VOL.CLXIV No. 56,685 ©2014 The New York Times VOL.CLXIV No ...€¦ · Alvin Dark Dies at 92 Paul...

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By NORIMITSU ONISHI

MONROVIA, Liberia — Daysafter Kaizer Dour died of Ebola atthe edge of a mangrove swamp,strangers carried his rottingcorpse in a dugout canoe for a se-cret burial. Out on an uninhabit-ed, bush-covered island, far fromthe national basketball courtwhere Kaizer won acclaim as oneof Liberia’s most valuable play-ers last season, the strangers ful-filled one of the most importantduties of a Liberian family —

burying the young man.One of the men stood knee-

deep in a shallow grave, shov-eling sand over Kaizer’s 6-foot-2-inch body. The other, havingsteeled himself with swigs of a lo-cal gin called Manpower, gave aspeech to bid Kaizer farewell inthe absence of mourners.

“Your whole entire family, noone is here to represent you,” theman intones, captured in a cell-phone video. “Your mother gavea rose that we should bury withyou to remember her. She triedher best, but she was alone.”

The burial, one of countless un-listed deaths in the deadliest Ebo-la outbreak in history, was ananonymous end for a middle-class young man on the cusp ofcelebrity. A rising star in Libe-ria’s top basketball league, Kaiz-er, 22, had dreamed of making itto the Los Angeles Lakers, thehome of his idol and fellow shoot-ing guard, Kobe Bryant. HisFacebook profile, updated justthree weeks before his death onAug. 9, shows him spinning a bas-ketball, an overhead light beam-ing down on a face bearing a

young man’s self-assuredness.A proper burial surely would

have drawn hundreds of people— teammates, friends, fans andmembers of his large family, forwhom Kaizer was an enduringpoint of pride. But this strange,horrific disease called Ebola, newto this part of Africa, had alreadystarted dismantling his unusuallytight family, bringing fear, angerand ultimately death to the peo-ple who cherished him.

Ebola is a family disease, Libe-rians are reminded continually in

A Family Shattered: Ebola Turns Loving Care Into Deadly Risk

DANIEL BEREHULAK FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES

Lucy Freeman and Jacqueline Wherger in Monrovia, Liberia. Seven members of their extended family have died of Ebola.

Continued on Page A8

By DAVID STREITFELD

Hachette won an importantvictory on Thursday in its battlewith Amazon: the ability to set itsown prices for e-books, which itsees as critical to its survival. Buteven as the publisher and retailerannounced a negotiated peace af-ter sparring since January, hard-ly anyone seemed in the mood forcelebratory fireworks.

The conflict, which played outin increasingly contentious for-ums as the year progressed, leftwounds too deep for that. Ama-zon has been cast as a bully inpublications across the ideologi-cal spectrum, and a large groupof authors is calling for it to be in-vestigated on antitrust grounds.Its sales were hit by the dispute,analysts said.

Hachette, too, revealed its vul-nerability.

Amazon’s supporters publiclyquestioned the need forHachette, the fourth largest pub-lisher, to exist in an era when au-thors can publish themselvesdigitally, an accusation Hachettewas reluctant to respond to.

And even if Amazon got less inthe deal than it originally wanted,it still controls nearly half thebook trade, an unprecedentedlevel for one retailer. And the dis-

Publishing WarIs Over, but FearOf Amazon Isn’t

By MICHAEL S. SCHMIDT

WASHINGTON — An intruderwas able to climb a fence and en-ter the White House in Septem-ber because of a succession of“performance, organizational,technical” and other failures bythe Secret Service, according to adamning review of the incidentby the Department of HomelandSecurity.

The review found that the Se-cret Service’s alarm systems andradios failed to function properly,and that many of the respondingofficers did not see the intruderas he climbed over the fence, de-laying their response.

Omar Gonzalez, the mancharged in the incident, couldhave been stopped by a SecretService officer who was stationedon the North Lawn with an attackdog, the review said. But the offi-cer did not realize that an intrud-er had made it over the fence be-cause he was sitting in his vantalking on his personal cellphone.

The officer did not have his ra-dio earpiece in, and had left thesecond radio he was supposed tohave in his locker. It was only af-ter he saw another officer run-ning toward Mr. Gonzalez that hewas alerted to the security

Review FaultsSecret ServiceAt Many Levels


By PETER BAKERand JULIE HIRSCHFELD DAVIS

WASHINGTON — PresidentObama emerged from last week’smidterm election rejected by vot-ers, hobbled politically anddoomed to a final two years in of-fice suffering from early lame-duck syndrome. That, at least,was the consensus in both par-ties. No one seems to have toldMr. Obama.

In the 10 days since “we gotbeat,” as he put it, by Republicanswho captured the Senate and bol-stered control over the House,Mr. Obama has flexed his mus-cles on immigration, climatechange and the Internet, demon-strating that he still aspires to en-act sweeping policies that couldhelp define his legacy.

The timing of the three differ-ent decisions was to some extenta function of separate policyclocks, not simply a White Housepolitical strategy. Mr. Obama, forexample, had been scheduled totravel to China for a summitmeeting in mid-November, andAmerican officials have been try-ing for most of the year to negoti-ate a climate agreement for himto announce while in Beijing.

Still, even if by happenstance,the back-to-back moves have re-

Obama, DownBut Not Out,Presses Ahead


By ROBIN POGREBIN

Since its adolescence morethan four decades ago, the NewYork Philharmonic’s home atLincoln Center has been knownas Avery Fisher Hall. Now, as theorchestra prepares for a majorrenovation expected to cost morethan $500 million, the Fisher fam-ily has agreed to relinquish thename so the Philharmonic and

Lincoln Center can lure a largedonor with the promise of re-christening the building.

The unusual agreement, an-nounced on Thursday, is a signif-icant turnaround from 12 yearsago, when the family of AveryFisher, the music philanthropistwho gave $10 million in 1973 tosupport the building, threatenedlegal action if the concert hallwas rebuilt or renovated under anew name.

Lincoln Center is essentiallypaying the family $15 million forpermission to drop the name andhas included several other in-ducements, like a promise to fea-ture prominent tributes to Mr.Fisher in the new lobby of theconcert hall.

While the ability to raisemoney through naming opportu-nities has become a staple tool forarts organizations, perhaps no

Goodbye, Avery Fisher. Hello, Somebody Else.


STEPHEN CROWLEY/THE NEW YORK TIMES

After much talk of change, Senator Harry Reid, at lectern, was elected minority leader. Page A13.Democrats Retain Reid, With a Caveat

Continued on Page B6

This article is by Michael D.Shear, Julia Preston and AshleyParker.

WASHINGTON — PresidentObama will ignore angry protestsfrom Republicans and announceas soon as next week a broadoverhaul of the nation’s immigra-tion enforcement system that willprotect up to five million unau-thorized immigrants from thethreat of deportation and providemany of them with work permits,according to administration offi-cials who have direct knowledgeof the plan.

Asserting his authority aspresident to enforce the nation’slaws with discretion, Mr. Obamaintends to order changes that willsignificantly refocus the activi-ties of the government’s 12,000immigration agents. One keypiece of the order, officials said,will allow many parents of chil-dren who are American citizensor legal residents to obtain legalwork documents and no longerworry about being discovered,separated from their families andsent away.

That part of Mr. Obama’s planalone could affect as many as 3.3million people who have been liv-ing in the United States illegallyfor at least five years, accordingto an analysis by the MigrationPolicy Institute, an immigrationresearch organization in Wash-ington. But the White House isalso considering a stricter policythat would limit the benefits topeople who have lived in the

country for at least 10 years, orabout 2.5 million people.

Extending protections to moreundocumented immigrants whocame to the United States as chil-dren, and to their parents, couldaffect an additional one million ormore if they are included in the fi-nal plan that the president an-nounces. White House officialsare also still debating whether toinclude protections for farmworkers who have entered thecountry illegally but have beenemployed for years in the agricul-ture industry, a move that couldaffect hundreds of thousands ofpeople.

Mr. Obama’s actions will alsoexpand opportunities for legalimmigrants who have high-techskills, shift extra security re-sources to the nation’s southernborder, revamp a controversialimmigration enforcement pro-gram called Secure Communities,and provide clearer guidance tothe agencies that enforce immi-gration laws about who should be

MILLIONS MAY STAYAND WORK IN U.S.

IN OBAMA’S PLANOverhaul of Immigration Would Slow

Deportations — G.O.P. Sees Fight

JABIN BOTSFORD/THE NEW YORK TIMES

Immigration advocates at theWhite House last week.


The American Psychological Associa-tion will review its role in the use of tor-ture in Bush-era interrogations of ter-rorism suspects. Psychologists helpeddevelop the C.I.A.’s interrogation tech-niques. PAGE A6

INTERNATIONAL A3-11

Psychologists’ Role in Torture

Charges have been dropped against aDanish intern at a Manhattan preschoolwho was accused of inappropriatelytouching children. PAGE A19

NEW YORK A19-24

Preschool Case Is Dropped

After a FIFA judge cleared the 2018 and2022 World Cup hosts of corruption, thecase’s investigator criticized the judge’ssummary of his findings. PAGE B9

SPORTSFRIDAY B9-16

Fight Over a FIFA Report

Indian women who died after beingsterilized at a government camp mayhave been given tainted medications.The inquiry is focusing on ciprofloxacinand ibuprofen pills. PAGE A4

Tainted Pills Suspected in India

The Pentagon will spend billions onemergency fixes to nuclear weapons in-frastructure, Defense Secretary ChuckHagel is to announce Friday, after stud-ies found “systemic problems.” PAGE A18

NATIONAL A12-18

Nuclear Arsenal Shows Decay

The Museum of Modern Art is featuringElaine Sturtevant’s very close versionsof the art of others, like Roy Lichten-stein. Holland Cotter reviews. PAGE C25

WEEKEND ARTS C1-36

Extreme Copycatting

A Giants shortstop in the 1950s and amanager who won a title with the 1974A’s, he created controversy with re-marks about minority players. PAGE B17

OBITUARIES B17

Alvin Dark Dies at 92

Paul Krugman PAGE A27

EDITORIAL, OP-ED A26-27

Cheaper gasoline is putting $70 billionback in the pockets of Americans, justas a recovery in the United States is buf-feted by slower global growth. PAGE B1

BUSINESS DAY B1-8

More Spending Money

Warren E. Buffett agreed to buy Procter& Gamble’s Duracell in a deal that cutsthe tax bill for both sides. PAGE B1

Buffett to Buy Duracell

Russia plans to reduce its participationin a joint program to secure nuclear ma-terials on its territory, reflecting adownturn in U.S. relations. PAGE A3

Russia Backs Off Nuclear Pact

VOL. CLXIV . . . No. 56,685 © 2014 The New York Times NEW YORK, FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 14, 2014

Late EditionToday, partly sunny, windy, colder,high 43. Tonight, mostly clear, briskand cold, low 32. Tomorrow, mostlysunny skies, but unseasonably cold,high 42. Weather map, Page B15.

$2.50

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MONROVIA, Liberia

DAys after Kaizer Dour died of Ebola at the edge of a mangrove swamp, strang-ers carried his rotting corpse in a dugout

canoe for a secret burial. Out on an uninhabit-ed, bush-covered island, far from the national basketball court where Kaizer won acclaim as one of Liberia’s most valuable players last sea-son, the strangers fulfilled one of the most im-portant duties of a Liberian family — burying the young man.

One of the men stood knee-deep in a shal-low grave, shoveling sand over Kaizer’s 6-foot-2-inch body. The other, having steeled himself with swigs of a local gin called Manpower, gave a speech to bid Kaizer farewell in the ab-sence of mourners.

“your whole entire family, no one is here to represent you,” the man intones, captured in a cellphone video. “your mother gave a rose that we should bury with you to remember her. she tried her best, but she was alone.”

By NORIMITSU ONISHI

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By NORIMITSU ONISHI













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The burial, one of countless unlisted deaths in the deadliest Ebola outbreak in history, was an anonymous end for a middle-class young man on the cusp of celebrity. A rising star in Liberia’s top basketball league, Kaizer, 22, had dreamed of making it to the Los Angeles Lak-ers, the home of his idol and fellow shooting guard, Kobe Bryant. His Facebook profile, up-dated just three weeks before his death on Aug. 9, shows him spinning a basketball, an overhead light beaming down on a face bearing a young man’s self-assuredness.

A proper burial surely would have drawn hundreds of people — teammates, friends, fans and members of his large family, for whom Kaizer was an enduring point of pride. But this strange, horrific disease called Ebola, new to this part of Africa, had already started dis-mantling his unusually tight family, bringing fear, anger and ultimately death to the people who cherished him.

Ebola is a family disease, Liberians are re-minded continually in sunday sermons. The more families pull together to fight the virus, the more they seem to fall apart.

Kaizer’s extensive family had survived Liberia’s 14-year civil war, growing stronger as it united against poverty, rapa-cious rulers and indifferent gov-ernments. so when Kaizer got sick, his mother, Mamie Doryen, did what the Doryens had al-ways done, turning to her family to help with her ailing son.

Kaizer, infected by his father, soon passed the virus to two aunts. In all, seven members from three genera-tions died in quick succession. His mother, the family’s dominant figure, survived. But blamed for the calamity, she went into hiding, a pariah in her family’s hour of greatest need. The fam-ily’s center could not hold.

“Ebola was like a bomb,” one of Kaizer’s uncles said.

This destruction of families is the central tragedy of the epidemic. On a continent with many weak states, the extended family is Af-rica’s most important institution by far. That is especially true in the nations ravaged by the disease — Liberia, sierra Leone and Guinea

— three of Africa’s poorest and most fragile countries. Ebola’s effects on the region, in un-dermining the very institution that has kept its societies together, could be long-term and far-reaching.

Even today, as help increases from the Unit-ed states and other nations, many victims in the region are still being treated within the family, a place of succor — and a font of contagion.

“They were together, a strong family, but this Ebola broke the entire family apart,” said the Rev. James Narmah, a Pentecostal minister who knows Kaizer’s family. “That’s what’s hap-pening right now. Ebola is bringing a lot of divi-sions, a lot of hatred, inside families and inside communities, everywhere.”

A Battle-Tested FamilyKaizer’s maternal grandparents, Joseph

and Martha Doryen, had five sons and five daughters. All survived Liberia’s civil war from 1989 to 2003, a brutal one even by the standards of African wars of that era.

Before the fighting started, when rebels tried to oust the military dictatorship, Joseph Do-ryen worked as a driver at the agriculture ministry and then for a rich Ghanaian businessman. After the businessman fled the war, Joseph Doryen began grow-ing potato greens in his Monro-via neighborhood, Capitol Hill. The children helped, and his wife sold the crop at a local market.

Until Joseph Doryen died three years ago, the old couple could often be seen strolling or

sitting together under the mango tree behind their home. Their 10 children were all “same father, same mother,” a rarity in a large family of that generation.

They were also comparatively fortunate, es-caping the rockets that frequently rained on Cap-itol Hill, destroying houses and killing residents.

Like its American model in Washington, the neighborhood derives its name from the nearby Capitol Building — one of the many ties between the United states and Liberia, a country found-ed by freed American slaves in 1822. But being next to Liberia’s seat of government made the neighborhood a frequent target.

A8 Ø N INTERNATIONALTHE NEW YORK TIMES FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 14, 2014

Sunday sermons. The more families pulltogether to fight the virus, the morethey seem to fall apart.

Kaizer’s extensive family had sur-vived Liberia’s 14-year civil war, grow-ing stronger as it united against pov-erty, rapacious rulers and indifferentgovernments. So when Kaizer got sick,his mother, Mamie Doryen, did what theDoryens had always done, turning toher family to help with her ailing son.

Kaizer, infected by his father, soonpassed the virus to two aunts. In all,seven members from three generationsdied in quick succession. His mother,the family’s dominant figure, survived.But blamed for the calamity, she wentinto hiding, a pariah in her family’s hourof greatest need. The family’s centercould not hold.

“Ebola was like a bomb,” one of Kaiz-er’s uncles said.

This destruction of families is the cen-tral tragedy of the epidemic. On a conti-nent with many weak states, the ex-tended family is Africa’s most impor-tant institution by far. That is especiallytrue in the nations ravaged by the dis-ease — Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guin-ea — three of Africa’s poorest and mostfragile countries. Ebola’s effects on theregion, in undermining the very institu-tion that has kept its societies together,could be long-term and far-reaching.

Even today, as help increases fromthe United States and other nations,many victims in the region are still be-ing treated within the family, a place ofsuccor — and a font of contagion.

“They were together, a strong family,but this Ebola broke the entire familyapart,” said the Rev. James Narmah, aPentecostal minister who knows Kaiz-er’s family. “That’s what’s happeningright now. Ebola is bringing a lot of divi-sions, a lot of hatred, inside families andinside communities, everywhere.”

A Battle-Tested FamilyKaizer’s maternal grandparents, Jo-

seph and Martha Doryen, had five sonsand five daughters. All survived Libe-ria’s civil war from 1989 to 2003, a brutalone even by the standards of Africanwars of that era.

Before the fighting started, whenrebels tried to oust the military dictator-ship, Joseph Doryen worked as a driverat the agriculture ministry and then fora rich Ghanaian businessman. After thebusinessman fled the war, JosephDoryen began growing potato greens inhis Monrovia neighborhood, CapitolHill. The children helped, and his wifesold the crop at a local market.

Until Joseph Doryen died three yearsago, the old couple could often be seenstrolling or sitting together under themango tree behind their home. Their 10children were all “same father, samemother,” a rarity in a large family of thatgeneration.

They were also comparatively fortu-nate, escaping the rockets that fre-quently rained on Capitol Hill, destroy-ing houses and killing residents.

Like its American model in Washing-ton, the neighborhood derives its namefrom the nearby Capitol Building — oneof the many ties between the UnitedStates and Liberia, a country foundedby freed American slaves in 1822. Butbeing next to Liberia’s seat of govern-ment made the neighborhood a frequenttarget.

Not even the war, however, was asbad as Ebola, the family said.

“Even when we were fighting war atthat time, you know the safe place togo,” said Anthony Doryen, 39, the sec-ond-oldest son. “This one, you can’teven know where to go.”

“Ebola is a disease that eliminatesfamilies,” he added. “It makes youafraid because when you get aroundyour family, apparently you get in con-tact with it. It makes you go far awayfrom your family.”

Today, Capitol Hill’s dirt paths snakearound houses with corrugated roofsheld down by heavy rocks. To the east,the Temple of Justice peeks above thepalm trees. The president’s ExecutiveMansion is a quick walk to the south.The Liberian flag outside governmentbuildings — red and white stripes, witha white star in a blue box — can easilybe mistaken for the American flag.

For the Doryens, postwar Liberia ledto better lives. Like most residents, theystill got their water from aging, unsani-tary wells. But because they had prop-erty in Capitol Hill, they were better offthan most, with steady jobs as gas sta-tion attendants, government cafeteriaworkers, cellphone-card salesmen andmarket traders.

Just as they had during wartime, theDoryens pulled together during peace-time. The children built separate housesnear their parents and tore down the

flimsy old family home, pooling theirsavings to build an eight-room concretedwelling. It offered stability, cohesion —and a refuge for an ailing Kaizer.

A Father on Ebola’s Front LineFor most West Africans infected dur-

ing the outbreak, the virus was trans-mitted quietly, through tender acts oflove and kindness, at home where thesick were taken care of, or at a funeralwhere the dead were tended to.

But for Kaizer’s father, Edwin Dour,Ebola came violently on the night ofJune 25 after a gravely ill man — Pa-tient Zero to the Doryen family — wasbrought to the beleaguered govern-ment-run clinic where Kaizer’s fatherwas the chief administrator.

Six of 29 employees at the clinic diedwithin a month of Ebola’s arrival. Kaiz-er’s father, known for never turningaway patients, became infected, too,passing the virus to his son in a patternseen across the city. The sick broughtEbola to defenseless health centers thatin turn often helped spread the virus.

Despite the money that the UnitedStates and other governments had fun-neled into Liberia’s health care systemin recent years, health centers quicklycrumpled. The 16-year-old girl who hadbrought the disease from Sierra Leoneto Monrovia died in the state-run Re-demption Hospital on May 25. A doctorand five nurses there, working withoutgloves or the basics of infection control,died in rapid succession.

Though Redemption often did nothave running water, it was one of thebiggest medical centers in Liberia. Soafter it was closed in a panic in June, thesick scattered to nearby clinics, includ-ing the one managed by Kaizer’s father.They were even less prepared to dealwith Ebola’s onslaught.

On June 25, a yellow taxi dropped offa young man in front of the clinic’s gate.The patient, a church caretaker, had ap-parently become infected when an oldwoman with Ebola was brought in forprayers. By the time the caretakershowed up at Kaizer’s father’s clinic, hewas exhibiting the full-blown symptomsof late-stage Ebola: vomiting, diarrheaand — a peculiar sign of Ebola — uncon-trollable hiccups.

Around 10 p.m., the sick man becameviolent and confused. “He was fighting— unstable — he was just going up anddown, coming down on the bed, turningthis way, that way,” said the physicianassistant on duty, Moses Safa.

The guard held the man down. “Thenhe gave up the ghost,” Mr. Safa said.

The guard himself would soon die ofEbola, though not before transmitting itto Kaizer’s father. The clinic’s medicalstaff, terrified by the deaths at the statehospital, offered the ailing guard mini-mal care. Kaizer’s father was not au-thorized to provide care, but he volun-teered to put the guard on an intra-venous drip — and was infected in theprocess.

Kaizer’s father tested positive forEbola, but the government did not tellhis family. In theory, workers are sup-posed to inform families of test results;in practice, few tests have been carriedout and the results rarely provided —another systematic failure that has con-tributed to Ebola’s spread.

Kaizer’s father, who was in hismid-40s, died July 23. Because his par-ents had separated years before, Kaizerhelped tend to his dying father. But ashas been the case for thousands whohave died during this epidemic, the nat-ural inclination to care for a loved onewould prove his undoing.

On Aug. 9, Kaizer’s father was laid torest at Good Shepherd Funeral Home ina closed coffin. Though the funeral hallcould hold 100 people, only about 20came, mostly workers from the clinicand friends from the father’s days as asoldier in the Liberian Army. No familymember came.

Shared Denial and DeathOverwhelmed by Kaizer’s illness, Ma-

mie Doryen had brought him by taxi toher family in Capitol Hill. As day broke,the neighbors learned that an ailingKaizer had been carried in overnight.

Fear spread quickly. The neighbors,who knew that Kaizer’s father had died,lived in close quarters and shared a wellwith the Doryens.

It was early August, and the govern-ment, reeling from the deaths at Re-demption and other health facilities,was paralyzed. Many Liberians re-mained deeply skeptical of Ebola’s veryexistence, suspicious of governmentcorruption. The government slogan —“Ebola Is Real,” written on billboardsand posters — merely reinforced thepopular belief that it was not.

Still, enough deaths had occurred inthe capital that, for many, any illnessimmediately caused suspicion of Ebola.

“We, who had family around there,were getting afraid,” said Teddy Dowee,21, a friend of Kaizer’s and the Doryenclan. “I was afraid.”

It is perhaps a peculiarity of the psy-chological response to Ebola that peopleoutside an affected family, like theDoryens’ neighbors, were often betterable to grasp the reality around them.

Those inside the family oftenwrapped themselves in layers of denial,as impermeable as the protective suitsworn by health care workers. They de-nied Ebola’s presence in the family toavoid being ostracized — and to con-vince themselves that they could tend

to a sick loved one.They often had no choice: Through-

out the Ebola hot zone, the chronic lackof treatment beds for months forcedfamilies to care for the sick at home.

And so Mamie denied that Ebola hadkilled her former husband, Edwin Dour,and sickened Kaizer. Instead, they hadboth been poisoned, she insisted, tellingher family of a mysterious woman inblack terrorizing Kaizer in his sleep.

Some of those closest to Mamie ac-cepted the poisoning story, a wide-spread belief in Liberia. They had rea-son to put faith in her. She was the fam-ily anchor, a woman of about 40 whosereal name was Yah but was alwayscalled Mamie because she acted like amother to her younger siblings.

So the family allowed Kaizer to stay,sharing one room with three familymembers — all of whom would die.

The neighbors demanded that theDoryens take Kaizer away, threateningto call the authorities. But the poisoningstory gave the psychological room forhis relatives — caught between theirlove for him and the fear of Ebola — totake care of him.

One morning, Tina Doryen, an aunttending to Kaizer, took a bath using abucket in which he had previously vom-ited. “If that Ebola want to kill me, let itkill me,” she said, Mr. Dowee recalled.

With Kaizer’s condition worsening,the Doryens finally took him outside —to a nearby church that was holding atwo-week revival.

It was already dark and the reverend,Mr. Narmah, was wrapping up a ser-mon on hope when the double doors ofthe church opened suddenly. Kaizerstaggered in, his large frame supportedon either side by his two favorite aunts

— Tina, 20, and Edwina, 24. With Ebolain mind, the reverend instructed theaunts, both members of his church, tostay at the back with Kaizer.

“He had no strength,” Mr. Narmahsaid. “He couldn’t talk.”

The congregation gathered aroundKaizer for a prayer. Mr. Narmah pouredanointing oil on Kaizer’s head. He toldthe members to stretch their arms to-ward Kaizer but to not touch him.

Kaizer’s family took no such precau-tions. To Martha Doryen, 29, anotheraunt, Kaizer was the kid nephew whohad always asked her for a treat orpocket money. This year, seeing Kaizerplay basketball for the first time — andplay so well that a fan handed him $50after the game — Martha realized withpride that he was “no small player.”

“They were afraid of Ebola,” Marthasaid of the church members. “It was mysister’s only son. How can I be afraid? Ican’t lie. I touched him.”

The Doryens’ neighbors stepped updemands that Kaizer leave Capitol Hillas soon as possible. The Doryens acqui-esced, telling Mamie to take her son.

‘There Was No Family’Kaizer died the next morning in his

mother’s home next to the swamp. Noone from the family, except his grand-mother, went there to help.

“We were angry and also afraid,” saidKaizer’s uncle, Abraham Keita.

Mamie continued to insist that Kaizerdid not have Ebola. Perhaps because ofher assurances, five church membersjoined around her son’s deathbed. AsKaizer lay dying, he said he saw thewoman in black who had been beckon-ing to him in his troubled dreams. He

could no longer hide from her, she toldhim, as those gathered around himprayed loudly in tongues.

Abruptly, Kaizer reached for his neck.“He said he saw the woman, the spir-

it, standing over him, choking him,” saidRose Mombo, a church member there.“He was fighting.”

Kaizer, his eyes wide open, burst intotears, spat out something and died.

It happened just as his own fatherwas being laid to rest. During the fu-neral service for Kaizer’s father, thescattered attendees learned that Kaizerhad died as well.

The government was still incapable ofresponding in the most basic ways, in-cluding collecting the highly infectiousbodies of the Ebola dead. So two daysafter Kaizer’s death, the stench of hiscorpse seeping out toward her neigh-bors, his mother asked one of them, Je-rome Mombo, to bury her son.

Mr. Mombo took precautions againstEbola, adding $15 of his own money tothe $55 in American currency Kaizer’smother had given him. He paid fisher-men $60 and spent the rest on chlorine,a spray gun, six empty rice bags to sewtogether as a burial shroud and bottlesof Manpower.

The men drank the gin before en-tering the room, then again inside.

“Otherwise, I couldn’t do it,” said Mr.Mombo, who later delivered the brieffarewell for Kaizer. “I had to drinksomething to give me more power.”

Heavy rain allowed the fishermen topaddle all the way to a flooded area be-hind the home of Kaizer’s mother. TonyKaba, 22, a basketball player and friendof Kaizer’s, stood at a distance andwatched the men take the body away.

“There was no family,” he said.It took half an hour down the Mes-

urado River to reach Kpoto Island, oneof many uninhabited islands up a chan-nel called Creek No. 2. With soft, sandysoil, Kpoto has long been used by thepoor to bury their dead. Now, freshlydug graves are obvious in the thickbush.

Many relatives of Ebola victims arebelieved to have carried out secret buri-als across the region because bodies aresimply not picked up in time, or the fam-ilies do not want to surrender relativesfor mass incinerations. Such burials arebelieved to contribute to a significantundercount of the Ebola dead in Liberia,Sierra Leone and Guinea.

For Kaizer’s team, the Timberwolves,his death upturned the future. It hadplanned to build the franchise aroundKaizer, who seemed destined to becomethe top player in the Liberia BasketballFederation, said Jairus Harris, theteam’s vice president.

Kaizer was fast, shot well and fear-lessly challenged any opponent. Overthe years, two Liberians had come closeto playing in the National BasketballAssociation in the United States, asource of pride for Liberian basketball.

“Kaizer would have made it in theN.B.A.,” Mr. Harris said. “I’m sure.”

Instead, his mother returned alone toCapitol Hill, seeking the comfort thatthe Doryens had always provided oneanother. But things were different thistime. The consequences of the family’srallying around Kaizer were quickly be-coming clear.

Kaizer’s two favorite aunts, the ones

A Family Shattered: Loving Care TurnsInto a Deadly Risk

JosephDoryenDied in 2011

Mamie Doryen,Around 40

LesterMorris,27

MarkJerry,27

Edwin Dour contracted Ebola at his clinic from a guard who got it from a patient who checked in June 25. Mr. Dour passed the virus on to his son, Kaizer.

Mr. Morris, Tina’s estranged husband and Esther’s father, did not visit Tina and Esther, fearing infection.

After Kaizer’s mother took him to her family’s home, Kaizer’s aunts Tina and Edwina and his grandmother Martha also contracted the disease.

Mr. Jerry is the only member of the family to have contracted Ebola and survived.

FIRST CASE

The Spread In the Family

THE NEW YORK TIMES

Martha Doryen, 60sDied Aug. 31

Edwin Dour, mid-40sDied July 23

Kaizer Dour, 22Died Aug. 9

Tina Doryen, 20Died Aug. 27

Esther, 5Died Sept. 7

Edwina Doryen, 24Died Aug. 27

Princess, 9Died Sept. 15

From Page A1

Mark Jerry, top, and his daughter Princess contractedEbola. Mr. Jerry is the only person in the Doryen familyto have gotten the virus and survived. His wife, Edwina

Doryen, middle, was taken by a burial team. Lester Mor-ris, second from right above, mourning the loss of his

daughter, Esther, at right a week before dying.

Clair MacDougall contributed reporting. Kaizer Dour, 22, was a prom-ising basketball player.

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Not even the war, however, was as bad as Ebola, the family said.

“Even when we were fighting war at that time, you know the safe place to go,” said An-thony Doryen, 39, the second-oldest son. “This one, you can’t even know where to go.”

“Ebola is a disease that eliminates fami-lies,” he added. “It makes you afraid because when you get around your family, apparently you get in contact with it. It makes you go far away from your family.”

Today, Capitol Hill’s dirt paths snake around houses with corrugated roofs held down by heavy rocks. To the east, the Temple of Justice peeks above the palm trees. The president’s Executive Mansion is a quick walk to the south. The Liberian flag outside govern-ment buildings — red and white stripes, with a white star in a blue box — can easily be mis-taken for the American flag.

For the Doryens, postwar Liberia led to better lives. Like most residents, they still got their water from aging, unsanitary wells. But because they had property in Capitol Hill, they were better off than most, with steady jobs as gas station attendants, government cafeteria workers, cellphone-card salesmen and market traders.

Just as they had during wartime, the Do-ryens pulled together during peacetime. The children built separate houses near their par-ents and tore down the flimsy old family home, pooling their savings to build an eight-room concrete dwelling. It offered stability, cohesion — and a refuge for an ailing Kaizer.

A Father on Ebola’s Front LineFor most West Africans infected during

the outbreak, the virus was transmitted quiet-ly, through tender acts of love and kindness, at home where the sick were taken care of, or at a funeral where the dead were tended to.

But for Kaizer’s father, Edwin Dour, Ebola came violently on the night of June 25 after a gravely ill man — Patient Zero to the Doryen family — was brought to the beleaguered gov-ernment-run clinic where Kaizer’s father was the chief administrator.

six of 29 employees at the clinic died with-in a month of Ebola’s arrival. Kaizer’s father, known for never turning away patients, became infected, too, passing the virus to his son in a

pattern seen across the city. The sick brought Ebola to defenseless health centers that in turn often helped spread the virus.

Despite the money that the United states and other governments had funneled into Libe-ria’s health care system in recent years, health centers quickly crumpled. The 16-year-old girl who had brought the disease from sierra Leone to Monrovia died in the state-run Redemption Hospital on May 25. A doctor and five nurses there, working without gloves or the basics of infection control, died in rapid succession.

Though Redemption often did not have running water, it was one of the biggest medi-cal centers in Liberia. so after it was closed in a panic in June, the sick scattered to nearby clin-ics, including the one managed by Kaizer’s fa-ther. They were even less prepared to deal with Ebola’s onslaught.

On June 25, a yellow taxi dropped off a young man in front of the clinic’s gate. The pa-tient, a church caretaker, had apparently be-come infected when an old woman with Ebola was brought in for prayers. By the time the caretaker showed up at Kaizer’s father’s clinic, he was exhibiting the full-blown symptoms of late-stage Ebola: vomiting, diarrhea and — a peculiar sign of Ebola — uncontrollable hiccups.

Around 10 p.m., the sick man became vio-lent and confused. “He was fighting — unstable — he was just going up and down, coming down on the bed, turning this way, that way,” said the physician assistant on duty, Moses safa.

The guard held the man down. “Then he gave up the ghost,” Mr. safa said.

The guard himself would soon die of Ebola, though not before transmitting it to Kaizer’s fa-ther. The clinic’s medical staff, terrified by the deaths at the state hospital, offered the ailing guard minimal care. Kaizer’s father was not au-thorized to provide care, but he volunteered to put the guard on an intravenous drip — and was infected in the process.

Kaizer’s father tested positive for Ebola, but the government did not tell his family. In theory, workers are supposed to inform fami-lies of test results; in practice, few tests have been carried out and the results rarely provid-ed — another systematic failure that has con-tributed to Ebola’s spread.

Kaizer’s father, who was in his mid-40s, died July 23. Because his parents had sepa-

rated years before, Kaizer helped tend to his dying father. But as has been the case for thou-sands who have died during this epidemic, the natural inclination to care for a loved one would prove his undoing.

On Aug. 9, Kaizer’s father was laid to rest at Good shepherd Funeral Home in a closed coffin. Though the funeral hall could hold 100 people, only about 20 came, mostly workers from the clinic and friends from the father’s days as a soldier in the Liberian Army. No family member came.

Shared Denial and DeathOverwhelmed by Kaizer’s illness, Mamie

Doryen had brought him by taxi to her fam-ily in Capitol Hill. As day broke, the neighbors learned that an ailing Kaizer had been carried in overnight.

Fear spread quickly. The neighbors, who knew that Kaizer’s father had died, lived in close quarters and shared a well with the Doryens.

It was early August, and the government, reeling from the deaths at Redemption and oth-

er health facilities, was paralyzed. Many Liberi-ans remained deeply skeptical of Ebola’s very existence, suspicious of government corrup-tion. The government slogan — “Ebola Is Real,” written on billboards and posters — merely re-inforced the popular belief that it was not.

still, enough deaths had occurred in the capital that, for many, any illness immediately caused suspicion of Ebola.

“We, who had family around there, were getting afraid,” said Teddy Dowee, 21, a friend of Kaizer’s and the Doryen clan. “I was afraid.”

It is perhaps a peculiarity of the psycho-logical response to Ebola that people outside an affected family, like the Doryens’ neigh-bors, were often better able to grasp the real-ity around them.

Those inside the family often wrapped themselves in layers of denial, as imperme-able as the protective suits worn by health care workers. They denied Ebola’s presence in the family to avoid being ostracized — and to convince themselves that they could tend to a sick loved one.



















































































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Ø N A9INTERNATIONALTHE NEW YORK TIMES FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 14, 2014

who had held him up in church, died onthe same day, Aug. 27, less than threeweeks after he did. Kaizer’s grandmoth-er and a cousin were visibly sick, too.Some of Kaizer’s uncles had fled CapitolHill. The remaining Doryens gatheredin a daze.

“It was a scene to behold,” said theRev. Alvin Attah, who has known thefamily for decades. At the pastor’s urg-ing, Kaizer’s grandmother boarded anambulance to a treatment center.

Blamed for bringing Ebola to CapitolHill, Kaizer’s mother could not return toher family home. She wandered towardher church half a mile away andknocked on the homes of congregationmembers, searching for a place tospend the night.

“But they refused to let her in,” saidFelicia Koneh, a family friend. “Every-body was afraid. No one knows whereshe went after that.”

“It’s pathetic, you know, to see a fam-ily just fall apart,” she said.

Distance and GuiltEbola is an insidious disease. It turns

compassion into a danger. It turns sur-vival into a haunting source of guilt.

Kaizer’s cousin, Esther, 5, the daugh-ter of his beloved Aunt Tina, was clearlysick. On the day Tina died, Esther’s fa-ther faced the anguish of going to seehis ailing daughter in Capitol Hill — butbeing too afraid to get close enough tocomfort her.

“She tried to get to me, but I stood ata distance,” said her father, Lester Mor-ris, 27, who had separated from Tinathis year. “I told her to go to her AuntieJulie.”

The guilt and pain of trying to protecthimself was wrapped in a tight knot in-side him, a feeling shared by many oth-er survivors.

“To see a loved one separated fromyou, you talk on the telephone and say,‘I’m dying,’ and you cannot go — it’smore painful than the war,” said Les-ter’s father, Joseph Morris.

It is a comparison heard often, onethat may seem extreme. The war killedperhaps a quarter-million Liberians,Ebola only 2,800 officially in this coun-try so far. The war’s destruction of Mon-rovia can still be seen in its brokenroads, schools and buildings. Ebola hasleft no physical scar.

But to many Liberians, the pain ofEbola is greater. Often, the only sureway to survive is to abandon one’s fam-ily.

Esther’s father and uncle begged thegovernment for help. The family re-peatedly called its Ebola hotline to gether out of Capitol Hill, but received onlyempty promises.

It was late August, and the govern-ment was panicking. It had deployedsoldiers to quarantine Monrovia’s larg-est slum, setting off deadly riots. Thecost of paralysis by the internationalcommunity was continuing to mount.

The Doryens worried that Estherwould infect them, as Kaizer had. OnAug. 31, one of the remaining aunts, Ju-lie Doryen, guided the girl with a stickto the main road outside Capitol Hill.Esther collapsed on the sidewalk.

A large, angry crowd watched fromacross the street, drawing the policeand, finally, an ambulance. Esther, whohad appeared dead, stirred to life. Her

father, Lester, arrived minutes after shewas put inside the ambulance.

She was taken to an Ebola treatmentcenter. Her father and uncle visited andthought she was doing better.

Before visiting again, Lester lookedwistfully at a Christmas card from lastyear. In it, wearing a red dress with abig white ribbon, Esther stands againstan idealized American backdrop of a co-lonial house, a green lawn and a whitepicket fence.

Overnight, her uncle received a callfrom a friend inside the center. Estherhad died. He did not tell Lester. On thetaxi ride there, Lester began to suspecthis brother was hiding something. Bythe time they arrived in front of the cen-ter at 10:30 a.m., Lester was yelling athis brother. Lester paced back andforth, his eyes reddening.

“He’s weeping,” said a man nearby.“Maybe somebody dying?” said an-

other.“Brother, you gotta be a man,” a taxi

driver said. “Be a man, yeah? Don’t becrying.”

Lester did not cry inside the centerwhen told about his daughter’s death.He said nothing. His brother asked forthe body for a proper funeral, or at leasta photograph. Neither was possible.

The brothers went to Capitol Hill toinform the Doryens. The remainingfamily gathered outside. MarthaDoryen, Kaizer’s aunt, started wailing,throwing her hands in the air. Therewere no tears, but the sound echoedthroughout Capitol Hill.

With no body to bury, Lester couldnot meet his traditional duties. Sudden-ly, he started crying, uncontrollably,tears streaming down his face. Thewomen, and his brother, looked away.

Coming to GripsWithin hours of the death of Kaizer’s

Aunt Tina, the other aunt who had heldhim up in church, Edwina Doryen, died

as well. Two weeks later, her husband,Mark Jerry, sat slumped outside anEbola treatment center. Their daughterPrincess sat to his right, resting herforehead against the wall. Both were tooweak even to drink water.

For days, Mark had maintained hisdenials about the family illnesses. Hewas sick, too, but told friends he had ty-phoid and switched off his cellphone. Af-ter Princess fell ill, things changed.

“I’m convinced it was Ebola,” Marksaid.

It was mid-September, and Liberiastood on a precipice. Monrovia had be-come the focal point of the outbreak inWest Africa. Infections were doublingevery two to three weeks.

Mark and Princess were lucky to re-ceive treatment at all. But while Mark,27, improved, Princess, 9, did not. Shedied within days.

After being discharged with a letterthat he was “no longer infectious,” Markbegan working for Doctors WithoutBorders. Once a denier of Ebola, he be-came an evangelist.

Mark, a money changer, and Kaizer’sAunt Edwina, a restaurant worker, hadspent years saving $900 to build theirhome, a simple structure steps awayfrom the Doryen house. He had suspect-ed that Kaizer had Ebola. The uneasefelt by the Doryens’ neighbors in Capi-tol Hill had unsettled him.

But he had blocked out those doubtswhen Edwina got sick. What else couldhe do but take care of her?

“Edwina and I were like one person,”he said. “I would bathe her. She was toi-leting all day. I would clean her, andthen after two, three minutes, she wouldtoilet. I would clean her again.”

He took her to a local clinic, wherethey were told that she had a chest cold.Finally, with Edwina unable to walk andbleeding from the mouth, Mark carriedher on his back and put her in a taxi tothe hospital. Turned away for lack ofbeds, she was taken to an Ebola holding

center. She died there the next day, on abrown mattress on a filthy floor, sur-rounded by body fluids.

A rage built within him. All the suf-fering — all the pointless deaths in thefamily — stemmed from a betrayal, hesaid: Mamie’s refusal to admit whatwas wrong with Kaizer.

She had at least suspected the truth,Mark said. Once Edwina became symp-tomatic, Kaizer’s mother, the progenitorof the poisoning narrative, offered asuspicious warning.

“She said, ‘Mark, the way you’re tak-ing care of Edwina, you got to get chlo-rine water on the side, and when youfinish taking care of her, you wash yourhands,’” he recalled.

“She acted very bad, my sister-in-law; she knew that her son had the vi-rus and she never educated us,” Marksaid. “To me, she was wicked. I don’tcall that ignorance. I call that wick-edness.”

Adrift in AngerThe disappearance of Kaizer’s moth-

er quickly set the Doryens adrift, leav-ing them to endure one loss after an-other without their central figure.

Four of Kaizer’s aunts and cousinsdied in a month. Kaizer’s grandmotherdied, too, on Aug. 31. But the Doryensdid not even find out about her death fornearly two weeks. Mamie, as the headof the family, gave her cellphone as acontact number when the ambulancetook away the grandmother. When Ma-mie disappeared, health officials wereunable to contact the Doryens.

Mamie’s absence stirred fierce dis-agreement, another source of divisionin the family. Some saw it as proof of herdeception. Others, like her brother, An-thony Doryen, imagined her grief.

“Everybody is angry with her,” hesaid. But “she herself lose her mother,she lose her son, she lose two sisters.”

As word of the family deaths in Capi-

tol Hill spread to Mamie’s neighborsnear the swamp, they grew alarmed.Mr. Mombo, who buried Kaizer, reachedMamie by phone after many attempts.

“Why you running from place toplace?” Mr. Mombo asked her. “Butsince then, her phone is switched off.”

Mamie insisted in a brief phone in-terview that Kaizer was poisoned anddied after the woman in black told himhe was “finished.”

“Everybody is carrying my namearound,” Mamie said. “I didn’t do any-thing.”

“Nobody should blame me,” she add-ed. “The devil is very busy. The CapitolHill people saying I’m the one carryingEbola there. All my family dying.”

Forgiveness and HopeBy late September, after the death of

Kaizer and six of his close relatives, thesickness seemed at bay. Twenty-threedays had passed since the last sick fam-ily member was taken out of CapitolHill, two days beyond Ebola’s maxi-mum incubation period.

“It’s good to stay alive,” said Abra-ham Keita, Kaizer’s uncle.

He smiled, stretched and brought outa DVD, “Monrovia on Fire,” a local mar-tial arts film in which he had a support-ing role. He hoped for a bigger part in asequel. Mr. Keita, a furniture maker andtaekwondo master, was planning for thefuture.

One of the Doryen brothers had re-turned to Capitol Hill, though he stillkept his wife and children away. Mr.Keita hoped the other Doryens wouldfollow, including Mamie.

“Before, yes, I was angry,” he said.“Everybody was angry with her.” Helaughed. “Now I can forgive her. That’swhat God says.”

“Maybe after one month, two months,she will come back, because we are thesame family.”

In Liberia, too, the mood has begun toshift. New Ebola cases have droppedsignificantly, leading some internationaland local health officials to say they aremaking headway against the disease.On Thursday, President Ellen JohnsonSirleaf lifted the state of emergency im-posed on the country, saying “we can allbe proud of the progress.”

Weeks earlier, Martha Doryen, Kaiz-er’s aunt, stood outside her house. Acellphone number and “Yah” — Ma-mie’s real name — were scribbled onthe front wall with charcoal.

Mamie’s new cellphone number?Instead, Martha looked at her 13-

year-old daughter, who had just cele-brated receiving her first cellphone bywriting the number on the house. Hername is also Yah. Thirteen years ago,Martha asked her big sister, Mamie, toname her firstborn. Mamie named thegirl after herself, Yah, a new genera-tion’s hour come round at last.

Then, almost as an afterthought, Mar-tha mentioned that Mamie had calledthat morning, the first time since shewas forced from Capitol Hill a monthearlier. Martha was sitting on her porchmaking dry rice with fish. An unknownnumber had flashed on her cellphone.

“She says she’s fine,” Martha said.“She’s just telling us to wash our hands,stay away from people and be with our-selves. Because herself, she is O.K., tak-ing the same advice she gave us.”


Joe Doryen with his family in the Capitol Hill community, where the Doryens thrived before Ebola hit.

PHOTOGRAPHS BY DANIEL BEREHULAK FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES

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They often had no choice: Throughout the Ebola hot zone, the chronic lack of treatment beds for months forced families to care for the sick at home.

And so Mamie denied that Ebola had killed her former husband, Edwin Dour, and sickened Kaizer. Instead, they had both been poisoned, she insisted, telling her family of a mysterious woman in black terrorizing Kaizer in his sleep.

some of those closest to Mamie accepted the poisoning story, a widespread belief in Liberia. They had reason to put faith in her. she was the family anchor, a woman of about 40 whose real name was yah but was always called Mamie because she acted like a mother to her younger siblings.

so the family allowed Kaizer to stay, shar-ing one room with three family members — all of whom would die.

The neighbors demanded that the Dory-ens take Kaizer away, threatening to call the authorities. But the poisoning story gave the psychological room for his relatives — caught between their love for him and the fear of Ebo-la — to take care of him.

One morning, Tina Doryen, an aunt tend-ing to Kaizer, took a bath using a bucket in which he had previously vomited. “If that Eb-ola want to kill me, let it kill me,” she said, Mr. Dowee recalled.

With Kaizer’s condition worsening, the Do-ryens finally took him outside — to a nearby church that was holding a two-week revival.

It was already dark and the reverend, Mr. Narmah, was wrapping up a sermon on hope when the double doors of the church opened suddenly. Kaizer staggered in, his large frame supported on either side by his two favorite aunts — Tina, 20, and Edwina, 24. With Ebola in mind, the reverend instructed the aunts, both members of his church, to stay at the back with Kaizer.

“He had no strength,” Mr. Narmah said. “He couldn’t talk.”

The congregation gathered around Kaizer for a prayer. Mr. Narmah poured anointing oil on Kaizer’s head. He told the members to stretch their arms toward Kaizer but to not touch him.

Kaizer’s family took no such precautions. To Martha Doryen, 29, another aunt, Kaizer was the kid nephew who had always asked her for a treat or pocket money. This year, seeing Kaizer

play basketball for the first time — and play so well that a fan handed him $50 after the game — Martha realized with pride that he was “no small player.”

“They were afraid of Ebola,” Martha said of the church members. “It was my sister’s only son. How can I be afraid? I can’t lie. I touched him.”

The Doryens’ neighbors stepped up de-mands that Kaizer leave Capitol Hill as soon as possible. The Doryens acquiesced, telling Ma-mie to take her son.

‘There Was No Family’Kaizer died the next morning in his moth-

er’s home next to the swamp. No one from the family, except his grandmother, went there to help.

“We were angry and also afraid,” said Kai-zer’s uncle, Abraham Keita.

Mamie continued to insist that Kaizer did not have Ebola. Perhaps because of her assur-ances, five church members joined around her son’s deathbed. As Kaizer lay dying, he said he saw the woman in black who had been beck-oning to him in his troubled dreams. He could no longer hide from her, she told him, as those gathered around him prayed loudly in tongues.

Abruptly, Kaizer reached for his neck.“He said he saw the woman, the spirit, stand-

ing over him, choking him,” said Rose Mombo, a church member there. “He was fighting.”

Kaizer, his eyes wide open, burst into tears, spat out something and died.

It happened just as his own father was be-ing laid to rest. During the funeral service for Kaizer’s father, the scattered attendees learned that Kaizer had died as well.

The government was still incapable of re-sponding in the most basic ways, including collecting the highly infectious bodies of the Ebola dead. so two days after Kaizer’s death, the stench of his corpse seeping out toward her neighbors, his mother asked one of them, Je-rome Mombo, to bury her son.

Mr. Mombo took precautions against Eb-ola, adding $15 of his own money to the $55 in American currency Kaizer’s mother had given him. He paid fishermen $60 and spent the rest on chlorine, a spray gun, six empty rice bags to sew together as a burial shroud and bottles of Manpower.

The men drank the gin before entering the room, then again inside.

“Otherwise, I couldn’t do it,” said Mr. Mom-bo, who later delivered the brief farewell for Kaizer. “I had to drink something to give me more power.”

Heavy rain allowed the fishermen to paddle all the way to a flooded area behind the home of Kaizer’s mother. Tony Kaba, 22, a basketball player and friend of Kaizer’s, stood at a distance and watched the men take the body away.

“There was no family,” he said.It took half an hour down the Mesurado

River to reach Kpoto Island, one of many unin-habited islands up a channel called Creek No. 2. With soft, sandy soil, Kpoto has long been used by the poor to bury their dead. Now, freshly dug graves are obvious in the thick bush.

Many relatives of Ebola victims are be-lieved to have carried out secret burials across

the region because bodies are simply not picked up in time, or the families do not want to surren-der relatives for mass incinerations. such buri-als are believed to contribute to a significant undercount of the Ebola dead in Liberia, sierra Leone and Guinea.

For Kaizer’s team, the Timberwolves, his death upturned the future. It had planned to build the franchise around Kaizer, who seemed destined to become the top player in the Liberia Basketball Federation, said Jairus Harris, the team’s vice president.

Kaizer was fast, shot well and fearlessly challenged any opponent. Over the years, two Liberians had come close to playing in the National Basketball Association in the United states, a source of pride for Liberian basketball.

“Kaizer would have made it in the N.B.A.,” Mr. Harris said. “I’m sure.”



















































































LesterMorris,27

MarkJerry,27





FIRST CASE


THE NEW YORK TIMES








From Page A1





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Instead, his mother returned alone to Cap-itol Hill, seeking the comfort that the Doryens had always provided one another. But things were different this time. The consequences of the family’s rallying around Kaizer were quickly becoming clear.

Kaizer’s two favorite aunts, the ones who had held him up in church, died on the same day, Aug. 27, less than three weeks after he did. Kaizer’s grandmother and a cousin were visibly sick, too. some of Kaizer’s uncles had fled Capitol Hill. The remaining Doryens gath-ered in a daze.

“It was a scene to behold,” said the Rev. Al-vin Attah, who has known the family for decades. At the pastor’s urging, Kaizer’s grandmother boarded an ambulance to a treatment center.

Blamed for bringing Ebola to Capitol Hill, Kaizer’s mother could not return to her family home. she wandered toward her church half a mile away and knocked on the homes of con-gregation members, searching for a place to spend the night.

“But they refused to let her in,” said Felicia Koneh, a family friend. “Everybody was afraid. No one knows where she went after that.”

“It’s pathetic, you know, to see a family just fall apart,” she said.

Distance and GuiltEbola is an insidious disease. It turns com-

passion into a danger. It turns survival into a haunting source of guilt.

Kaizer’s cousin, Esther, 5, the daughter of his beloved Aunt Tina, was clearly sick. On the day Tina died, Esther’s father faced the anguish of going to see his ailing daughter in Capitol Hill — but being too afraid to get close enough to comfort her.

“she tried to get to me, but I stood at a dis-tance,” said her father, Lester Morris, 27, who had separated from Tina this year. “I told her to go to her Auntie Julie.”

The guilt and pain of trying to protect him-self was wrapped in a tight knot inside him, a feeling shared by many other survivors.

“To see a loved one separated from you, you talk on the telephone and say, ‘I’m dying,’ and you cannot go — it’s more painful than the war,” said Lester’s father, Joseph Morris.

It is a comparison heard often, one that may seem extreme. The war killed perhaps

a quarter-million Liberians, Ebola only 2,800 officially in this country so far. The war’s de-struction of Monrovia can still be seen in its broken roads, schools and buildings. Ebola has left no physical scar.

But to many Liberians, the pain of Ebola is greater. Often, the only sure way to survive is to abandon one’s family.

Esther’s father and uncle begged the gov-ernment for help. The family repeatedly called its Ebola hotline to get her out of Capitol Hill, but received only empty promises.

It was late August, and the government was panicking. It had deployed soldiers to quaran-tine Monrovia’s largest slum, setting off deadly riots. The cost of paralysis by the international community was continuing to mount.

The Doryens worried that Esther would infect them, as Kaizer had. On Aug. 31, one of the remaining aunts, Julie Doryen, guided the girl with a stick to the main road outside Capitol Hill. Esther collapsed on the sidewalk.

A large, angry crowd watched from across the street, drawing the police and, finally, an ambulance. Esther, who had appeared dead, stirred to life. Her father, Lester, arrived min-utes after she was put inside the ambulance.

she was taken to an Ebola treatment cen-ter. Her father and uncle visited and thought she was doing better.

Before visiting again, Lester looked wist-fully at a Christmas card from last year. In it, wearing a red dress with a big white ribbon, Esther stands against an idealized American backdrop of a colonial house, a green lawn and a white picket fence.

Overnight, her uncle received a call from a friend inside the center. Esther had died. He did not tell Lester. On the taxi ride there, Les-ter began to suspect his brother was hiding something. By the time they arrived in front of the center at 10:30 a.m., Lester was yelling at his brother. Lester paced back and forth, his eyes reddening.

“He’s weeping,” said a man nearby.“Maybe somebody dying?” said another.“Brother, you gotta be a man,” a taxi driver

said. “Be a man, yeah? Don’t be crying.”Lester did not cry inside the center when told

about his daughter’s death. He said nothing. His brother asked for the body for a proper funeral, or at least a photograph. Neither was possible.

The brothers went to Capitol Hill to inform the Doryens. The remaining family gathered outside. Martha Doryen, Kaizer’s aunt, started wailing, throwing her hands in the air. There were no tears, but the sound echoed through-out Capitol Hill.

With no body to bury, Lester could not meet his traditional duties. suddenly, he started cry-ing, uncontrollably, tears streaming down his face. The women, and his brother, looked away.

Coming to GripsWithin hours of the death of Kaizer’s Aunt

Tina, the other aunt who had held him up in church, Edwina Doryen, died as well. Two weeks later, her husband, Mark Jerry, sat slumped outside an Eb-ola treatment center. Their daughter Princess sat to his right, resting her forehead against the wall. Both were too weak even to drink water.

For days, Mark had maintained his denials about the family illnesses. He was sick, too, but told friends he had typhoid and switched off his cellphone. After Princess fell ill, things changed.

“I’m convinced it was Ebola,” Mark said.It was mid-september, and Liberia stood

on a precipice. Monrovia had become the focal point of the outbreak in West Africa. Infections were doubling every two to three weeks.

Mark and Princess were lucky to receive treatment at all. But while Mark, 27, improved, Princess, 9, did not. she died within days.

After being discharged with a letter that he was “no longer infectious,” Mark began work-ing for Doctors Without Borders. Once a denier of Ebola, he became an evangelist.

Mark, a money changer, and Kaizer’s Aunt Edwina, a restaurant worker, had spent years saving $900 to build their home, a simple struc-ture steps away from the Doryen house. He had suspected that Kaizer had Ebola. The unease felt by the Doryens’ neighbors in Capitol Hill had unsettled him.

But he had blocked out those doubts when Edwina got sick. What else could he do but take care of her?

“Edwina and I were like one person,” he said. “I would bathe her. she was toileting all day. I would clean her, and then after two, three minutes, she would toilet. I would clean her again.”









































































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He took her to a local clinic, where they were told that she had a chest cold. Finally, with Edwina unable to walk and bleeding from the mouth, Mark carried her on his back and put her in a taxi to the hospital. Turned away for lack of beds, she was taken to an Ebola holding center. she died there the next day, on a brown mattress on a filthy floor, surrounded by body fluids.

A rage built within him. All the suffering — all the pointless deaths in the family — stemmed from a betrayal, he said: Mamie’s refusal to ad-mit what was wrong with Kaizer.

she had at least suspected the truth, Mark said. Once Edwina became symptomatic, Kaiz-er’s mother, the progenitor of the poisoning nar-rative, offered a suspicious warning.

“she said, ‘Mark, the way you’re taking care of Edwina, you got to get chlorine water on the side, and when you finish taking care of her, you wash your hands,’ ” he recalled.

“she acted very bad, my sister-in-law; she knew that her son had the virus and she nev-er educated us,” Mark said. “To me, she was wicked. I don’t call that ignorance. I call that wickedness.”

Adrift in AngerThe disappearance of Kaizer’s mother

quickly set the Doryens adrift, leaving them to endure one loss after another without their central figure.

Four of Kaizer’s aunts and cousins died in a month. Kaizer’s grandmother died, too, on Aug. 31. But the Doryens did not even find out about her death for nearly two weeks. Mamie, as the head of the family, gave her cellphone as a contact number when the ambulance took away the grandmother. When Mamie disap-peared, health officials were unable to contact the Doryens.

Mamie’s absence stirred fierce disagree-ment, another source of division in the family. some saw it as proof of her deception. Others, like her brother, Anthony Doryen, imagined her grief.

“Everybody is angry with her,” he said. But “she herself lose her mother, she lose her son, she lose two sisters.”

As word of the family deaths in Capitol Hill spread to Mamie’s neighbors near the swamp, they grew alarmed. Mr. Mombo, who

buried Kaizer, reached Mamie by phone after many attempts.

“Why you running from place to place?” Mr. Mombo asked her. “But since then, her phone is switched off.”

Mamie insisted in a brief phone interview that Kaizer was poisoned and died after the woman in black told him he was “finished.”

“Everybody is carrying my name around,” Mamie said. “I didn’t do anything.”

“Nobody should blame me,” she added. “The devil is very busy. The Capitol Hill people saying I’m the one carrying Ebola there. All my family dying.”

Forgiveness and HopeBy late september, after the death of Kai-

zer and six of his close relatives, the sickness seemed at bay. Twenty-three days had passed since the last sick family member was taken out of Capitol Hill, two days beyond Ebola’s maxi-mum incubation period.

“It’s good to stay alive,” said Abraham Kei-ta, Kaizer’s uncle.

He smiled, stretched and brought out a DVD, “Monrovia on Fire,” a local martial arts film in which he had a supporting role. He hoped for a bigger part in a sequel. Mr. Keita, a fur-niture maker and taekwondo master, was plan-ning for the future.

One of the Doryen brothers had returned to Capitol Hill, though he still kept his wife and children away. Mr. Keita hoped the other Dory-ens would follow, including Mamie.

“Before, yes, I was angry,” he said. “Every-body was angry with her.” He laughed. “Now I can forgive her. That’s what God says.”

“Maybe after one month, two months, she will come back, because we are the same family.”

In Liberia, too, the mood has begun to shift. New Ebola cases have dropped signifi-cantly, leading some international and local health officials to say they are making head-way against the disease. On Thursday, Presi-dent Ellen Johnson sirleaf lifted the state of emergency imposed on the country, saying “we can all be proud of the progress.”

Weeks earlier, Martha Doryen, Kaizer’s aunt, stood outside her house. A cellphone num-ber and “yah” — Mamie’s real name — were scribbled on the front wall with charcoal.

Mamie’s new cellphone number?

Instead, Martha looked at her 13-year-old daughter, who had just celebrated receiv-ing her first cellphone by writing the number on the house. Her name is also yah. Thirteen years ago, Martha asked her big sister, Ma-mie, to name her firstborn. Mamie named the girl after herself, yah, a new generation’s hour come round at last.

Then, almost as an afterthought, Mar-

tha mentioned that Mamie had called that morning, the first time since she was forced from Capitol Hill a month earlier. Martha was sitting on her porch making dry rice with fish. An unknown number had flashed on her cellphone.

“she says she’s fine,” Martha said. “she’s just telling us to wash our hands, stay away from people and be with ourselves. Because herself, she is O.K., taking the same advice she gave us.” n Clair MacDougall contributed reporting.

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