Braving Ebola

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Photographs and interviews by DANIEL BEREHULAK, nytimes.com

"I have dreams in the middle of the night, waking up in the Ebola ward as a patient. I’ve had dreams where I’m in the ward without any gear, just standing there in my pants and shirt. But I like getting up in the morning, and I like coming here. I think we’re actually making a difference for these people." Steven Hatch, 45, physician from Boston

“I have dreams in the middle of the night, waking up in the Ebola ward as a patient. I’ve had dreams where I’m in the ward without any gear, just standing there in my pants and shirt. But I like getting up in the morning, and I like coming here. I think we’re actually making a difference for these people.”
Steven Hatch, 45, physician from Boston

"I came here to look for a job to help my family. Some were afraid to come here, and I took the chance. I focus on my work. I can’t feel nothing when I’m working." Otis Bah, 41, gravedigger

“I came here to look for a job to help my family. Some were afraid to come here, and I took the chance. I focus on my work. I can’t feel nothing when I’m working.”
Otis Bah, 41, gravedigger

The patients arrive, at first fearful of the people in spacesuits whose faces they cannot see. They wait for test results, for the next medical rounds, for symptoms to appear or retreat. They watch for who recovers to sit in the courtyard shade and who does not. They pray.

The workers offer medicine, meals, cookies and comfort. They try to make patients smile. Very, very carefully, they start IVs. They spray chlorine, over and over, and they dig graves. They pray.

These are the people of one Ebola clinic in rural Liberia. Run by the American charity International Medical Corps, the clinic rose in September out of a tropical forest. It now employs more than 170 workers, a mix of locals and foreigners, some of them volunteers. There are laborers trying to make money for their families, university students helping because Ebola has shut down their schools, and American doctors who, after years of studying outbreaks, are seeing Ebola’s ravages in person for the first time. A mobile laboratory operated by the United States Navy has set up shop at a shuttered university. Now, test results come back in a matter of hours instead of several days.

Some of the workers will stay a few more weeks, or until the end of the year. Many of the Liberians vow to remain until the disease is gone, when they can go back to their old jobs or resume their former lives. They work toward a time after Ebola.

"I got up in the morning, I prayed. In the evening, I prayed. At dinner, I prayed. Prayed to get well. Yesterday they said, 'You, you’re free.' I danced, I jumped." George Beyan, 34, Ebola survivor

“I got up in the morning, I prayed. In the evening, I prayed. At dinner, I prayed. Prayed to get well. Yesterday they said, ‘You, you’re free.’ I danced, I jumped.”
George Beyan, 34, Ebola survivor

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