where the staff buses were parked. He couldn’t afford to miss the bus as the money paid from this trip would have to serve as transport fare with no gain for him. He had been very lucky since being posted to work with Kelechi. As an intern he was making more money than his peers and by the time he returned to university, he would be able to acquire a laptop. He was excited at the thought.
But he couldn’t get the thought of the dark skinned man out of his mind. The woman must have been wrong. Ebola doesn’t exist in these parts. He had dated a biochemistry student from his first year to fourth and had some knowledge of these things. He remembered how his girlfriend had followed the last outbreak in east Africa diligently. She had graduated and gone to do her masters in some virology field. He never could comprehend why anyone would want to work in such a dangerous field. A soldier at war had better odds than virologist, he used to think.
So when the woman made that pronouncement, he had to freeze in his tracks. It simply wasn’t possible.
“Bros, wetin you dey think”, Ibrahim asked. Ibrahim was his closest friend at the office. They were from the same school and sat together in the staff bus to and from the office.
“Na how I wan take balance this my laptop money”, he lied. Maybe tomorrow he will ask Kelechi what the man had come down with. He noticed Kelechi too was uneasy and had stayed back to see the doctor personally. Ibrahim offered him some snacks but he declined. He was afraid to allow his hand make contact with his mouth.
The bus came to a halt in front of his street and he made for the door. “Are we seeing later”, Ibrahim enquired.
“I have a lot of chores to run for my dad”, he lied again and bolted down the street. He ran as fast as he could and got to his house before the bus left the stop. He flung open the front door and ran up the stairs to his room. He pulled off his clothes and jumped into the bathroom. He turned the taps and allowed the water run over his body. He was determined to wash away whatever the dark skinned man had, from his body

To be continued!

Hmmmn..nice 1 op..

Nice!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RTfSthZY2Ck

[size=15pt]Ebola Virus in Nigeria[/size]

BattaBox Presenters discuss the outbreak of the Ebola virus in Lagos, Nigeria

Kelechi:

Kelechi slumped onto the queen size bed in his bedroom. The walk up the one storey stairs had felt like walking up the NITEL building. He couldn’t shake the dark skinned man out of his mind. He opened up safari on his iPad and looked up the Ebola Virus. The first thing to pop up was the incubation period which stemmed from 2 days to 21 days depending on the individual. This implied he had a wait-and-see period of 3 weeks, he thought. He just hoped he had not exposed himself and family to this incurable disease.

He got up from the bed and walked to the wardrobe. He opened the embedded safe and brought out his family travel passports. He flicked through his. His American visa was still valid. He flipped through his twin sons', valid. Nkechi, his wife had only her UK visa valid. She has to get the American renewed asap, he murmured to himself.

Mrs. Ouattara:

The woman jumped off the motorbike and threw the fare at the rider. She dashed to the bank gates. She was determined to get into the bank before they closed for business. As she stepped into the hall, she looked up at the wall cock behind the bank cashiers. 15:55pm it read. She heaved a sigh of relief.

She walked to the customer service desk and took a sit in front of the attendants.

“How can we help you today”, enquired the lady attendant.
“I want to close my account with your bank”.
“Is it urgent for you to do it today? As you can see we are almost at the end of the business day, perhaps…”
“No, I must close it today”, demanded the woman. “I have to leave for my country tomorrow morning”.
“Okay let me look up your account and get you the necessary forms”, replied the attendant as she punched some keys into the computer system on her table.”Can I have you account number please”?

After a couple of seconds rummaging through the system, “Oh, it says here you need your husband’s consent to close this account”.
“My husband is late”, replied the woman. “We emigrated from the DR Congo in the seventies. He passed on twelve years ago. I have been operating the account on my own”.
“In that case, we will require your husband’s death certificate and some notification of his death in the national dailies as published then”.

The woman looked helplessly at the attendant. If only she would understand. Her mind flashed back to those horrid scenes from the streets in her village.

She was younger then and just had her seventh child 3 months earlier. Without warning, a strange plague had hit her village and people started dying. Even the white missionary men couldn’t help them as they had quarantined themselves away from the villagers when the death toll hit 10 victims. The help that was to arrive from the central government was taking forever to come.

She had struggled to feed her family as the entire village was deserted. Not that people had left their homes, contrarily, they had barricaded themselves in their homes.

Within days, her first three children developed the fever, the rash and blood soon followed. Before they could consult the native doctor, four children had died. Her husband advised that they relocate to the native doctor’s home as their neighbor’s had done. On getting there, a very foul odour welcomed them.

The entire native doctor’s home was littered with bodies at various stages of decomposition. At the center of the compound lied the limp body of the doctor himself. Everyone had died.

Ahmed:

Against company policy, Ahmed usually drove the truck home. His argument had always been how he was supposed to get home and back to work in the morning after parking the truck at the office premises.

This night was no different; he drove the truck to his usual spot at Exclusive Hotel. Being a bachelor, he spent most of his nights with commercial sex workers. He didn’t really enjoy the sex but he need to relieve himself of the pool of spermatozoa building up inside him every day.

“Ahmed, Ahmed”, called out one of the girls from a dark corner by the hotel gate. “Your girl no dey today o, make I come”. Everyone wanted Ahmed because they knew he was a good spender. Ahmed glanced in her direction briefly but continued walking towards the reception. He knew she was lying and only interested in wrestling him away from the clutches of the other girl.

Ahmed walked up the stairs and stopped on the second floor. He paused in front of room 221 and the door flung open before he knocked on it. The girl was already in her lingerie and was waiting to satisfy Ahmed.

She pulled Ahmed into the room and removed his clothes while constantly grazing her eyes over him. Soon they were in bed making love.

Kelechi:

Kelechi woke up, startled. His head was pounding from the nightmare he woke up from. He looked at his side and noticed it was empty. He looked at the bed side watch and it was almost 7:30am. He made to get up but the pounding in his head had him cuffed to the bed.
Nkechi walked out of the bathroom.

“You shouldn’t try to get up. I will strongly advise against it”, Nkechi said cleaning her body with a towel.

“I need to get to the office before 9:00 am. We have a meeting to collate the inspection reports we have been on for the past one month.”

Nkechi stood akimbo, the towel wrapped around her from her chest down.

“Do you even have the faintest idea what I went through this night”, she queried him

“Please check your side of the bed and see how soaked it is from sweat. You have been running a fever all night and you were barely conscious”.
“Fever…”, Kelechi murmured, his eyes becoming wide and alarmed.

“I was about to call the doctor before you last temperature recording showed 38 degrees. This is still too high but compared with 41 degrees you were on at night, I will take that.”

Kelechi tried to reach for his iPad. He remembered that fever was one of the symptoms but he wanted to check again just to be sure. Nkechi snatched the equipment from the night stand before he could reach it.

“Nkechi, you don’t understand”.

“There’s nothing to understand bros. No work for you today”, she said slowly settling herself onto the bed by his side. She made to give him a peck but he turned away.

“What’s gotten into you? Because I am looking out for your well being”

“Nkechi, please stand up and stay away from me. I think…” he started but was unsure if to continue as he didn’t want to alarm her.

“Na wa o. Person sick like this, still dey find work”, she said clapping her hands in traditional African woman fashion when surprised at an issue.

“Maybe I should give you a mirror so you can see how bloodshot your eyes look for you to believe you are really sick”.

“Bloooooodshot”, Kelechi screamed from the bed. This was supposed to take 3 weeks, Kelechi thought to himself.

“No work for you today, bros. Your breakfast will be in the microwave. I will call your office. If they wish, let them fire you. You are not going to work today and that’s final”, Nkechi stormed back into the bathroom.

Doctor Shuaib:

Shuaib woke up yawning wide. He stretched his arms to his side and was reluctant to get up despite the call to prayer nearing its end over the lodge’s loud speakers. Grudgingly, he swung his feet over the side of the bed and nearly fell off forgetting that he was on the upper bunk of a double bunk bed.

He had been living in the corpers’ lodge since he came into town. Despite concluding his service more than six months ago, Shuaib chose to continue to live at the lodge till his results came out and he had a decision to make. His United States Medical Licensing Examinations, USMLE.

After service, he had begun studying for his step 3 and had gone to write it the previous month in the US. The procedure says the results will be in 3 to 4 weeks and he had logged into his yahoo account almost every half hour of the day for the past three weeks. Shuaib had always been a brilliant fellow. He finished top of every class from kindergarten to university. He was on various state and federal scholarships. He had a perfect score in the West African Examination Council exams, what is known as “A1 parallel”.

Despite his poor background, his brilliance had helped pay the way for him to acquire the knowledge and position he currently occupied. His USMLE exams and travel were being sponsored by the NYSC and state government for his meritorious services to health care delivery. “Allah Akbar”, rang out twice again to conclude the final verse of the call to prayer.

Shuaib crouched to perform his ablution. He saw one of the new medical corpers approaching him.

“Sulaimon”, he called out to him. Sulaimon approached him, rubbing sleep away from his eyes.

“Salam aleykun”

“Waleykun Salam”, Sulaimon responded.

“See, I have a cadaver for you guy”, Shuaib announced. Sulaimon’s eyes lit up.

“Ah Shuaib, you are a God sent. May Allah reward you abundantly. Those students have been looking for a cadaver for their practical for almost three months. Where is it? When can we pick it up?”

“It is at the general hospital morgue. The ME is not in town so you can have the body and quickly have those kids do their practical.”
“What is the procedure for release of the body to us”, Sulaimon asked.

“Procedure ke…we will sneak the body out. Just perform your practical and return it before the ME gets back next week. Do you think Bill Gates followed procedure to be the world’s richest”.

“Allah Akbar, Allah Akbar”, rang out again over the speakers. The Imam was ready to start the Subhi prayers.

Bimpe:

Bimpe had made the decision not to go to work the next day. Due to her lazy nature at work, she barely touched a needle. Except for the dark skinned man who had died in Doctor Shuaib’s office. She was reserving all her energy for the outing she had later that night with her latest boy friend, the Chief whose wife had died of cervical cancer while under her care. She was determined to get hooked to this Chief and use it as her passport out of poverty.

That was until she got home.

She had no inkling of the fever before. About the time her shift was to be over, she developed a very nasty headache. Very nasty by headache standards because it felt like she hit her head on a wrecking ball. On arrival home, it had turned into full blown fever. Her body had begun to itch and her eyes were now red.

Her sister got home from work at the bank and met Bimpe all wrapped up in a duvet.

“Sista mi, what’s wrong”, Sumbo asked. “You are shivering like a fish out of water. Where did this fever come from”, Sumbo asked again, touching her palm with Bimpe’s forehead.

“Please quickly go and get me that artesunate medication from the chemist. This fever is about to take my life”, Bimpe answered shivering the words out of her mouth. “Call Chief and tell him I won’t be available for the date”

“Oh, can I go on your behalf then”.

“You must be mad”, Bimpe answered and threw a pillow at the disappearing Sumbo.

Bimpe:

Bimpe woke up and though she felt better, realized that this was no ordinary fever. Anytime she was sick, she always attributed it to being too far from the Lord and paying for sins she had commited or was committing. She decided to go for Mass at St Peter’s church.

“Sumbo, wake up”, she spoke softly waking her sister. “You have to take me to Mass before you leave for work”.

“You and these religious ailments. Which sin is it this time?”

“Sha, let’s go”, Bimpe responded. “Get up and get ready. We don’t need to shower”. She was afraid to show her sister the rash that was growing over her torso.

Sulaimon:

He set the body bag on the lab table and looked at the faces of the fifty plus students in front of him. They were waiting anxiously for him to open the bag and set the cadaver on the table. It was like a birthday scene where children were waiting to pounce on the cake. Not even the very foul smell coming from the bag could deter them.

They were newly inducted second year medical students who had been reading anatomy through text books and never had the opportunity to examine one. He brought out the small plastic bag containing the gloves he had meant to distribute and counted the gloves. He had just eight pairs. He decided to let them do the examination without gloves instead of a couple having and some, not.

Sulaimon opened the bag gingerly and rolled the body onto the table.

The students gasped, covered their noses but still came close to the table. Then the pushing began. In order to get a good view the students at the back were pushing the ones closest to the table.

“Wait, wait”, Sulaimon shouted. “Please, if you can’t get to the front, climb the stools behind you and you will be able to see. Please do not push”

“What kind of cadaver is this Doctor? Are you sure it’s a human being”, enquired the girl closest to Sulaimon. “He must have died of something really horrible with all these sores over his body. Are you sure we can carry out an examination of this cadaver in this state”.

“Dey there dey blow grammar”, Sulaimon responded. “You may not get another cadaver in months. This is your last opportunity to get a close examination before Prof’s quiz next week”

The girl needed no second invitation. The students began to discuss the different parts of the body they had read in books. Those close to the table were responsible for touching and lifting the different parts of the table.

The stench became unbearable. One of the students on the stools threw up his lunch all over the lab.