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took my temperature twice daily; in my case, out of anxiety, almost on the hour. My recommended 21 days of monitoring ended, and I am well. I am cleared to go back to work and was ready and anxious to mentor aspiring photojournalists.
I’m angered by the decision and sorry not to get to teach. It was a disservice to journalism students at Syracuse, a missed opportunity to share real-world experiences with future media professionals. Especially now, I am cognizant of what I could have told them — about the power and necessity of capturing images that interpret the human experience while daily life unfolds under the cloud of Ebola.
In one of the most emotional encounters I faced in Liberia, I photographed a family that accompanied a sick woman who seemed near death as they sought treatment. She was bleeding from the mouth and her breathing was shallow; she was not ambulatory. As the husband, a sister, a brother and a friend descended from the van, each wore large plastic bags around their hands, feet and bodies, trying to protect themselves from infection with makeshift coverings. They knew it was the only way to get their very ill relative to the Doctors Without Borders Ebola treatment unit. Waiting outside the gates was a given, but to the anxious family, I am sure one hour seemed far too long as the patient worsened.
At one point, I approached the woman’s sister, who had secluded herself against a wall away from the others and her sister fading away in the van. Standing at a safe distance, I asked her how long her sibling had been sick; she said about a week. She asked me questions that I could not completely understand and could not answer. As we tried to converse, neither fully understanding the other’s dialect, our eyes did the talking. To me, her eyes said, “This is the end.” I looked at her and said, “You know she is very, very sick.” She said, “Yes, I know.” As I tried to continue our fruitless conversation, my voice broke and suddenly tears came involuntarily. By then, more patients arrived by ambulance and I resumed taking photographs.
It is profoundly difficult not to be a feeling human being while covering the Ebola crisis. Indeed, one has to feel compassion and, above all, try to show respect.
On three previous trips to Monrovia, near the end of the civil war there, I’d seen a country in ruins. People’s struggle for basic subsistence was palpable. Today, as Liberia’s economy begins to improve after years of civil war, life moves at the hectic
African pulse, and the Ebola virus continues to kill, seemingly, at a faster pace. As of Friday,
The scene at sunset on Sept. 21, taken from the roof of a home that overlooks the Atlantic Ocean in the Capitol Hill area of Monrovia.
Courtesy of The Washington Post