Despite growing international concern over the virus, local residents continue to pack shoulder-to-shoulder into bars and transit vans, unified in their belief that Washington needs to calm down.
KINSHASA, Democratic Republic of Congo — The condensation beaded on a lukewarm bottle of Primus beer as the U.S. State Department slammed its borders shut in a blind panic over the Ebola virus on Tuesday. The sweeping geopolitical maneuver was met primarily with mild irritation by Congolese health officials, who spent the morning assuring their terrified American counterparts that absolutely nobody in the capital’s deafening, shoulder-to-shoulder nightclubs has any immediate desire to visit the United States.
While the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention elevated its global threat level to maximum, the air in Kinshasa’s Matonge district smelled heavily of diesel exhaust, roasting plantains, and unbothered revelry. Millions of residents continued to pack closely into open-air markets and underground bars, cheerfully exchanging sweat, currency, and respiratory droplets in a vibrant rejection of Western hypochondria.
The Americans are acting as if a highly infectious hemorrhagic fever with a 50 percent fatality rate is a valid reason to stay home on a Friday.
At a bustling transport hub on Boulevard Lumumba, commuters ignored the international travel restrictions entirely, squeezing themselves eighteen at a time into brightly painted transit vans. U.S. Homeland Security officials have defended the strict travel ban as a necessary, urgent precaution to protect the American homeland from an immediate vector of transmission. In response, the Congolese health ministry issued a formal diplomatic cable noting that the U.S. flatters itself by assuming anyone in the greater Kinshasa metropolitan area would willingly give up their table at Fioti Lounge just to fly to a country where the bars close at 2 a.m.
Reaching for his third skewer of grilled goat over the thumping bass of soukous music, Dr. Mbuyu confirmed his department would gladly comply with the American travel restrictions, provided the U.S. embassy stopped calling his mobile phone while he was trying to order drinks. At press time, the Ministry of Health was reportedly screening arriving international alerts from the World Health Organization, leaving them on read so as not to interrupt a particularly good DJ set.