The Writing on the Wall

In September 1991, the Zairian military went on a Kinshasa-wide rampage. The unrest quickly spread to the civilian population. To keep the hordes out of the compound where I and the bonobos lived, I slaughtered a sheep, and with its blood, wrote "AIDS" on the institute's walls. It worked. This photo was taken a few days later, with some of my workers. From Grains of Golden Sand:

"From the tub, I sucked the sheep-blood slurry into the syringe. In three foot tall letters, I spray-painted the word “SIDA”—“AIDS” in French—on the cement block entrance wall. The blood ran dramatically in long, red fingers down the pale ramparts. It was a word that evoked cold dread. In those early years of the sickness, many believed that AIDS was an anti-African plot hatched by outsiders. Skeptics joked that the letters “SIDA” stood for Syndrome Imaginiare pour Décourager les Amoureux, the Imaginary Syndrome to Discourage Lovers. But people were learning that this so-called imaginary disease was a killer."

Photo by: D. Messinger