Ituri, in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo, is a remote province of forests, green hills and gold mines where weak state institutions and decades of armed conflict have displaced nearly 900,000 people.
Then Ebola struck.
The outbreak was declared on May 15 after the virus spread from the mining town of Mongbwalu, where it may have circulated for months.
Photographer Arsène Mpiana and I left Kinshasa, the Congolese capital, and traveled to Bunia, in Ituri province, with some trepidation. There’s no cure for the species of Ebola circulating, and some locals have attacked health workers, suspicious of their motives.
The scale of this crisis is impossible to miss. A man vomited blood and died in the street near our hotel in Bunia, hours after we arrived. People took care not to shake hands, since Ebola is spread through touch. Hospitals there were overwhelmed, and many families lacked running water or space to isolate sick relatives.
Although many of the tensions I’d read about before arriving were muted, they were still noticeable. Mongbwalu, a gold-mining town at the center of the outbreak, sits three hours from Bunia on a road studded with checkpoints. Many people were reluctant to speak, as if the virus were taboo.
But there was no hiding the impact of the virus. The town’s only hospital hummed with ambulances, burial teams and a steady stream of patients.
What struck me most is how hard it is for people to protect themselves. Many share a single room, without running water. Medical workers looked exhausted, and aid workers all agreed this was only the beginning. | 
