This article is part of HuffPosts Project Zero campaign, a yearlong series on neglected tropical diseases and efforts to fight them.

YALIKOMBO, Congo Jean de-Dieu Liyande was only 42 when a mysterious ailment began keeping him up at night, wandering and hallucinating, and making him sleep like the dead by day.

No one could explain the migraines or the feeling of exhaustion that would strike suddenly, forcing him to doze off wherever he sat. He became increasingly weak and confused.

I went to the hospital and they couldnt solve it, said Liyande, a farmer and assistant priest in the remote village of Yalikombo on the Congo River. I went to the traditional healer, and he didnt solve it.

People thought that I must have been cursed, the father of nine added, clutching his well-thumbed Bible.