A photo shows Mr. Menea’s body bag ripped open, exposing his infected body.
So much raw hostility is dispiriting, said Mr. Okele, the musician. He had once considered quitting, until his mother encouraged him to keep going. But experts warn the outbreak could last a year and, eventually, he feels the volunteers will be vindicated.
“Even if the community doesn’t understand me today,” he said. “One day they will.”
A few days after diving into the bushes to escape the assault, Mr. Bokwandela sat on a rock outside his home in a rundown Bunia neighborhood, readying for work.
At 61, his family was still expanding. Beside him, his wife, Josephine, breastfed their youngest, Clarice, 1. (The eldest of his 15 children is 38, he said with a smile.) A Red Cross volunteer of 20 years, he was philosophical about the risks of the job.
“Death can come in many ways,” he said, citing his Muslim faith. “None of us can escape it.”
The team soon drove to Nyankundae, a onetime mission station where an American, Dr. Peter Stafford, had been infected in the early days of the outbreak. Having been evacuated to Germany, Dr. Stafford had just been discharged after weeks of experimental treatment, said Dr. Charles Kashindi, the director of the 150-bed hospital where the American worked.
But the village where he got Ebola was still battling the tide of illness and death.
The Red Cross team came for Sarah Aendoa, 29, a mother of four who had just died. Ebola was decimating her family. She had arrived four days earlier with her husband, John, and two other relatives. All four had been caring for her mother-in-law, who had died weeks earlier.
They rushed to Nyankundae after hearing that Samaritan’s Purse, an American aid group, had built a new treatment center there, a relative said. But they were mistaken: The center was still under construction.
Mr. Olangi and his team emerged from the Ebola ward with Ms. Aendoa’s body, then puffed and strained as they carried her coffin to their battered truck.
