Cornelia Davis

Q: Today is Thursday, August 25, 2022, and this is Mary Hilpertshauser for the

David J. Sencer CDC Museum. I'm in Atlanta, Georgia, and I'll be interviewing

Dr. Cornelia Davis through Zoom, and we'll be discussing her life and career,

but especially focusing on her experience in the smallpox eradication program.

Connie, thank you for being here. Do I have your permission to interview and

record this session?

DAVIS: Yes. My name is Cornelia E. Davis, and you have my permission to record me.

Q: Thank you. Now would you briefly describe for me where you were born and the

community that you grew up in?

DAVIS: Yes. Well, I was born on the south side of Chicago [Illinois] to African

American parents. My dad was an orthopedic surgeon, and my mom was a 00:01:00teacher. I

think ever since I was five, I knew I wanted to be a doctor. My mom encouraged

that. Dad was more reticent because he understood how difficult it was for

African American males to get into medical school, much less females. When I was

around ten, he told the family that he had been offered a job by Kaiser Hospital

to go to California and that we were moving. We were going from the south side

of Chicago to lily-white Walnut Creek, a suburb of Berkeley, and Oakland in the

Bay Area, the San Francisco Bay area.

We moved there, and I think as far 00:02:00as what encouraged me to still--to be a

doctor when I was about eleven or twelve, Dr. Tom [Thomas Anthony] Dooley was

giving a big lecture in San Francisco on his first book-- and dad told me, "You

know, Connie, I worked with Dr. Dooley in Yokosuka, Japan," this is during the

Korean War, so I'll try and get us backstage so you can meet." I was really

excited, and so we went there, heard his presentation, and got to go backstage.

Of course, Dr. Dooley remembered Dad and knew him. Dr. Dooley encouraged me,

yes, you should go on and try and be a doctor.

On the other hand, I had a high school science 00:03:00teacher who told me, "Your dad

might be a doctor, but you're not smart enough, Connie." That pissed me off so

that anytime the going would get tough, you know, even in university, I think of

that teacher, and I'd say, "I'm going to show you. I'm going to do this," you

know. You know, you have those that encourage you, and those that don't.

Q: But he inspired you.

DAVIS: Yes, right, right. Pushed me to go on.

Q: What year did you move out to Walnut Creek?

DAVIS: What year did we move?

Q: Yes.

DAVIS: It was 1956. 1956 it was-- a creek still ran through the city. I don't

know if there were walnut groves there. Walnut groves are no more.

Q: Yes. Is there a creek? Probably 00:04:00 not.

DAVIS: No, they--after about five years, you know, it would always overflow, so

they made it go underground, or something.

Q: Okay.

DAVIS: Yes, I don't know. Now they wish they probably still had that creek. I

mean, California is suffering.

Q: That is true. Tell me a little bit about your educational past. You had this

teacher that inspired you, although not that she thought that she was inspiring

you, but it was an inspiration for you to continue on--

DAVIS: To continue, yes.

Q: --regardless. Where did you go to college?

DAVIS: To university?

Q: Yes, university.

DAVIS: I went to Gonzaga University; it's in Spokane, Washington. It's run by

the Jesuit Order. They had just started the Gonzaga in Florence, Italy

program (in 1963-64).

My older brother had gone to the first 00:05:00year, and I applied for the sophomore

year because I was in pre-med, and by junior year, you needed to be in the

States and doing all these medical things. They said the only opportunity is to

go your sophomore year. I went--my sophomore year was 1964-'65, and I mean, it

was just so eye-opening. You know, in 1964 in the States, the Civil Rights Act

was just passed. But African Americans were really treated like second-class

citizens. Probably in the South they still are.

But when I went to Europe, I mean-- I was treated like my white fellow

classmates. When 00:06:00I hitchhiked--because hitchhiking--we only went to school four

days a week, and three days were for us to travel around. The way that students

traveled in those days-- was you could hitchhike. A woman had to hitchhike with

a boy (with parents' approval) from the (Gonzaga) university. But you could get

up to Switzerland or over to Yugoslavia, and it was so enlightening to stay with

people. A lot of times, they invited us to stay, those who picked us up, to stay

in their house. I found out that--I felt that I was appreciated more in Europe

than I had ever been in the States. I thought, you know, Davis, you don't have

to stay in the States to work. You could go overseas, as long as you learn the

language, you aren't 00:07:00bound by staying in the States. That thought stayed in the

back of my mind. When I went to medical school, I was always looking for

opportunities to get overseas again.

Q: Then you went on to Berkeley [University of California, Berkeley]?

DAVIS: Okay, I applied. I graduated in 1967 from Gonzaga, and I applied to UCSF

[University of California, San Francisco] School of Medicine, and I didn't get

in. I was devastated. I couldn't believe they didn't want me. Actually, I was

really depressed, and I just--I said, "I'm going up to the mountains." I got a

job as a Girl Scout counselor at a camp, and my mom said, "What are you going to

do?" I said, "I just can't deal with 00:08:00 this."

In the meantime--now, this is where you need strong family support. My mom knew

I needed to go on to graduate school, so she applied for me to go to Berkeley.

But I had to take that graduate record exam, so she sent mail up to me, a

letter, and said, "You're signed up to take the GRE [Graduate Record

Examinations] in Colorado Springs, so you somehow get there." I mean, I didn't

have a car or anything. But other counselors at camp lent me a car, told me how

to get to Colorado Springs--I took the exam, and then one of my other professors

had said, "Look, when you go to graduate school, why don't you take Anatomy,

because in the end, you're still going to have to know about--it's not going to

be wasted. You're going to have to know 00:09:00 anatomy."

I took Anatomy at Berkeley, and then the following year, in 1968, I reapplied,

and I was accepted to UCSF School of Medicine. There were five African Americans

who were accepted in the freshman class; there were three males and two females.

I was one of the first two African American females that had been accepted to

UCSF. That was 1968. There were five women in the class of 110, so they got two

for one with me, you know, a Black woman. But I'm just saying I think now, you

have something like 48 percent of medical school classes are women. But you can

see how difficult it was for just women to get in, much less it took 00:10:00until 1968

for a Black female to get into medical school. I think it's--well, it just shows

you. What can I say?

Q: Okay. What did you want to get out of that? Did you want to specialize in

anything, like infectious disease? Where did you want to--where did you see

yourself practicing?

DAVIS: Well, I mean, in going through, until you get on the wards, which is your

last two years, you don't really know. But I must say, UCSF, the professors

there, they gave me a lot of ideas and--you know, because I told them, I think I

want to go overseas and do work. One was, "Why don't you apply for a summer

research grant at Hooper Foundation?" I 00:11:00got that. It was between my second and

third years. It allowed me to go and do this research project, which was to

study the incidence of roundworm in the pediatric population in the pediatric

ward and see if there was any difference between the three ethnic groups in

Malaysia. You have Malays, Chinese, and Indians. I was there for three months

and did research. That was so interesting to go--now I'm traveling. When I went

to Gonzaga in Florence, there were eighty students with me. I had to go alone to

get to Malaysia and to find your way to Hooper Foundation and just to fit in.

Now I must say, I was 00:12:00always--I had long hair. I didn't have this color hair. I

was always there, taken for being Indian, but I didn't dress like an Indian

because, over a certain age, you're always going to wear a Sari, you know. So, I

was wearing Western clothes in Malaysia. But that was a really interesting opportunity.

The other opportunity that I got with UCSF was-- one of my professors told me,

"You want to go overseas," he said, "Well, the closest thing to a developing

country in the States is an Indian reservation. Why don't you go to White

[Mountain] River Apache Reservation in Arizona, and 00:13:00that'll be a really good

experience." I said, "In the middle of the desert? Arizona?" He said, "No, no,

White River is up in the White Mountains. It's really beautiful." So, as I was

driving there, that was in my fourth year of medical school, externship, three

months, right before getting out to go to internship. I thought he lied to me--

you know? I'm going through this desert until where you come to turn off. I

thought--I've been going since 6:00 in the morning. If I still have a ways to

go--I need to eat.

I go up to this restaurant, and outside there's this sign. It's big, and it

says, "No dogs or Indians allowed." I thought, what the shit, this is 1972--you

can't have a 00:14:00sign like that! Then I thought, oh, damn, what are they going to

think I am?

You know, if they don't want Indians, I can tell you they don't want Blacks. I

thought I am hungry. I'm going in here. There were about five tables that were

full, and I thought, okay, I'd better speak loudly so the whole place could

understand. The waitress came up, and I said, "Look, I'm a new doctor at the

White [Mountain] River Reservation," so they could tell I'm not Indian. "Can you

tell me how much further do I have to go? Is it a good road?" "Well, it depends

on how fast you go, but it's a paved road, it's good road. You should get there

between two and three hours." I said, "Well, I'd better get something to eat.

How about a hamburger and fries?" She said, "Yes, coming right up."

She said, "That your 00:15:00California plates?" I said, "Yes, I'm coming from San

Francisco, being posted there." Now everyone knows that I have a right to be

going up and going. But I couldn't believe that you have a sign like that in

1972. But what happened there is, they were doing a special public health

research project, trying to see if mothers could make oral rehydration salts,

the solution. A number of these studies were being done around the world, but

the Apache Reservation had been chosen. My supervisor had said, "Now look, you

have to get the methodology right," it had to do with their chart number and

all. Then, "You cannot slip an IV into them. You have to show the 00:16:00mother how you

prepare the solution." I thought to myself, what kind of third-class treatment

are they giving these Indians because I'm coming from UC San Francisco, you had

six hours in the emergency room [ER] to rehydrate a kid with moderate to severe

diarrhea--you know, stick an IV in, in two hours you can rehydrate him and send

him home. Here, we're mixing up the solution and then giving it to the child by

spoon from this cup. Who would know that thirteen years later, I would open

model ORT [Oral Rehydration Treatment Centers] training centers in Abidjan and

in Monrovia, Liberia? I mean--and I did some of that initial research to prove

that 00:17:00mothers could be trained to do that. It's just really small world, I mean,

you know.

Q: Yes. After you had the hamburger and fries, what did the people in the area,

or in the restaurant, how did they react to you?

DAVIS: Then it was, like, oh, you know, she's US [United States] Public Health

Service, so we'd better not say anything. She's commissioned officer, you know,

because it was a public health hospital I was going to. That's what--I just

wanted to have no problem, and just let me keep on going, you know?

Q: Yes. But you're alone in a car, and you're in the desert, and there's not a

lot around you.

DAVIS: There's not a lot of emergency personnel--

Q: Many things could have happened on the way down.

DAVIS: Well, yes, you know. I just thought, let me keep on going out there. I've

got my hamburger. I can eat it--I ate it there, and 00:18:00then went on up. Then I had

my supervisor there say, you know, he met me--I came in on the weekend, and they

had some rooms in the back of the hospital for consultants and stuff, so that's

where you were going to stay. There were two other young people; one, a nurse

trainee, and then someone in radiology, a guy. We were about the same--young, so

you could have people to play with on the weekend if you ever got out.

But I remember him coming and explaining how the clinic is set up. He said, "You

know, they've never had a woman doctor. They get to choose who they want to see,

which doctor, and they put their chart in back of your door. But don't get upset

if they don't want to come to you. It's not--it's just they don't know a woman 00:19:00doctor." Darned if everybody and his brother put the fricking chart in back of

my door, and after an hour I came out, here are these two docs sitting there, I

said, "Come on, talk to the people, or we're never going to get out of here if

you don't help on doing this." I mean, everyone wanted the lady epidemiologist.

They could recognize that I did have Indian blood, my family does. They loved

that there was a woman doctor, you know?

Q: How long were you there?

DAVIS: Three months. I was there three months and--

Q: Long enough to make some--not friends, but you were able to be a part of the

community a little bit more?

DAVIS: Long enough to--actually became more of the--you know, I was there Easter

vacation, you know, high school 00:20:00students are sent away to a boarding school

where they're not allowed to speak their native language, so all the kids were

back, the high school kids were back. While I was there, three teenagers climbed

these cliffs, and they had fallen and gotten-- I mean, it was still up high.

People would run into the hospital and said that these three boys, they're up

there on the cliffs. You need to get up there, you know. Well, I didn't think

any of the other doctors could go up the cliff. As soon as I volunteered, I

thought, there are no ropes, Connie. Why did you volunteer?

Anyway, they took me away in the ambulance. I never even looked at the emergency

kit because we were always in the hospital-- I didn't even know what I had. They

were 00:21:00up what looked like a half a mile up this cliff. I thought--but the men had

climbed up two by two, going up this cliff, so that basically they just passed

me up this cliff and then passed up my bag. The three kids, I mean, they

were--oh my God, the head's split open, blood all over. They were breathing,

though. I felt, oh thank God. Thank God they're breathing. I just started

bandaging up their heads. They were all unconscious. Then let's get them down

the same way, get them in the ambulance. Then all the doctors and nurses were

waiting for us to come. They were helping to really examine, put IVs in, and my

supervisor pulled me 00:22:00aside, and he said, "I've already called for the flying

doctors to come, because they're going to need"--for sure they had hematomas,

and whatever. "They're going to be flown to Phoenix. The plane is coming out

now, but the plane is not big. We've got three passengers already, and it can

take one doctor." He said, "You did really good, Dr. Davis. You can go with them

to Phoenix".

I said, "Dr. [Gary H.] Spivey thank you. But here's the deal. They're going to

look at me and they're going to know immediately that I'm a fourth-year medical

student. I don't know anything about what their benefits are. I'm not going to

be 00:23:00able to tell some surgeon there that they have to do this operation." I said,

"Their best bet is for you to get on that plane and for you to take them in,

because I don't know the rules for the [U.S.] Public Health Service." He said,

"You're right, you're right." I thought, white male is going to trump

everything, honey. You don't need me. I mean, I looked so young in those days,

you know. I still look young. But I looked like a teenager, and nobody's going

to take-- Phoenix--it didn't know me from wherever.

Anyway, but of course the whole community heard that it was the lady doctor who

went up to save the boys. Then they went--they were in Phoenix a long time, I

mean, I had left. But because Indians couldn't go into 00:24:00town in restaurants or

bars, they had their own bar on the reservation, it was called the Flaming

Arrow. We weren't told we couldn't go, but none of the doctors went into the

bar. But I wanted to see it one time before I left. The day before I left, I

went in the Flaming Arrow. It was crowded, but everyone saw me, and the head of

the tribe came over and said, "We want to thank you again for saving the boys."

They gave me drinks. But they remember, you know, that it was the lady doctor

who went up to save the boys.

Q: Wow. You triaged them on the side of a mountain?

DAVIS: Yes. But they survived.

Q: Do you know what happened to them? Have you--

DAVIS: I don't know, you know, I know they 00:25:00survived and came back. My younger

brother is a lawyer, and I don't know how he has gotten involved in helping the

Indian tribes get certain things, but I know during COVID [coronavirus disease]

time, he was trying to help them get the drugs to treat. He said, "You know,

Connie, they still say--he's say your sister was here in White [Mountain] River

Apache," and he's not even at White River. But they'll say, "Didn't your sister

work on an Indian reservation?" He'd say, "Yes, she was somewhere. Apache." I

mean, they still remember you--and what you did, so I thought, okay. Yes, no, I

just haven't had time to 00:26:00drive back through the desert to see if that sign is

still there on the crossroads.

Q: --Or that place, yes.

DAVIS: Yes. I don't want to. [Laughs]

Q: All right, so quite an interesting--I mean, Malaysia--

DAVIS: Those were really two things that kept on whetting my appetite, to do

something overseas. But I did, I actually did a pediatric internship and

residency at USC LA County Hospital [University of Southern California at Los

Angeles] to do my residency. Then when I was finishing up, you know, I thought,

okay, I'm not sure--I want to go back to the Bay Area, but not immediately. I

want to do some kind of humanitarian thing, for, like, six months only. Do my

bit for 00:27:00 humanity.

My chief of peds [pediatrics] was busy writing reference letters to the Ship

Hope, (not that they would want me for my lack of expertise), and Peace Corps.

Then he called me in the ER [Emergency Room] and said, "Connie, I just got a

call from D. A. [Donald Ainslie] Henderson, he's the head of smallpox in Geneva

with WHO [World Health Organization]". I said, "We talked, WHO only takes

experienced people." He said, "Yes, but they're looking for these junior doctors

to go over to work on smallpox in India." Of course, he was asking for male

doctors. Dr. [Paul F.] Wehrle told him, "Well, I'm writing these letters for

Connie Davis," he said, "D. A. said, you know how it 00:28:00is, we're sending them to

isolated areas." These are areas that hadn't followed the methodology, there are

no amenities, there are no hotels, there are no restaurants. He said, "She's a

woman. Do you think she can survive in this kind of situation?" and he said,

"Yes." Because he had worked in smallpox before, he knew exactly what he was

talking about.

When he called me, I said, "Well, what did you tell D. A.?" He said, "I told him

you could do it." I said, "I don't have any problem with the no amenities. I'm a

former Girl Scout, I got the highest badge equivalent to Eagle badge with the

Boy Scouts, but I don't know anything about smallpox." He said, "Don't worry

about that. They're going to train you when you get there. They're going to be

sending you a letter. You'd better start winding 00:29:00up here, because you've got to

be, first week in June, you've got to show up in Delhi." That's how I got that job.

Q: How did you --

DAVIS: You know? It was two men, two white men who put their reputations on the

line, because the Indian program did not want a woman. But they insisted, and so

they took me, under duress. I mean, I didn't know that until I got there, to

find out all the behind-the-scenes thing. But they didn't--they were asking for

male doctors, not a woman. In hindsight, I can see their problem is that with

the caste system, with sexism, are they even going to pay attention to a woman?

--you 00:30:00 know.

Basically, I looked like I was eighteen, you know, and I was twenty-six,

twenty-seven. I mean, it's great when you got older, you don't look as old as

you are. But then I looked really young.

We had a one-week orientation in Delhi where we were trained and taught about

smallpox. There were nine men and Connie in this orientation. The program was

already excited because the outbreaks in India were down to one-digit

outbreaks--they used to have thousands of villages affected, and now, by June of

1975, they were just down to, like, ten outbreaks 00:31:00left. They had told us when we

started on the first day that probably most of you are going to be sent to

Bangladesh because Bangladesh is still having thousands of cases. Dr. Nicole

Grasset was the regional smallpox advisor, and she came in the beginning of the

training to talk to each of us separately, to find out -- did you have

any--where did you want to go, had you read up on any place that you thought

you'd like to go.

When she met me, I said, "Look, they said that most of us are going to go to

Bangladesh, because you don't even have that many cases left." She said,

"Connie, we had so much trouble getting India to accept you, there is

no--Bangladesh is 00:32:00fundamental Islam. There's no way I'm even going to approach

them because it's a non-starter." I said, "Right now"--she said, "They want to

put these doctors on these little boats to go up the stream because it's easier

to get to those remote villages once you get on the water. You're going to be

living on a boat with three to five men. Is the captain going to take

instructions from you?" You know, they jump off the boat to take a bath, they

pee over the side and other things. She said, "It's just not reasonable to

think." I thought, all right, I had Plan B anyway, in mind. I said, "I

understand that Bangladesh is a no-go." I said, "But look, I know what you're

going to do. 00:33:00You're going to send me to the capital of a state. I didn't come

all this way to see chickenpox. I don't care where you send me in India, but I

want you to send me to a rural area. I want to see the real India." Be careful

what you wish for.

Q: Okay, so I got to ask --

DAVIS: It may come true. That's the problem. Going to the rural area, I mean,

the caste system is how they live, breathe and work.

Q: Explain the caste system, -- at that time.

DAVIS: Well, Hindu--well--

Q: It's still there.

DAVIS: --it's there. They've got some rules to help affirmative action. But it's

still there. In the Hindu 00:34:00religion, you are born in one of four major caste

systems, and if/or you're an untouchable, that's the fifth one. The highest is

Brahmin, and they have the sacred thread, they're the priests, then there's the

warrior [Kshatriya], then there's the shopkeeper, merchant, independent

[Vaishya], then there's the worker bee, Shudra. Then there's the outcast [Dalit]

who does--cleans the toilets, cleans the roads and stuff. A highborn cannot even

take water from another caste member because they'll be polluted. Then he has to

go to the temple and go through all this purification. 00:35:00Now, what happens to people who are not Hindu or Muslim, or don't believe in

this? Well, you're outside the system, so that still makes you untouchable.

During the Colonial times when the British were in charge and they had their

soldiers and all, the male British commander of the state, he was treated as if

he was Brahmin, okay, because he was a white male. But basically, when I

was--well, they had a hard time convincing the Indian government to send me to

the northern part of West Bengal. It's a very sensitive area for India, because

to the north is 00:36:00Tibet, to the east, is Bhutan, and to the west is Nepal. It's a

sensitive area because all these different nations are there. At that time, even

for tourists to go to Darjeeling, they could only get a one-week pass. You could

only stay one week. Now WHO is asking to put me up there for six weeks, and they

saw my photo and they said, "First of all, you're telling me she's American, but

she looks Indian." My hair was long. "As far as we're concerned, we think she's

CIA [Central Intelligence Agency]." I said, "CI-- Jesus, I sure hope CIA can

pick somebody better than me to be"--I don't know. I mean, you don't ask a lot

of questions. I'm 00:37:00sure the CIA was doing something, like putting listening

satellites, or something, up there. I never asked. I didn't. But they did not

want me to go, because they thought I was CIA, and because I looked Indian. Once

I got up there, I could blend in with the masses. They would not be able to

follow me. I had special restrictions that no other WHO doctor had.

When I arrived in each new district, I was to go right to the police station,

and I should report that I'm arriving. Whenever I left, no matter what time, I

needed to report back to the police station. I was going, leaving that district,

and going to the next one. When I got to that district, I'd go to the police

station. They 00:38:00said, "We're sending out a poster with her picture on to all three

districts, saying this is supposedly the WHO doctor, but we have suspicions, so

you need to keep a lookout on her." Well, you know Indian bureaucracy. I

thought, there is no way they're going to get this information about me up there

to the districts. There is no chance that they can circulate this to the

governor, and all these people.

When I did arrive and went immediately to Jalpaiguri to the police station, I

said, "Hi. I'm Dr. Davis." He said, "Yes, I know." He said, "I've got a folder."

He brought it out to show me. There was my picture, and then in Hindi,

underneath, was explaining that they needed to keep an eye on me. I couldn't

believe that they did that. But you know, I 00:39:00had ten, twelve-hour days, I never

knew where I was going to stay. I actually, after that first time in Jalpaiguri,

I didn't have time to go and figure out where the one police station was in the

whole district. I let that--that wasn't high on my list of things to do. One

night, in the dak bungalow, at 11:00 at night, someone knocks on my door. Now,

I'm a single woman, and everyone knows that. Who has the nerve to knock on my

door? I open it a little bit, and there's this guy, and he pulls out this thing

and flashes a badge, like they're CIA-equivalent.

He 00:40:00said, "You're Dr. Cornelia Davis?" I said, "Yes." He said, "You did not

go--you have not been going to the police station." I said, "Do you see what

time it is?" I said, "I've been out for twelve hours today. I'm tired. Yes,

you're right, I didn't go. Everyone knows I'm the only one with this Toyota Land

Cruiser, only one in three districts, its parked downstairs, right under my

window." I said, "I haven't gone anywhere. Do you know what time it is? How dare

you knock on my door at 11:00 at night." He said, "You need to go to the police

station." I said, "I'll go tomorrow morning, okay?" I closed the door. Then the

next day with my staff, I said, "I'm not going to the police station." We were

in Cooch Behar. "Let's go. Take me to the governor's palace. 00:41:00I'm going to speak

to the top person."

We go in, I go in alone, and I introduced myself. He says, "I know who you are,

Dr. Davis." I said, "Look, last night, at 11:00, this guy from your secret

service knocked on the door saying I hadn't gone to the police station." I said,

"I have twelve-hour days." I said, "Can't you send out another circular saying,

'She's just doing her job, let her do her job. She doesn't have to do this.'" I

said, "Everybody knows the lady epidemiologist and my car. They know when I get

out of the car to pee, so please, come on." He laughed, and he said, "I'll send

out a circular to tell them, forget it, to stop bothering you about checking

in." But do you know that 00:42:00they collected all my letters home for the first five

weeks. My parents hadn't gotten any letters, and I always sent a letter when I'm

overseas, I would write a letter once a week because it just lets them know what

you're doing, you're alive, they don't worry about you.

They hadn't gotten one since I arrived in India, and it was during the emergency

time. That's when my mother called D. A. Henderson in Geneva saying, "My

daughter, where is she? Did she arrive? We haven't gotten any word." That's

when, for our first meeting, when they called us down after a month, all the

junior epidemiologists, the regional epidemiologist said, "Who's Dr. Davis?" I

said, "I am." He said, "Write 00:43:00home! Your mother called D. A. Henderson"--I

wanted to die! All the guys said, "Call home, Connie. Your mom's worried about

you." You know?

Then I got a letter from mom that said she got five letters in a row, and when

she opened them, it had clearly been opened and taped back. Anytime I mentioned

a name of a village, they'd taken a black marker and gone through it. But do you

know--how do you know where I'm mailing these letters? I mean, I started in

Delhi, and then I could mail them at any post office in the three districts and

Cooch Bihar. You had to have thousands of people looking for Connie Davis's

letters, then you read through them. I guess they finally realized, this is no

CIA report, as you know. [Laughs]

I couldn't 00:44:00believe that they went to all that trouble.

But -- because I was--like, you had a jeep, you had a driver and a paramedic

nurse. They were both male, my driver [Abdul] was a Muslim, my nurse [Dinesh]

was Hindu. They could not eat together. I, as an unrelated female, could not,

technically, according to the caste rules, eat with them.

After a week of us traveling like this, when we're going back to the dak

bungalow, I told them, "Look, I have spoken to the gods, and they are in

agreement. If there is any bad karma associated 00:45:00with what I'm going to tell you,

I have accepted to take it all. But we all three are going to be eating

together; we're going to go to those truck stop places where they have the big

picnic tables, eight men at a table. You're not going to let any other men sit

with us, but we're going to eat there, we're going to eat together." I realized,

"You two don't usually eat together, you're not supposed to eat with me, but

we're already breaking the rules because we're in the same vehicle together. I'm

ordering you -- you didn't have any choice-- you didn't volunteer to work for

the expat doctor. If there's any bad karma, I've accepted to take it all. You're

not going to have any bad karma associated"--I actually thought as soon as we

got back to Cooch Bihar they'd go and report me to the chief DHO [District

Health Officer], because this was, 00:46:00like, how can--you know. At first, it took a

couple of days for them to relax, to be able to enjoy the meal. But then, you

know, we were a team. I said, "Here -- you're my family, here. You're all I

got." They really were very protective of me, you know.

Q: Can you tell me about, like, a typical day when you guys would go out, all

three of you?

DAVIS: Yes, well, because it was so hot and humid on the lowlands--not

Darjeeling, you know--I'd wake up at 5:00 am because I wanted to see the third

highest mountain, Kangchenjunga. You had to do it--it's monsoon season, and

before the clouds gathered, you needed to get a quick glimpse. Then there's just

the hint of coolness before 7:00. Then it just is muggy and 00:47:00hot. I knew that we

weren't getting any reports of cases, so my concern--and I'd read the reports of

West Bengal before arriving--was that I had a 160-kilometer border with

Bangladesh. I knew they were having thousands of cases. We aren't reporting any,

and two years previous, West Bengal had gotten down to no cases. Then cases from

Bangladesh had come in and reintroduced smallpox. That was going to be my worry.

I was going to go along border villages to see what was going on, to see if

there were any rash and fever cases. You'd get up early in the morning, and then

we had the map, road map. I didn't know where I wanted to go, but I would just 00:48:00close my eyes and see where my finger hit. It would hit on a border town, and

I'd say, "You know, have you heard of this village," and the driver would say,

"Yes, I can get there." I said, "Well, let's go there." If I've already been in

that district--I mean, they've all met me before, when the first day I got off

the plane, I was taken to a meeting. they called all the smallpox workers from

all three districts so that they could see me and know who I was. But were they

surprised--they were not expecting a woman!

In fact, the epidemiologist I was replacing, he didn't even look at me at the

airport. He was looking for an older, experienced white male, and I didn't fit

the bill. The next thing I knew, I was outside of the airport, trying to find

the jeep, and--

Q: When you arrived, and you arrived as all those other 00:49:00doctors, were all those

American doctors? Or were they--

DAVIS: No. They were mostly European. There was one other American doctor. But

they were mostly European doctors. They all went to Bangladesh, and me crying

because I wasn't going with them, you know?

What was I saying, I was telling you about regular--

Q: You were replacing an epidemiologist.

DAVIS: Yes. Right. I had--actually, you always go to the capital of the state,

and you go meet the smallpox program staff, so that they know who you are.

You're newly trained, so they know you don't know that much about smallpox. Then

you go up to your assignment. But because I was trying to overlap with the

outgoing doctor--he was leaving in a week, so they had told--I had gone to

Lucknow 00:50:00first, to get field training with Don [Donald P.] Francis, who was a CDC

person that was based there.

He said, "Your plans have changed, Connie. You're to go right away, fly to

Calcutta, we're working on your plane ticket, and stay in the airport, continue

right up to Jalpaiguri, don't go into the office because you have to overlap." I

was sitting in the airport when David [L.] Heymann,--he was working out of

Calcutta--he came into the departure lounge--how do you get to come into the

departure lounge? I mean things have really changed a lot. He didn't know me

either, but he came in front of me, and he said, "Are you, Dr. Davis?" You know,

and I wanted to say, well, who wants to know--but I said, "Yes, I am." He said,

"Great. Come in the back here." He said, "There are 00:51:00no banks up where you're

going, so we have no way of getting money to you for your per diem, for you to

pay for petrol for your cars, or others. I have money right here in this little

suitcase for you. We have to go to the back, I have to count out the money, and

then you're going to count, then you're going to sign this chit saying you

received this much." It was five thousand dollars in ten-rupee notes. I said,

"Are you crazy? You're going to count this money in the back of the departure

lounge?" He said, "We don't have much time, Connie, before your plane takes off."

We got behind this huge pillar, and I stood in front of him, you know, hoping no

one would come back here, seeing him counting these ten-rupee notes. 00:52:00I think it

was twenty-eight thousand--whatever. They say, "Okay, now it's your turn." I

haven't squatted on my haunches since I was five years old. I'm counting this,

so then I make the chit, and I said, "How am I supposed to get on this plane?

They're going to ask me to open this up, and here's all this money?" He said,

"Okay, they may or may not ask you to open it. It's up to them. Sometimes they

don't. If you open it, you just tell them, I'm WHO, and this is WHO money, and

I'm taking it with me," and you show them your laissez-passer, and forget it.

They actually didn't ask me to open that satchel, you know? I said, "You said

there are no banks. What am I supposed to do with this money?" He said, "Well,

in the daytime you can keep it under the front seat, and at night you can put it 00:53:00under your pillow and have sweet dreams." I said, "All right, fine," you know.

I'm carrying this money which, to me, is like a lot of money. If anyone knows,

they're going to kill me so they can have these rupees. Anyway, they had just

opened a bank, actually, in Jalpaiguri that I could put the money in and take

half with me. But I still had to carry a lot, because you didn't know when you'd

get back to this bank to get more money.

Q: Did you use the money to pay your people, and also for petrol?

DAVIS: Well, the money, one, was to pay my per diem every day, so I could eat,

lodging, pay for--they knew I would have my own vehicle. I needed to be able to

go to any gas station and pay for the petrol. But if you actually have an

outbreak, you need to pay for 00:54:00smallpox workers, you need money to pay for so

many things. Actually, West Bengal had not paid their smallpox workers for three

to six months. I thought, well, first of all, I can tell you why they may not be

working. If I haven't been paid for six months, I'm not going to be so

enthusiastic. But actually, smallpox workers were so loyal to--they were

working. Then when I finally told my team that we were going to eat together,

the per diem for me was enough--I could pay for their meals, too, you know.

Wherever I stayed in official dak--dak, D-A-K bungalows [ bungalows to house the

workers that delivered the mail )that were scattered, the distance that a horse

could travel in a day]. You had no way to alert them in advance that you were coming.

Usually, they had one or two rooms. You needed to get off the 00:55:00road by 4:00 p.m.,

because in West Bengal, they really did have a problem with dacoits, with

bandits. If the dacoits didn't get you, hitting a cow would certainly mess your

vehicle up, too. You needed, before the sunset, you needed to find a dak

bungalow. Now your driver usually knew where all of them were, but you needed to

get in before 4:00, so that if there were several people who wanted this

lodging, that you could get it. The dak bungalow was ten rupees for the WHO

person. If there was room for the officer, then somewhere in the back, there was

always room for your driver and paramedic, for them to stay. It's interesting,

it's 00:56:00only one time that I got in late. It was a place that had, actually, like,

three rooms, but they were all taken. That's when I played the woman card when I

came and I said, "Are all the rooms taken?" One of the men came forward and

said, "You can have my room. I'll move in with one of the other men." I said,

"I'm only staying one night, thank you very much." I'm moving on because you

never knew where the next rumor would take you. You get a rumor of rash and

fever, and you try and determine, did you see it? Did you see this rash? Did it

look like this? You know, do you know where this village is? "Yes, it's just the

one next to mine." "Are you willing, then, to get in my jeep and go with me to

show?" "Yes." But I gave a reward; just for reporting a rash and fever was a

hundred rupees. There were a lot of 00:57:00people that were coming up to the vehicle to

say, "There's a rash and fever case here," so you had to determine who sounded

like they knew what they were talking about. Then you'd go off to the village.

You never knew where you were going to stay that night. The first six months was

really hard.

Q: You had identification cards to show them, like, what it looked like, if it

was smallpox?

DAVIS: It was like a big postcard. On the front was a nine-month-old male baby,

and it showed the front of him with full smallpox pustules, and the back of him.

You said, did this rash look like this? You know, that you're trying to get at.

It was a good picture. I mean, people used to pull that photo from me and look

at it, study it. 00:58:00Until we came to this village my first week alone on the job.

In the first house, I said, "Have you seen anyone with a rash and fever like

this?" He looked at this, and he said, "I haven't seen it, but I heard that

there's a rash and fever case." I turned to my nurse, and I said, "He's not

understanding my poor Hindi." I'm sure because we'd always gotten no, no, no, we

haven't seen, heard anything. I said, "As him in real Hindi what he knows." He

said, " It's in a village, that way." I looked, it's South, it's Bangladesh, you

know. The SPX program made it absolutely clear you were not to cross

international 00:59:00 borders.

But it's really close, which would be within--if, in fact, the case is just

across the border, it's within my one kilometer, which means it's going to

happen like it did two years ago, that cases will re-enter into West Bengal. I

thought -You know who they're going to blame? "See, I told you. I told you not

to send a woman up there, and she's a Black woman, and she's American. I told

you. Bad idea".

I thought, oh, God, I could just pretend--well, let's say it's chickenpox. You

don't do anything about that. But what if it is smallpox? What if someone from

the family comes over to get something on this side of the border

I said, "Is there a health clinic close by?" Dinesh said, 01:00:00"Yes, about half a

kilometer." I said, "Let's go there and hear if they've heard anything." We

talked to the doctor, he'd had no cases, he hadn't seen anything in six months,

a year. I said, "We heard a rumor that there's a case of rash and fever, tell

them what the name of this village is." He said, "Yes, I heard it." I said,

"Well, what did you do?" He said, "It's in Bangladesh, Dr. Davis." I said, "Oh,

yes, right. Okay."

Then I left, and I thought, let me just think about this. Then I told my team, I

said, "Look, I have a laissez-passer. I'm just going to sneak across the border,

I'm going to take a quick look, and then I'll come back. If it's chickenpox, we

can all just relax. If it's smallpox, we're going to have to do containment."

Dinesh said, "Ah, 01:01:00Dr. Davis, do you speak Bengali?" I said, "I don't even speak

Hindi that well." The driver said, "We're not letting you go alone. We're going

to go with you." We three looked so different, sneaking, and walking across

the--I mean, like, if you wanted to cause attention, here are three clearly

unrelated people that are coming. I told them, "Okay, as we're walking there," I

said, "I'm not going to speak, because for sure they're going to see I'm a

foreigner. Dinesh, you talk to them and ask where this village is. They're not

going to ask why we want to go, we just want to go, and then we'll get a bullock

cart or something to take us there."

We went across, and we climbed into this bullock cart and got to this village

and I jumped 01:02:00out. Of course, they don't get too many foreigners, the villagers

surround us. I said, "I need to speak to your chief." Chief was coming, and I

said, "I heard a rumor that you have a smallpox case here in the village. Is

that true?" He said, "Yes, we have smallpox." "You do?" I said, "Can I see it?"

We went to the house-- they were in seclusion. It was parents with six kids, and

they'd all finished their disease; there were just the last two that had active

pustules, scabs, you know. That was my first case of smallpox, so I asked them,

"Can I"--well, first I told the chief, "I'm WHO. I'm in India, but I heard you

had a case of smallpox. you're really close to us, so I just needed to make

sure. " Have they been 01:03:00across to India?" "No." he said, "Has anyone in your

village?" No! But I'm not believing. "Where did you go--how did you get this?"

They'd gone to a wedding. I said, "Have you told your Thana district people

about this case?" He said he hadn't. I said, "You have to go, today after we

leave, and report these cases because the team has to come and then go to where

that village was to start doing containment and stuff, and also to vaccinate

around here." I said, "But I'm WHO, I need to get across the border again and

start doing containment on my side."

When we got back, first thing, I thought, well, I had collected scabs, and I

filled out the form, name of the village, and yada, yada, yada, yada. I had that

with me. I said, "We have to 01:04:00find the telegraph office."

Q: Right, I was going to ask you about communication. What was communication like?

DAVIS: Yes. That's the first thing. We had smallpox, so I went to the telegraph

office, and I said, "Can I have the form for a telegram?" He said, "I'll do it."

I said, "I know how to write and how to speak English. Give me the form." You

know, the office was crowded. There were a lot of people there. I really didn't

want to be saying something out loud so others would hear about smallpox. He did

not like that this woman--anyway, he thrusts this piece of paper at me. I wrote,

"Eight cases, smallpox, village So-and-So, district So-and-So." Then, I thought,

oh shit, I have to say Bangladesh. I'm going to be in deep Kimchi.

I mean, 01:05:00Calcutta hasn't even seen me. All they're going to see is, this is from

Dr. Cornelia Davis. We don't even know if she can recognize smallpox. What's

she doing in Bangladesh? I said, "Oh, I am in real trouble!" Anyway, I finished

it, and he takes it, because he has to figure out how much I owe. He reads this

out loud! "Eight cases, smallpox in village," and I thought, I want to kill you.

I thought, all of Cooch Bihar will know tonight about this, and that I went to Bangladesh.

We got that out, the telegram off. Then I said--Take me back to the village, we

need to start getting prepared. Abdul, you need to go to the district health 01:06:00office, and you need to get a smallpox worker and smallpox vaccine right now.

It's afternoon, but we have to get started. I'm going to stay here and talk to

the village, tell them what I found, and start renumerating everyone in each

house so that when the smallpox worker comes, he can go really fast. Also,

looking at the time, I need to be off the border before 6:00 pm. I talked to the

village, well, with a translation from Dinesh. I said, "Does anyone here speak

and write any other language? I don't care what it is." "Yes, Hindi." I said,

"Okay, will you help us, because I need you--here's the paper--we're going to go

house to house, we're going to put a number on the house and then list all the

people in this house. When a smallpox worker comes, he can easily see, there's

nine people here, so he can just check them off and make sure he gets every one

of 01:07:00them," you know?

Then I talked to the village. Are there any mothers here who have children,

babies under two? I said, I know you're really anxious, you don't want the baby

to get anything. They need to get vaccinated. I will come to you each

separately, I'll examine the child, make sure he's healthy. I assure you when

the smallpox worker comes back, I showed them, it doesn't hurt. You know,

vaccinate me on this arm to show. I teased the men, Did I cry? I'm a woman. Are

you afraid to get a vaccination? They would laugh, and the women would laugh.

Everyone is agreeable. Nobody's going to refuse. I said, "We need to start

getting the work done."

Five-thirty I needed to leave, and they were still doing enumeration. The

smallpox worker was 01:08:00staying the night there, they were putting him up. There

were three villages--the driver also brought back the maps from the DHO, there

were three villages that were on the border and that were within the one

kilometer that I'm using to determine--in one kilometer from a case, you have to

vaccinate everybody. Ten kilometers, you have to just search for rash and fever.

Then I had to see how many other villages we need to do the search in, and then

I figured, okay, the plane only comes up once a week, it's on Saturday. This is

Wednesday. I have three days to get all of these villages searched, vaccinated,

rash and fever cases looked at. Then before--I said, I knew they were going to

send someone from Calcutta, because this woman is crazy, and I'm going to be in

deep Kimchi, so I might as 01:09:00well do everything correct.

Then when we got to the end of the third day, it was so hot, I was staying at a

Jesuit mission. I told the priest, Father LaFerla I said, "I'm going up to

Darjeeling. I just have to get two days of cool air. I will be back here on

Monday before 7:00." I said, "I know that someone's coming from Calcutta, would

you please put them up?" Yes, he would. "I will be here before 7:00 am on Monday

to meet them," Sure enough, when I arrived at a quarter of seven, pulled into

the parking lot, Father LaFerla came out and he said, "There's someone here, a

doctor from Calcutta, from WHO. His car drove up, but he flew up on Saturday. He

went 01:10:00with the District Health Officer to the border to see the villages. He's in

eating breakfast. I told him you're coming." He had given me a heads-up, so I knew.

I came in and sat down and said, "Hi, I'm Dr. Davis." He introduced himself. He

said, "The District Health Officer took me to the border. He told me that he had

found the cases in Bangladesh." I said, "What?" I said, "He hasn't even been to

the border when I was doing this." He said, "calm down". He said, "When I went

to the border village and I got there, of course all the village came around and

they said "Yes. The lady epidemiologist is the 01:11:00one who was here with us, who

told us about the cases in Bangladesh, who took the names, vaccinated, and all.

It was the lady epidemiologist who did that." The epidemiologist from Calcutta

said, "We know this DHO. He is nefarious. Besides, it was your name on the

telegram, so we knew it was you." He said, "Job well done." I was waiting to get

chewed out about, not crossing international borders. And I expected to be told

you're coming back to Calcutta. He said, "You did a great job."

Q: Who was the person who came up from Calcutta?

DAVIS: I don't know. It was a European.

Q: Okay.

DAVIS: But older, experienced, wise, seeing thousands of cases, and said, "You

did good."

Q: How did you feel about that?

DAVIS: I did. I was worried about 01:12:00crossing the border, but I was even more

worried about cases re-entering, re-introducing smallpox into our side, and

being blamed for it. I loved it, I did good! You know, I searched diligently for

two years--I never saw another batch of smallpox cases in India, outside of

[those 8 cases in Bangladesh], 01:12:35].

Q: Wait, I thought you were only supposed to be there six months.

DAVIS: Oh, well, yes.

Q: What happened there?

DAVIS: I did so well in my six months up country, because most doctors, junior

doctors, you only had one district. I had three districts. I really--I put

lookouts, vaccinators, I paid along the border where I saw major--you know, the

border was not marked, and it didn't have a wall. There was only 01:13:00one official

crossing, there I kept a vaccinator all the time. Anyone coming in, I told

immigration, they had to get that. I don't want to see whether or not they had a

vaccination before, don't let them in unless they're vaccinated. But then there

are all these people that are coming across the border at other places, so I'd

go to the village, I'd see who looked like he had some brains, and I'd hire him

as a smallpox worker and put him, I'd say, "At night is when I need you to work,

I need you to just--we don't need names, I just need you to keep a record of how

many people you're vaccinating so I can get an idea, at the end of the month--I

can come at any time to check your work, and then I'll pay you when I come." I

had six or eight people along the border, who were just vaccinating people

coming 01:14:00in from Bangladesh because really, 180 kilometers, I really worried about

smallpox being reintroduced.

The Bangladesh president was assassinated after I was there for about two

months. Of course, I didn't hear anything at all about it, but of course the

U.S. Embassy in Delhi had heard about it in advance. They called up the UN

[United Nations] Agencies and asked, are there any Americans that are up on the

border with Bangladesh, because, quietly, the president's been assassinated.

They're going to say that it's India, that's assassinated them, and there's

probably going to be war, and you need to get any American out. 01:15:00Well, apparently, I was the only American way up there, surrounded on three

sides by Bangladesh. They said, "You, you get her out, you get her out

immediately. That's your problem, you need to get her and bring her down." I

came back late one night, and there was this guy at my doorstep waiting for me,

and he had three letters; one was explaining him, that his job was to find me. I

always told the District Health Officer, "This week, I'm going to be in this

area," you know, so they kind of knew where I was. He knew I was going to be

coming back that night. Then he said, "You need to open up those others." The

other one was a letter to the Highest Armed Forces. "You are not to take Dr.

Davis's vehicle-- you are to give her all aid and 01:16:00help in helping her get down

to Calcutta." Other one was to the police commissioner, "You are not to take her

vehicle." You know because they were expecting war.

The guy who came up with these letters, he said, "They told me no matter what

time it is, you're to leave. You're to leave immediately from here." I said,

"It's already 11:00 at night." I said, "Go down and get my staff." They came up,

I let them see the letters. We never were out on the road after dark. I said,

"At least we have to go and get to Jalpaiguri, so I can get where my"--I had a

duffle bag and stuff, pick that up, it's on the way down to Calcutta.

I told the 01:17:00driver, "Go and find out where the gas station guy lives. You've got

to wake him up, fill the car up all the way with petrol. We're leaving tonight."

I asked him, "Are you supposed to come with us?" He said, "No, you're to travel

alone, and you're not to tell anyone. You're just to leave." Well, even though I

didn't like the DHO--you know, it's hard. You just disappear. What if they

worry, did you get in a car accident, or what? I wrote this letter, I just said,

"I've been ordered to come to Calcutta. It was late at night, so I told your

chowkidar, don't wake you up. He's to give you the letter in the morning." I

told him, "Don't wake him up. In the morning you give him this letter."

Then we took off, we arrived, like, 01:18:002:00 in the morning to the mission. Father

LaFerla had come down because the gates never opened. I mean, who is coming at

this time of night? He sees me, he says, "Come into my office." I said, "Don't

get angry at me. Read these letters that I had." He said his buddy was the head

of the Armed Forces, they would be drinking buddies, actually. He said, "I just

saw the guy tonight," he said they had heard about the assassination, and they

were given explicit orders, they were not to cross the border. But if Bangladesh

soldiers came, they were to repel them. They were getting all ready and set up

for being attacked. He said, "I understand why WHO wants to get you out." He

said, "It's 01:19:002:00 in the morning already. Send your guy out to get some more

petrol here, I'll wake you at 5:00 in the morning. If you start, you should, by

eight hours, be able to get to Calcutta, going straight. At least you can get a

little bit of rest. I'll have the cook make you a meal before you go. I'll see

you off." It felt like so--will we ever be back up here? What's going to happen?

Are we going to have war?

Anyway, we leave at 5:00 and we're driving down, somewhere halfway to Calcutta,

we hear this honking, you know? We look, and I said, "It's a smallpox jeep!" We

pulled to the side, and there was another smallpox--he's from Sweden or

someplace. He said, "What are you doing 01:20:00here?" I said, "Did you get notice?" He

said, "Notice? Notice about what?" I said, "The Bangladeshi president's been

killed. I was called to come down to Calcutta."

He said, "I haven't heard anything, I'll go back and see if anything is on the

radio," or whatever. I said, "Well, I have to keep on going because," I mean, we

hadn't even been--I hadn't been to Calcutta. My driver never been to Calcutta.

We didn't know where WHO was. But they're really good at asking questions.

Anyway, we get in around, I don't know, 11:00 in the morning, and we go right

in. WHO's really happy to see me. They said, "You'd better go right away 01:21:00to the

Embassy." I said, "What Embassy?" He looks at me like, "Your Embassy, the

American Consulate. You'd better go." I said, "Well, should I go and get

showered?" "Go! Now. Take your American passport with you." I thought, let me

take a taxi, because these people don't know where it is. The guard outside, I

showed my American passport. I come into the Marine Guard, he says, "They've

been waiting for you." He calls up, "Dr. Davis with WHO, she's here." I went up

to the Consul's office. He said, "I just want to call the political officer in."

They all wanted to know what was going on, had I heard? I said I hadn't heard

anything, until WHO had sent this guy up with these letters for me. I said, "But

I started at 01:22:005:00 in the morning, and there were all these big Army trucks that

were heading up to the Army post there, filled with soldiers and all." After I

counted 150, I got tired, and I stopped. But they were getting ready, and they

expected to be attacked. I said, "But Father LaFerla, who's buddies with the

guy, said that the orders for the Indian side were, they were not to go and

attack, they were just to stay on the Indian side, repel them if they come." I

said, "That's all I know." But there were lots of troops and stuff going up there.

The last two months, I had to stay in Calcutta. My team went back with the car. 01:23:00I said, "I have all these vaccinators that need to be paid." I said, "I can't

leave them." He said, "Your staff know, and we're sending money." I had told

them that, "We're sending money so they can go and pay them." I said, "Because

-- I stiff all these people? You said you were going to come and pay." "Just

calm down, Dr. Davis. Now you're going to stay here and you're going to work for

us." But it's not the same as when you're in charge of the whole thing, you

know, in your own three districts. It was after that, though, that I was offered

I got a call asking, would I want to go to Rajasthan and be at the state level

and work in the desert. I said, "Well, let me think about this," because desert,

again? I mean, I'm not a 01:24:00desert person.

But anyway, they had already announced in India that we were down to zero cases.

Now we're waiting for the certification team to come, and you're so close, you

want to be there for the end, you know? Yes, go to Rajasthan and be at the state

level, but I was going to go to every district in Rajasthan. I was going to

check, I was going to work with a smallpox team, we were going to get ready.

None of the states knew where the team would go to evaluate. It was up to them

to choose. But I knew that they would want to come to Rajasthan because they

would be really curious, they would not be certain that variolation wasn't

occurring in the desert region, and 01:25:00how are we going to prove that it's not?

I thought, of all the states, they're going to want to see West Bengal, too. But

they're going to want to come to Rajasthan. I knew we would have the

certification team. We needed to be ready, we needed to have all the forms,

everything correct. WHO Delhi wanted us to do a special search, a special search

in the desert, where we would look to see who had been vaccinated, who's the

youngest child, to determine when was the last time there was an active

case--who had pockmarks. When was the last smallpox case in Rajasthan. When was

it eradicated? I mean, at least in the desert, people are far apart, so it's

hard for transmission to occur because it has to pass person to person; it's

hard to keep that propagation going when you have these 01:26:00 nomads.

They said, "Your task, besides doing this special search, you need to find

out"--I mean, they knew for certain that in Pakistan in the desert, and

Afghanistan in certain areas, they did variolation. Why wasn't it occurring in

India? Just didn't seem right, even though everyone said, "Never heard of this.

What are you talking about?" That was my task, to find that out.

Q: West Bengal is on the--if you're looking at the--

DAVIS: The east.

Q: --the east. Then you're moving all the way over to the Western part of India.

DAVIS: The west, India.

Q: It's a much larger region.

DAVIS: I'm right next to Pakistan.

Q: Pakistan, yes.

DAVIS: Then you have the Thar Desert. Fair enough, I mean, there was the border

patrol there, they used camels, you know--the border patrol. As soon as I got

there, I talked to 01:27:00all the DHOs in the border area, and of course, they said, "I

don't know what you're talking about, Dr. Davis."

Q: Okay, before you go further, you've got to explain what variolation is.

DAVIS: Okay.

Q: That's a new thing for a lot of people.

DAVIS: People get confused between variolation and vaccination, okay. In

variolation, the person tries to find someone who has a mild case of smallpox,

and they will either take the pus or the scabs and they will make a solution.

Then in scratches in the skin, they will put this solution on, so it kind of

looks like you're vaccinating, but what they're really doing is, you are

transferring smallpox from this person immediately to this other person. You're 01:28:00giving them smallpox. They can get smallpox, and they don't necessarily get a

mild case, they could get a blown-up case. They could die from this. They're

transferring smallpox. In vaccination, you're taking the antigen and you're

attenuating [weakening] it in some way, so that it causes an immunity, but it

doesn't cause you to get the disease. You don't break out in pustules, and

you're not going to die. It protects you. It gives you immunity.

You don't want this practice going on where you're spreading smallpox, but

everyone is saying they never even heard of it, and they think you're crazy. I

went up to the border patrol to ask--I needed camels, guides, and maps. In

addition, I looked into 01:29:00the history of smallpox in these desert areas and seeing

what percent of the population had been vaccinated. Most of the people in the

desert were Muslim, and it turned out -- variolation was done by the fakirs,

their priest when someone--because they also know a lot about health, and they

would be called by nomad groups if their group got smallpox.--If one got it,

it's just much better if everyone got the disease at the same time. Because

every year you get pulled aside and have to stop the whole group because

somebody or a family is sick. It was important to find a fakir. But when you

started asking, "Do you have any fakirs who did this variolation?" They wanted

to know, why do you want to know? They were suspicious of the government. They

said, "All of them went to 01:30:00Pakistan when the partition occurred."

I said, you think something bad is going to happen to them? I said, "Look, I

just want to talk to them." You know me. What am I going to do? I'm not going to

put them in jail, no, I just want to know if they did this practice. Maybe they

didn't even do it.

I got three names, two of which, I figured out, were dead. One was still alive

and here, on our side. He was somewhere in this section of the desert. We went

out, for a week, going from encampment to encampment, and they'd say, "Oh, he

was here a week ago." "But where does he live? Where does he stay?" "Somewhere

over there." 01:31:00We would keep on going, until finally, I thought, this is like a

needle in a haystack. I'm not going to be able to find this guy. Then we came

across this homestead, this old lady was there tending the fire. We came down on

our camels, and I said, "I'm Dr. Davis, and I'm looking for this man." She said,

"Yes, that's my husband. This is our homestead." I said, "Okay, where is he?"

She said, "He was just called, some kid had some health problem. He went off on

the camel." I thought I can't stand this. We're always missing him. Then I said,

"Well, let's talk to her, let's see if she even knows what I'm talking about."

I said, "There used to be this practice where they would do. But the name

variolation it doesn't mean anything to her. 01:32:00"Where you would take some scabs

and you would" I said, "Oh, yes. Yes. I helped my husband prepare everything. I

can tell you exactly what we did. We'd get a call--, we would both go out to the

nomad community. He'd look, and examine all the ones who had smallpox. He would

take the person who had the mildest case, and then we would take the scabs. then

we would take breastmilk and I would boil that, chop it up, make the solution.

Then I took seven needles, needles like to sew, and you would bind them together

with thread. You dipped the needles in the solution. Then you pierced the snuff

box [the thin skin between the thumb and the first finger] this is where you

vaccinated the person, in this area. You 01:33:00would do five, six times, puncture the

skin, with the solution. Then you'd take the leaf of the berry plant and then

you wrap it up. Then in five to seven days, they would have smallpox." I said,

"Is your husband still doing that?" She said, "No." I said, "But why not?" She

said, "Because the government has a program for it." I said, "Okay, he probably

has a little jar where he keeps scabs," because they'd already done studies,

like, twelve years on, scabs still had the virus. WHO already knew that. What

they were concerned about is, you've got this jar, and then this kid 01:34:00 twenty

years later comes, is playing in the desert. He opens this jar, and the scabs

scatter. The child gets infected, he transmits it to others, -and you

reintroduce smallpox.

I said, "He's got this little jar with some scabs. I need to know where"--She

said, "Why would he keep scabs? Smallpox was everywhere. You didn't need to keep

it-- you could always find someone who had smallpox to make the solution. He

never kept scabs; we don't do that." I wrote that all up, and I thought, we're

home free. The thing is, at partition, a lot of the fakirs had gone to Pakistan

because they were Muslim, had moved there. He was the last of the people who did

it, and he hadn't done it 01:35:00for--now I'd have to look up the paper. I mean, he

hadn't done it for ten years. "Once the government program started, he wasn't

called anymore." "He didn't keep scabs. You don't have to worry about that. You

want some tea?" "Yes." Do you know? Then I wrote that up and I thought, "We

don't have to worry about that. They did do variolation. But they don't do it

now." Then we had the report from the three districts in the desert area about

when was the last case there, looking at pockmarks from people. There was a

five-year-old. It had been a long time since they'd had smallpox in the desert!

Of course, the certification team wanted to come out, and to see Rajasthan, and

of course to ride on a camel. 01:36:00One month before they're coming, I get a call

about a rash and fever case in the desert district of Barmer. Delhi is calling

me-- everyone is calling me to go out to Barmer. I thought, well, it's got to be

chickenpox. You know, the DHO was a young guy. He'd reported this, --he thought

it was chickenpox, but it was very early in the stage of the rash. He didn't

know he was supposed to report it to the State. He reported it to Jaipur and

Delhi. And now here's the expert coming. Villagers all around want to know what

my opinion is, and I said, before I go in, because we had four hundred people or

so, I said, "Who is the person who reported the rash and fever case, because I

want to give them their reward. They did the right 01:37:00thing. The person gets the

reward for reporting a rash and fever case. It doesn't matter if it's chickenpox

or smallpox. Let me give them their reward." I wanted them to know, that we paid

people for reporting rash and fever cases. I said, "Now take me to this case."

Now it's dark, you have the kerosene lantern, you're looking at this

eleven-year-old, rash on the dark skin is hard to see, even in daylight. But I

circled an area and I could see different stages, with papular, macular, rashes

on the trunk. Now chickenpox rash is fast evolving. In four hours, you're going

to see some other crops. I said, "I made the circle, I only see macular and

pustular. No rash on the palms or soles of the feet. I was 01:38:00pretty certain it's

chickenpox. But I'm going back again in 4 hours."

Four hours later, now we have crusting and new papular rashes. It's chickenpox.

I told the DHO, "You go, send a telegram now to Delhi that Dr. Davis says it's

chickenpox. I'm going back to the major district town and get real good night's

sleep," I mean, a month before the certification team's coming, and we've got a

rash and fever case in Rajasthan, that's all I need. God, really? Why me?

Really? You know, I loved it.

Q: There were a lot of relationships that you made there. Do you still have

people there that you know? Have you gone back?

DAVIS: I worked twice in India, twenty years 01:39:00apart. When I came back, I went to

Rajasthan, because I wanted to see--I had a five-year-old daughter at the time

that I had adopted. We went to Rajasthan. I had been really good friends with a

guide -E.P. Pram- who took tourists around Jaipur. He used to bring me--the

overland tours, the ones who were the guides, he'd bring them to my house,

because he knew there weren't any ex-pats in Jaipur at that time. He knew you

needed to speak with some of your own kind. They'd come and bring beer, and I

would share my scotch, and they'd tell me tales about going overland, coming to India.

I tracked Pram down because I knew he could help me track my smallpox workers in 01:40:00Jaipur, to find out where they were. My driver, Abdul Hakim, was still working,

but he was off on an assignment. And the nurse Ramesh Chandra had gone to his

ancestral home out of Jaipur. I had a card, and I said to Pram, "Give it to this

guy to give to Ramesh if he ever comes back to Jaipur, just to show him that Dr.

Davis came back to see how he was doing and what he was doing." This guide Pram

was a very intellectual person, who could explain all the customs of Rajasthan.

and where he thought I needed to look.

Q: What was his name?

DAVIS: His name? --I'll have to look it up. [E. P. Pram]

Q: That's fine.

DAVIS: Yes. No, 01:41:00but so I came back, with my parents when I was posted in

Pakistan (1981-82). I brought them to India to see the Taj Mahal because

Pakistan was really hard traveling! I wanted to show them Jaipur and Lahore.

When we came to Jaipur, Pram my former tourist guide got our hotel rooms. He

took good care of us and showed my parents where I used to work and took us up

to the palace. Yes, it was fun to reunite. I was hoping to get back. We were

supposed to have a big 40th Anniversary SPX eradication in 01:42:002020, but that was

canceled due to COVID. Then some UK [United Kingdom] film producer asked me,

would I be interested in going back to Rajasthan, and to try to find the old

people? I said, "Yes, I'm ready to do that if you're paying!" I've been

contacted after I wrote my memoir Searching for Sitala Mata, one of the sons of

the DHO in the desert district Barmer, wrote, "You don't me, but you know my

father. He's died, but I want to write up what he's done, and I saw your book."

He had written to ask me, what I remembered of his dad, during that time when I

had asked them to do the special search. 01:43:00At least the son would still be alive.

You know, the thing is, most of those people are dead. I mean, I was young. Now

I'm not young, so--[Laughs]

Q: It happens.

DAVIS: Yes, right. To all of us, I guess.

Q: I wanted to return to one thing that I thought was really interesting, is

that communication, it's not like it is today where we have cell phones and

everybody can talk to each other, and we can talk to each other like we're doing

right now, and we're not in the same place. What was the communication like when

you were--even in West Bengal, just to get--was it all by letter? Was it by word

of mouth? How long did that communication take? You sent a telegram, was that

twenty-four hours? Or did they get that telegram, like, in--

DAVIS: No, a telegram you'd get it within an hour or so.

Q: Okay.

DAVIS: That's why Calcutta was so concerned that this woman (me) was crazy loose

up there--

Q: All right.

DAVIS: --and what was going on? 01:44:00I mean, the only way to communicate, there was

no cell phone or computer. That's why I let the DHOs know in person where I

planned to search in advance. When I would come into a new district, I would

tell them, okay, this week I'm going to be along the border in this division.

The next week I would be --so they would know if they had to try and find me

about a case. You need to kind of know where I was. Then I would always

send--there are always smallpox workers around, you could send a letter to the

Chief DHO Cooch Behar. That was the chief district over the three of them;

Darjeeling, Jalpaiguri, Cooch Behar. I always let him know, even though he was

difficult to work with.

I had my own money, I could do what I want, but I wanted him to 01:45:00know where I was

in case, he had to find me. But you had to physically go and tell them, or send

someone with a chit, with a note. I mean, there weren't telephones--there was

telephone but would be, like, in a major hotel, or the DHO's office. There

wasn't anything available--and there was the post office. But that was slow. But

it always astonished me that people knew when the major festivals were. Like in

Rajasthan, there's a smallpox temple. Everyone knows when, that week when that

festival occurs, and these are people who are illiterate. There's no--there's

radio, but they don't have a radio. Then in the five-star hotel there may be a

TV [television] 01:46:00with two channels, but who goes to the hotel? But it was

amazing. About a month after we'd done the containment in those first villages

in Cooch Behar, they sent out word, they wanted me to come because they were

going to have a celebration that no one got smallpox, and they wanted to see if

I could come. I'm up some lonely road two divisions over, and I get stopped, and

he said, "You're Dr. Davis?" I said, "Yes, right." "The village where you did

the containment, they want to know at the end of the month, Friday, can you be

there for a celebration, to celebrate that nobody got sick?" I said, "You tell

them I'll be there. I will come." I thought, how did they do that? 01:47:00You know,

it's word of mouth, it's sending a runner, it's--you know. Then there's the

telegram, you send that and then everybody knows.

Q: Wow. That's community knowledge.

DAVIS: Yes. Then everyone--I mean, they know your vehicle, and then you're the

only lady. I mean, there was no woman epidemiologist Indian. It would have been

really difficult for an Indian woman doctor to break all those taboos, but I

didn't believe it, I didn't believe that I was born this caste, and this is how

I have to live my life. I'll take that bad karma on. I think I can get away with it.

In the end 01:48:00though, they treated me as if I was a white male doctor. Although

they never believed I was American. I was Indian. If we were in West Bengal,

"You're not from here, Dr. Davis, you're from Delhi." If I'm in Delhi, "You're

Indian, Dr. Davis, but you're not from Delhi, you're from Kerala." When I went

to Kerala, after all the work was over, they said, "You're Indian, but you're

not from Kerala, you're from West Bengal." I was always--you know, I said, "Why

don't you think I'm American?" I said, "You've seen the male American doctors,

they do have wives, you know?" "No, you're Indian. I don't know why you keep on

denying it. 01:49:00You do speak funny," because they're expecting you to speak with a

British accent, that you're English. And that American accent throws them a

while for a loop! But you're not American. I just gave up. Fine.

Q: Did you feel like you belonged there? Or did you just feel by yourself? Did

you ever feel alone or lonely?

DAVIS: No. You got lonely, but probably my overwhelming feeling, especially in

the first six months when I didn't know where I would sleep each night, was

exhaustion. I was tired from twelve-hour days. I can see where someone who's

twenty-eight, you can do this for a certain time. But if you were fifty--that's

why they need a junior doctor. You just can't keep up with that kind of rhythm

and what was needed. 01:50:00But it was really curious. In all those two years, there were only two times

that I couldn't--we were far away from any dak bungalow, and we had to go to the

village and ask the village headman if he would put me up because three of us

can't sleep in the jeep. I mean, two of them can sleep in the front and back

seats, but now what to do with me? The chief would put me in his wives'

compartment. But that's an uneasy sleep, too, because they haven't seen an

American, (we know she's really Indian), but she's different. Just changing in

your night clothes. And then you have your washing. Well, everyone washes, but

at the tap. You get into these pajamas, but they sleep 01:51:00in the clothes that they

have on. You're being looked at. What is this bra, these panties? You're always

on display.

Q: Right, like a zoo animal.

DAVIS: It's an uneasy sleep. I'm thankful that they let me stay, but it's

interesting that I did get to be in the dak bungalows most of the time and was

always--there was a room that was available, and the guard was also a cook. You

got in early enough, you gave him money, he could go out and make you a chicken

curry and stuff, you know.

Q: These dak bungalows, some, like, secure Airbnbs?

DAVIS: They're not Airbnbs, they were normally one or two bedrooms--something a

little better than a shack. I 01:52:00mean, it would have--there would be water

attached, and there would be a kitchen. There would be a guard station. Usually,

they didn't have a fence or anything around them. There would be the stables for

the horses, and then now used for your jeep.

Q: What did you sleep on?

DAVIS: A charpoi. It's a wooden frame bed, single, but there's a thick rope that

goes back and forth, that you lie on, the charpoi. It's a rope bed. That was the

usual. They didn't have mattresses. I bought a little Chinese red kerosene

lantern that I would read at night before going to sleep. I was a veracious

reader, and of 01:53:00course there are no libraries or books. Before I left Delhi,

there were these second-hand stores, so I went to Connaught Circus and I bought,

like, fifteen books, hardback, because you didn't have paperback. The only

things available were the exploits of the British explorers, Francis Edward

Younghusband going to Tibet. I know British history, and the Anglo-Indian War,

and all that, because I was reading these exploits. I knew where I wanted to

visit. I wanted to go and see Tibet. I wanted to, you know, to go to

Afghanistan. I read all these journals, and so that's how I'd read myself off to

sleep, and then you got up at 01:54:005:00, 6:00 in the morning, and you were off again.

The caste system was the hardest thing. There were a few instances where I

wasn't paying attention. I asked this Brahmin if he could give me a glass of

water. As soon as I said it, I regretted it. I'd left my thermos in my jeep, and

we'd been going through the village asking questions, making sure the vaccinator

had been by. He looked at me, then he closed the door. Then I turned to my nurse

and said, "Oh, Jesus, I shouldn't have asked him."

Then he came back out and he had a glass, one of his 01:55:00glasses. They have their

water pots, and inside it's cool, so the water stays pretty cool. He carefully

handed me the glass. We didn't touch hands or anything. I drank this water

because I was so parched, and I said, "Oh, you saved me." I said, "Thank you so

much." He took the glass and he smashed it on the ground to show me that I had

contaminated it, there was no amount of washing that could ever purify this

glass, so he broke it. And then I saw the sacred thread. He had to go to the

temple and would have to go through this purification thing because he handed me

this glass of water. I turned to Dinesh and I said, "Why didn't he just say, 'I

can't give it to you. I would have sent you back to the car to go and get the

thermos. I 01:56:00mean, we didn't really have to go through this big thing! Fine. You

don't want to give it to me, great. But outcasts couldn't even use the well.

They had to go to the creek where the water is--well, gives you instant

diarrhea, that was one thing. I was pretty careful about drinking water and

getting wherever I was staying to boil the water for 20 minutes so that in the

morning I could put it into my canteen. Where did I get sick? It's in Calcutta

at a four-star hotel that has all the thermoses saying, "This water's been

boiled." Then I come in one afternoon early, and I see the houseboy, is leaning

over the bathroom tub and is filling up the thermos from the tub 01:57:00water faucet. I

thought, oh my God because I'd been really drinking a lot of water. But what

really irritated me- there was no place to pee, I would really go dry during the

day. I mean, I could drink eight cups of tea and not pee, but because there

wasn't any place for a woman to pee, I'd have to wait until I got to the dak

bungalow, and then start drinking a lot of--I mean, I had my thermos, but I

needed to ration so I'd have just enough to keep me going, then drink two, three

liters at night. All the old-timers would say, "You're going to ruin your

kidney, Connie, that way. You have to keep hydrated!"--I'd say, "You guys are

men. You just stand to the side of the road and you pee. That's not easy for me.

I can't do that." Even now, when you did consultancies in 01:58:002014, '15, '16,

there's just so few places for women to pee.

Sexism--I mean, you couldn't--it was hard for the male smallpox workers to

actually talk with the women in the house. Now it's the women in the house that

are going to be taking care of anybody who's sick; you really want them to

see--you want everyone to see the smallpox photo. But you need them to recognize

the rash so that they tell their husband, I think the kid has smallpox, go, and

tell someone about this. But because of caste, because of women being in purdah,

seclusion, you can't get to them. You 01:59:00know, when I went checking up on the

smallpox workers, I'd say, "Take me to your chief first," of the village, and

I'd say, "Look, smallpox is high priority in India. When any of my smallpox

workers come, you are to find a ten-year-old male child from this village. He is

to accompany my smallpox worker, and he is to go with him house to house,"

because he can go into the house. He's ten years old. He can go in the house and

he can make sure that each of the women have seen this, that no one has seen a

rash and a fever case. Then he can report back to the smallpox worker. I said,

"Don't have him just, move on because nobody's coming to the door, or he's only

talking to the men. The men are sitting under a tree; they're not the ones

taking care of whoever is sick. 02:00:00"You can't do that. I'm going to come back and see, don't tell me you searched."

I had an uncanny ability of putting my hand on a village on a map. The DHO said,

"Oh, that village is well-covered. No, you don't want to go there--you know,

it's a long way away, Dr. Davis." Anytime they start doing an excuse, I said, "I

want you to go with me." "You know, there is a river that we're going to have

to"--I said, "We'll swim the river. Now I'm not a big swimmer, but we're going

to this village." "I think it would be better for you"--I said, "I pick the

village I want, and I want you to go with me." Then you find out there hasn't

been a smallpox worker there for a year! No DHO wanted to be reported while the

country was under "the emergency".

I mean, as a WHO consultant, you had 02:01:00extraordinary power. In fact, the

population could not refuse getting vaccinated. I never had any problem

convincing people to get vaccinated. But a number of the smallpox doctors did.

You could call the soldiers or the police and make them get vaccinated because

if you had cases, you need everyone vaccinated. You're doing containment, and

every single person has to get vaccinated within one km of a case. I could

always convince folks; you don't have to kick the door down. That was one thing,

because you're a woman, I can't force you to do anything, I can only joke with

you, or shame you. "Are you afraid of a little vaccination?" Are you going to

cry? Did I cry, ladies? No, 02:02:00But, yes, some vaccinators had problems. Then you

had to bring force. But I never did.

Q: Are there any special things that, while you were there, that really stayed

with you throughout your career?

DAVIS: Do you know your clothes are beaten on the banks of a river on the rocks,

in order to get them clean? One of my kurtas was really getting frayed. When I

was passing by the mission, I asked Father LaFerla, if had he gotten any

second-hand clothes. He said, "There's just a delivery from Calcutta today.

Connie, go on in, you can take anything you want." I went in and I saw the stack

of blouses and shirts, and a stack of pants. I 02:03:00saw this shirt sleeve, and it

looked like the sleeve of a shirt I used to have; it had these fine green

stripes and I thought, well, it can't be mine. I flipped it over, and I pulled

it out, and I said, well, I'll know if it's mine because, for camp, my mother

would iron on my name tag. That name tag was not coming out. I looked in the

collar, it said, "Cornelia Davis"--What is the likelihood? I know what my mother

did. I'm not coming back home, so she's getting rid of these camp clothes. She

sends them to St. Vincent de Paul. St. Vincent de Paul Society could send it to

Africa, or to Asia. Even if they sent it to Calcutta, why would that shipment

make it up to this one little mission in West Bengal and Cooch Behar. I also

found my jeans there, 02:04:00too! I ran, "Father LaFerla, you will not believe this."

That blew me away, I mean, that I got my own clothes back in India! I couldn't

believe it.

I also went in to see Mother Theresa when we were called down for a meeting.

Q: In Calcutta?

DAVIS: I went after a Durga festival; her mission was close to the Kali temple.

I said to another epidemiologist, "Let's go by, and we can give her some money."

She was famous. "Let's see the house for the dying," She came down and said,

"I'm busy, but I wanted to say thank you for coming by. Sister Rosa is going to

take you around and show you the different things, and thank you for your 02:05:00donation," The home for the dying was really interesting.

Q: Yes. It was sweet. After India, what did you do next?

DAVIS: I took the long road home.

Q: Yes, I can imagine.

DAVIS: Well, I thought, when will I ever be back here? WHO was giving me an

around-the-world ticket on Pan Am, so I said, all right, these overland guys

that I'd met in Jaipur, they'd said, "If you get to Afghanistan, to Kabul, you

need to go and stay in Mustafa Hotel near Chicken Street, a dollar a night." I

had that one name, so I thought, I wanted to go to Afghanistan because I'd

gotten very interested in Buddhism when I was in India. For the two weeks, three

weeks I 02:06:00was in India after smallpox was eradicated seeing the places I wasn't

posted to, I went to Goa, was also an area where Buddhism was, and Madhya

Pradesh. I went up to Varanasi to see the Burning Ghats, and also Sanchi. Then

went up to Kashmir. Then I wanted to see the tallest standing Buddha, which is

in Bamiyan in Afghanistan. I thought, I just want to see them. Then from

Afghanistan, I had the Pan Am ticket, so I'll go to Tehran and see the Peacock

Throne and the Shah was still there. Then I had a really close friend who was in

medical school with me. When I went to India, she went to teach at the medical

school in Nairobi, Kenya. She said, "Connie, when you finish up, come on to

Nairobi 02:07:00and you can stay in our house, but you've got to get here before June,

because we're going to be going on home leave, too." She had a baby overseas,

who was, almost nine months. I needed to coordinate all this so I could get to

Nairobi before they left. When I'm leaving on the plane to go on Indian Airlines

to Kabul, they said, "You're ten pounds overweight, so you need to go and pay."

I lost it and said, "Great. I've been working the last two years in the rural

area eradicating smallpox, and if you can't see it in your heart just to give me

this ten 02:08:00pounds on my duffel bag, it's fine. Tell me where I'm supposed to go

and pay." She said, "Oh, no. No. If you did smallpox, no no, you can get on."

But I thought I'm not going to get away with this all the time. I've got to

somehow get rid of baggage or luggage because I can't give this tired refrain

all the way home.

I got on the plane, and there was only one woman. That was me. I thought, what

am I doing, I knew it was going to be really different. Afghanistan was

fundamental Islam. I was wearing the Indian clothes that I would normally wear

in India, so I knew I was correct in all things. But I thought, uh--because

these guys going overland told me, you know, you're solo, female, you just don't

see too many of them, Connie, you may have a hard time. I don't know if you're

going to 02:09:00stay that long in Kabul. But anyway, I got to Kabul, and the only

hotels that you can book in advance are those that are going to be at least

three stars. The hotel that I had booked was, like, twenty-five dollars a night.

My budget wasn't going to make it on twenty-five a night. There was the Hilton,

on the hill for a hundred dollars. I thought, I've got to get over and find the

tourist office, see if they're doing a tour up to Bamiyan, get on that, then go

by and try and find Mustafa Hotel! I should move over there. A dollar a night?

This will save me.

That's what I did. Went and booked the tour to see Bamiyan. Then two years

later, the Russians came in. 02:10:00After that, the Taliban. I liked Afghanistan. While

in '77, women were still going to the university, and the young women didn't

wear the burqa, they just put a scarf over their heads. But you could feel that

it was changing, that things were tightening up, that you saw more and more men

out shopping, not women. Once the Taliban took over, everything is like it is

now! I really felt I had an opportunity to go back to when I was with USAID

[United States Agency for International Development] to join a WHO TB

[tuberculosis] survey evaluation in 2002. But then WHO deemed it was too

dangerous to send consultants, so I never got back to Afghanistan. 02:11:00Then from Afghanistan, I went to Tehran. Then Pam Am, in '77, started reducing

all of their far-flung, remote legs, you know? Like, how many people a week go

from Kabul to Tehran to Europe? They were getting ready to downsize. I get to

Tehran, and there is no more Pan Am flights! They had already canceled that leg.

I thought, oh now, how am I going to get to--my next stop is getting to Nairobi.

I just spent days running around, trying to find out what planes still came in.

But if you go out to the airport at night, and there's no room on a plane, then

how are you getting 02:12:00back? Finally, someone said, "Go to El Al." Well, I'm going

to pick an Israeli airline to take. Just getting inside the door to the--man,

you had to show your passport outside. It was like a fortress. Come inside and

again you have to show your passport. Anyway, they did have a plane, it was

leaving the next day. There was a layover in Haifa and on to Nairobi. I said,

sign me up! That was one good thing. The Pan Am ticket had so much value, the

other little airlines were fine taking that ticket and charging more money to

get out.

Q: Wow.

DAVIS: It was great. Then on to Nairobi. I was supposed to climb Kilimanjaro,

but-- my 02:13:00friends--well, no, I had one vacation in India, and I climbed to the

base camp of Mount Everest. Kilimanjaro was on my bucket list. Since my friends

were there, I asked them to see if there was a group that will take on a solo

person. There was some South African group said I could join them. Then the East

African union of Kenya, Tanzania, and Uganda was breaking up, so that meant if I

drove my friends' Land Rover across the border, it could not come back. They

said, "We love you, Connie, but we want our Land Rover. My brother's here. Can't

you just climb Mount Kenya with him?" It's the tallest mountain in Kenya. I did

that instead. Then from there, I went to Europe 02:14:00to see some people that I had

met in Jaipur, the au pair who was with a European family. But before that, D.

A. Henderson came out to India to talk to all the junior staff, to find out what

we were interested in, and what we wanted to do. He said, "Connie, you've really

done well, and WHO's starting this new EPI [Expanded Program on Immunization]

program, and I can get you in on this." I said, "You know, D. A., thank you for

offering that, it's just I think I want International Public Health. But I need

to go back because I've never really worked as a pediatrician. I need to work at

that and decide if I want 02:15:00peds, or if I really want international."

I said, "I have to turn this down." I now think, what if I hadn't? How would

life have been different if I'd gone immediately into WHO? But anyway, I went

back and I got a job at Kaiser in Oakland [California]. I did a third-year

residency, because I thought, well, you're going to have to take the boards, and

you might as well bone up on this. Two months in, I get this call in the

emergency room, and he says, "Connie?" I said, "D. A.? How did you find me?" He

said, "Are you bored yet?" I broke out laughing, and I said, "Ah, yes." He said,

"Look,"--he's dean of Hopkins [John Hopkins University] now, he said, "I have a

scholarship for you. I want you to come back 02:16:00and get a master's in public

health. It also covers your lodging and food, besides tuition." I mean, how can

you turn that down? I said, "I'm on!"

I went to Hopkins. If you're a doctor, the MPH [Master of Public Health] is only

one year. If you're anything else, it's two years. Then three months before the

ending of that, he called me down to his office and he said, "Okay, so what's

after this?" I said, "Well, I want to go back overseas." He said, "That's what

you told me. You need to apply to EIS [Epidemic Intelligence Service]. It's CDC

in Atlanta." I said, "I have not lost anything in the South. I am not going to

the South. Read my lips, D. 02:17:00A." He said, "You're the one who said you wanted to

go back overseas and maybe work for WHO or UNICEF [United Nations Children's

Fund]." He said, "You have to work in the top public health institution to be

considered. That's CDC."

He won. I went to Atlanta, and then the rest is history.

I lost the battle about CDC but it was interesting getting into international

health. D. A. was a real mentor, for those of us who were in the smallpox

program --the junior. After two years he'd find me and say, "Now where are you?

Yes. How was Pakistan? Okay, now where are you going?" I mean, he kept tabs on

what you were doing. "Aha, going to get into HIV/AIDS now? Okay." He was really

good, 02:18:00really looked after you. When you did your MPH--on the weekends, if there

was a smallpox consultant coming in, he'd have a party and he'd invite all of us

smallpox people at Hopkins to come over to meet them. He was a really a great mentor.

Q: Yes. I heard lots of stories about him. You went and became an EIS officer--

you get deployed to several different places. Then after that, you become a

Foreign Service Officer?

DAVIS: Foreign Service Officer, yes, Pakistan.

Q: You were USAID in Pakistan. Then back to CDC again?

DAVIS: No. I was a Foreign Service Officer in Pakistan. Then CDC got a big grant

to do [Combatting] Childhood Communicable Diseases [CCCD], and the triple-C-D

project was born. They were looking for epidemiologists, French-speaking. Now I

wasn't quite French-speaking, so I told CDC, "Look, 02:19:00I've always been interested

in French, and when I was in high school, I'd take some summer courses, so I'm

pretty certain that I can go overseas--I'm going to go overseas for two months

to take intensive French, then I'm going to come back and take the Foreign

Service exam for French. Then you can send me to Abidjan." They said, "All

right." They bet on me.

I went to the Francophone part of Belgium for two months and came back, and of

course, I had to get the Head of the FSI [Foreign Service Institute] to test me.

First thing she asked me was, where did I learn my French? I knew I was dead,

because first of all, I didn't take language training from them in D.C.

[District of Columbia], and I didn't go to France. I went to Belgium. That's

because the 02:20:00French were so mean to Americans, and I didn't want to put up with

it. The Belgians weren't like that.

I went to the Francophone part of Belgium, I mean, CERAN was excellent, you

know, it's just that if you'd gone through FSI training, you would have known

the five parts to the exam, and that you must speak subjunctive. If you don't

speak subjunctive, they're not going to give you a three-three. How was I

supposed to know? I took subjunctive. I knew that. I mean, I knew it, so I had

to do one more month, with the Beltway bandits, these language schools. They

knew what you needed to pass. They found someone, they said, "Where are you

going?" I said, "I'm going to Abidjan." They found someone from Côte d'Ivoire

to work with me and to go through each of the parts of the exam, but

particularly the oral where I speak 02:21:00subjunctive. The next time, I got the mean

one again, and I thought, God, you're not being helpful here. But she passed me,

three-three, and on to Abidjan.

I was based in Abidjan, but I was also to provide technical expertise to

Liberia, Mali, and Togo. There was a little bit of traveling there and getting

used to working with the French. I had the opportunity to open up model oral

rehydration therapy centers in the major hospitals in those countries. When you

consider that I had done the original research work in ORT on the Apache

Reservation. I helped prove that mothers could do this. It was just--some of the

stuff that's happened to me, it's just weird that way, you know?

Q: It comes full circle.

DAVIS: Full Circle, yes.

Q: 02:22:00We've come to almost the end of our time, too.

DAVIS: Yes, yes, right.

Q: But I want to do some reflections on your smallpox work because it seems like

that and the early days sort of set you up, prepared you for other things. What

kind of impact do you think the whole India program had on the global

eradication program?

DAVIS: Well, everybody knew, or thought they knew, India would never eradicate

smallpox. There was no way, they just had so many millions of villages, the

illiteracy, the caste system, it wasn't--if India could do it, well, then the

world could, there was a possibility that the world could eradicate 02:23:00smallpox. I

mean, Bangladesh, Somalia--they're all way smaller. I mean, they just knew. But

the thing is, Indira Gandhi, she had taken this on. She was going to show you,

Westerners, that India could do this. Smallpox was a high priority. Whatever WHO

wanted for smallpox, you got it, you know? That was the only program. When you

went into a DHO's office and you said, "I want you to drop everything and you

travel with me"--they had to. That was their directive. They could not--they

were to give you all the aid that you wanted.

Now you had money, you could buy your petrol, you didn't have to ask for help on

that. I'm sure that caused a lot of resentment in the other programs 02:24:00 because--I

mean, maybe you're in--well, the reproductive health one, because there was the

population control; people really didn't like that. Villagers would flee if they

thought it was a family planning vehicle that came. I remember early on, we came

to a village, and it was like the plague had been there, except there were no

bodies on the ground. The fires were still burning, the pot is on. It's, like,

but where did they go? Why? Then some ten-year-old boy comes out, he sees us and

he tells them, "No no no, it's smallpox." Then everyone comes back in. If it had

been family planning, they had so many men that needed to get sterilized each

month. The village headman had his quota. It was 02:25:00really--I mean, they coerced

people. It was not, I signed up because I wanted it.

But you knew who did it, because they got a transistor radio afterward for doing

that, for getting sterilized. But there was a lot of resentment against the program.

Q: Yes.

DAVIS: Then malaria had been working for years, and had never, anywhere achieved

close. It was like when smallpox was eradicated and we had a big celebration,

other WHO people would say, "Connie, so you eradicated smallpox. The kid's just

going to die of measles or diarrhea, so--" You know, and I thought, okay, you're

just jealous that we were successful. But it also became clear that when you put

so much emphasis on one 02:26:00program; there are these others, primary healthcare. You

really did need to address diarrheal disease. You know, the childhood illnesses

that were killing kids. Malaria has always been there, still is. We've got a

vaccine now that looks like it's doing something.

Q: Yes?

DAVIS: You know, I said--I did one thing now, you know, I can't help all the

rest, but you needed to go on to get away from the vertical program to the

horizontal primary healthcare. If you raise one boat, you raise them all, you

needed a different strategy. But it was such a feeling when you knew you were

close, and all your workers knew that. They 02:27:00really pulled for that. It was an

accomplishment. Still is.

Q: It is an accomplishment, yes.

DAVIS: I've worked on polio eradication and coming close. Then you have

another--when I was in DRC [Democratic Republic] Congo, as health director, you

know, an outbreak. I'm thinking, geez, we thought smallpox was hard, but polio

is just as hard.

Q: Yes. Do you think Public Health and politics have to go hand-in-hand?

DAVIS: I think the U.S. is really--it's not the U.S. I mean, when I was growing

up, I thought the '50s weren't really great for African Americans. I haven't

seen--I thought when [President Barack H.] Obama got in--all this time I'm

overseas--but that America had 02:28:00moved--you don't move on, I mean, there's

systemic racism and stuff. But we'd gotten better. But when [President Donald

J.] Trump got in, he let all the racists out of their little holes. They could

say what they want and get away with it and put in Draconian laws. You know, the

CDC that I worked at was, whatever CDC said, nobody made any attempt to say

something different. It's just incredible that you have people who know nothing

that say, you don't have to wear a mask--okay, CDC made some mistakes with

coronavirus. We're not all perfect. It's a new disease, you have to see what it

does. The 02:29:00polarization, the anti-vaxxers--I mean, most of these people wouldn't

be around if their parents hadn't gotten them vaccinated to begin with. It all

starts with a lie on autism--you proved that. But somehow, the lie stays. You

know? It's just incredible. I find it would be very hard working now at CDC. I

found it--I mean, for dengue, one of the things they sent me, I was to go to

Texas because Mexico was having a big outbreak. I was to go to the AMA [American

Medical Association] and the county, and to give lectures. Then I was to do two

serological surveys along the border, looking to see if we had infection our side.

I 02:30:00told my supervisor, I said, "Do you really think you should send me to Texas?"

He said, "Connie, do you work in virology?" "Yes." He said, "Is this an

outbreak?" "Yes." He said, "Well?" I said, "All right, I'm going." But, I mean,

I didn't want to go to Houston and see all these people, and then Austin. Austin

was nice. There were some young doctors there, and one came up after the lecture

and said, "First time in Austin?" I said, "Yes." He said, "Do you want to go and

hear some music?" I said, "Yes, if it's, okay?" Anyway, he took me to hear some

music, and then I got on the plane to go down to Matamoros, and to start the

work. I went 02:31:00out with a public health nurse who knew the community, so you've

really got to get to the community. I mean, if you're talking about some of my

reflections--you have to go to the lowest level, and you have to see what they

think and how they think, and what are their concerns. But in going with her, no

one put up any objection to me collecting information and blood from them so I

could ship them back to CDC, so we could see if dengue has been there but we

just haven't picked it up before, or what. But it's because I was with someone

from the community, they've known her, she'd worked for fifteen years. They knew

she was looking after their best interests.

Q: There was a trust issue? I mean, you trusted her?

DAVIS: A trust, yes. 02:32:00 Always.

Q: There has to be trust. Just like when you were in--the boy that you came out

and realized that you weren't there for family planning.

DAVIS: Yes.

Q: He trusted the smallpox people to do the right thing. Yes.

DAVIS: Yes, and, you know, the things I learned in smallpox fieldwork helped me

through all my fieldwork ever after. You have to get out of the capital and you

have to go down to the lowest level. It doesn't matter what even your NGOs

[Non-Governmental Organizations] tell you, this is what they found. You have to

verify it. You need to go down to the community and see, did they really do that

work? Was that correct? Probably when I worked at USAID, I'm probably one of the

few USAID Health Directors who went to the field all the time. New 02:33:00workers, I

would train them. You come with me, I want to see how you talk to people, how

you handle. This is what I do. Then I know how they are, and if they can get the

information that we need. But you've got to go to the community.

Then because I'd worked for WHO and UNICEF in Senegal, whenever any new post,

after meeting the national government ministry of health, I would go to WHO and

UNICEF, because I knew they would have asked, who's the new person coming on?

Where have they worked? They would say, "You know, Connie, this new one, she's

worked in UNICEF." They know you know who they are and what UNICEF is, you know?

I always wanted to work for UNICEF, because I couldn't understand how they got

to go 02:34:00down and work with community NGOs, and yet WHO couldn't. I mean, we had

nothing set up, no platform set up for us to do. Why? Why? Because in their

charter, it's written that they can go, whereas WHO has to go to the ministry of

health. That's why it made it really hard when I was at the United Nations

Program on HIV/AIDS, which was run by WHO. The six agencies were supposed to be

putting HIV/AIDS in their mainstream programs.

But we also, WHO, was tasked with giving grants to these little community NGOs

and stuff. I thought, you know, they had to make new rules just for this program

they had to make new procedures. I mean, even to 02:35:00get a desk and a chair for me,

you didn't have any procurement rules set up. Because if you sat in the Ministry

of Health, furniture would be given to you. You know, it was like, you guys,

this is crazy. It was like reinventing the wheel! Whereas with UNICEF,

immediately down to the lowest level. Anyway, we came through that. Just to show

you the difference, though, twenty years later, I went back to India. I knew I

should never repeat a country. It's not good, because it's never the same.

Q: No.

DAVIS: HIV/AIDS was not high priority in India. It was stigmatized. It was so

difficult working. I thought, but people know me from before, it's going to be

easy! Man, sex, HIV, telling people they need to use a condom--it wasn't. It

wasn't. That was 02:36:00really hard work, HIV/AIDS. But we, UNAIDS [United Nations

Programme on HIV/AIDS] funded an NGO [non-governmental organization] that was

working with injecting drug users and using needle exchange, something that

still isn't done a lot in the States. I mean, this was in--what year was that I

went back? Twenty years after '75, so in 1996 or something.

Q: Mid-'90s? Yes?

DAVIS: The director of the NGO came in and told me, "Connie, the eighth Tibetan

has walked into my clinic. You have got to get in touch with the Dalai Lama and

tell him that somebody is selling heroin up in a town that's below Dharamshala,

and if he knows that he can tell the Tibetan community 02:37:00to stay away from this,

and all." I said, "Yes, Dr. [Luke] Samson, I'm just supposed to pick up the

phone and say, 'Dalai Lama, this is Dr. Connie Davis with UNAIDS.'" He said,

"You know what, Davis? I have told you-- I've done my duty. How you get in

contact, what you want to do--that's your problem." I thought, okay, how am I

going to--I don't even have a telephone number. But I know that he has his

minister of health up in his area. I know their address, so I have a letterhead,

Indians like letterheads. I had the secretary type that I'm in charge of this

HIV program, it's a new disease, it's deadly. One of my NGOs has seen eight

Tibetans doing injecting drug use, and this is a serious problem. I'm willing to

come up and talk to the Dalai Lama about this new 02:38:00disease. I sent it off, this

letter, and thinking, well, first of all, it's going to take a week or two weeks

for his minister of health to get it. Let's just see what happens.

It turns out the Dalai Lama had a dream that there was a new disease that was

affecting Tibetans. He called his minister of health in, and he said, "Is there

some new disease that's killing Tibetans?" The minister of health said, "Dalai

Lama, there are many things that are killing Tibetans. But there's no new

disease. They're dying of malaria, TB." He said, "No, I had a dream, it was a

very disturbing dream, so I want you to 02:39:00call all the communities in Nepal and

India and you ask them if there's some new disease that's killing Tibetans. You

call the communities that are in South India" They had given some big tracks of

land to Tibetans in the forest--hot. I mean, I don't know why anyone would go

down there, but they needed more land. "You call them," he said, "there's some

new disease."

Then the next day, the minister of health gets my letter. He comes running to

the Dalai Lama, and he says, "There's this Dr. Davis, and she says there's this

new disease called HIV/AIDS, and it's killing Tibetans. She said she can come up

and tell us about it." He said, "I'm coming down to Delhi in two weeks. You give

her a private appointment and we'll get together."

When I got the letter back from them, I called Luke, I said, "You're coming with

me in case they want to know about these Tibetans." When we walked into the 02:40:00meeting, I walked through the door, the first thing the Dalai Lama said to me

was, "I had a dream about you." I thought, oh shit, you know, like, wow, about

me? Then I told him, "Okay, my problem is, I don't have any more money for

HIV/AIDS, and number two, the money we get for AIDS, it's for the Indian

program." I can't really take their money, I'd have to go through--I mean, they

were fine with letting the Tibetans come in and all, but it's another thing when

you start talking about if I can have some of your money for Tibetans. I said,

"Look if you can call your trainers, your health educators, to come to

Dharamshala, I can come up and do a training with Luke, and we can train your

first 02:41:00staff. I can bring up all of our UNAIDS materials," because we did the

modules for HIV/AIDS. "Then I can leave some people to help you--I mean, we have

it in Hindi, too. We have it in English-Hindi, but to sit with you while you're

translating it into Tibetan to do this. But I don't have any money that I can

give to you right now, this year, to bring the staff together. I'm just all out

of money, I've given it all away. But you tell me when you're ready, I'll drop

everything and do that." At that moment I only had six months left of the

three-year posting.

He didn't get back to me until my last week in India. I had planned to go relax

somewhere with my daughter, and I said, ok, I promised. I 02:42:00actually had a Tibetan

nanny who took care of Romene the last two years in Delhi. I said, "You go into

this resort in Delhi and take Romene so she can play and all. I'm going up to do

this week's training." I'm so glad I did, because, to me, it's like I did my bit

to save the Tibetans--because once the Dalai Lama knew about it, he could alert

the community, number one, that injecting drugs is bad, that people--I mean,

they moved those people who were bringing drugs out, once he got wind of what

was going on. Then people started hearing about HIV/AIDS. He brought health

staff from Nepal and from the Southern communities, and so we could provide the

initial training. I had another private meeting at the end of the 02:43:00training with

him, and they gave me two little Tibetan carpets, and thanked me for coming up

and doing the training and all. Yes, it was really heartwarming to--

Q: Yes.

DAVIS: When I was in Delhi, I was trying to get to Bhutan, but it takes so long.

I was finished, and never got back to Bhutan, except as a tourist, years later.

What I found is that the basics that I learned in smallpox field work stayed

with me and were the guiding forces through all of my work 02:44:00overseas. Since I

worked as a Foreign Service Officer, [U.S.] State Department people, they knew

that. They trusted you in another way than if you're just a contractor, you know?

Q: Yes.

DAVIS: Because I worked in WHO and UNICEF, they always supported me in every

country, you know, for what I thought we should be doing, and I supported them.

Even when I moved to Mexico! Not looking to work here, looking to retire and

relax and go into community theater and write my memoirs. But then when this

coronavirus thing started early 02:45:00on in 2020 when the White House would not let

CDC send out their initial recommendations on prevention, they squashed that,

the manuals and stuff.

You know, I'm on the smallpox listserv, so someone at CDC sent that manual to

us. They said, "Look at this, you see if you can use it, or whatever." I looked

at it, and I thought, why let the Mexican-- or my state start from scratch on

this? I mean, this would be useful. I went to my lawyer and notario [notary],

who has connections up at the state, and I said, "This is not something that I

want to give to the municipality here. It's something that somebody at the state

level is now trying to figure out what they should be 02:46:00doing about this new

disease. I'm not saying that this is a panacea for them, but they can use this

as a guideline. If it makes sense for Mexico, see what you need to twerk." I

said, "I give you permission," of course, they're going to say, "Where did this

come from? Is this legit?" I said, "You can tell them, I worked for CDC, I

worked for WHO. You can give them my name. I'm not trying to get on a board, I

don't want--you need to be better in Spanish because if you're convincing

people, you can't have a translation. You've got to hear it and say, 'No, that's

wrong, that's not what I said.'"

I said, "But you can tell them, all I want is, so they don't start from scratch.

You can start from what our top brains thought, and now you modify and apply."

The state came out with some good 02:47:00recommendations and stuff. I said, "Don't

mention my name. You can tell them what it is, but ask them--don't say, 'Dr.

Davis from CDC,' because I'm not now from CDC. I don't want to get in a big

argument about stuff. But if they can use it, I'm happy. I'm glad because that's

my bid to help Mexico, where they're being hospitable to me."

Q: That's a good story.

DAVIS: Yes.

Q: I've got to ask you about the necklace around your neck now. What is it, the

beautiful amulet?

DAVIS: Oh, this beautiful amulet. When I was in Rajasthan, I used to wear this.

I had lots of smallpox amulets. But in most of India, Sitala Mata, the smallpox

goddess, is represented by an old woman riding on a 02:48:00donkey, and she has a

winnowing basket in her hand. But in Rajasthan, the myth was, the story was that

seven sisters and one brother were out in the forest one day, and they came upon

an old lady who told them about a way to keep healthy against smallpox, and they

needed to worship her by bringing water and cool things. Don't have a fire

going, you need cooling substances and beverages for her, and then you might

come down with it, but you won't die. I got this to wear. All the villagers

immediately know Sitala Mata, this representation--so they knew I was working on

smallpox. I didn't have to say a word, even if I'm just walking through the 02:49:00village, they know that!

Q: Yes. It's a wonderful talisman, yes. We've come to the end, and I just wanted

to ask, are there any final thoughts that you'd like to say?

DAVIS: Well, I think I said before in the reflections on smallpox how it really

laid the foundation for me in international public health.

Q: How did it affect your daughter?

DAVIS: You know, she didn't--it was way after.

Q: Her--

DAVIS: I mean, I didn't adopt her until Ethiopia--

Q: Okay.

DAVIS: --in the Ethiopian War, in 1990.

But she's been really interested in--well, smallpox is in the news, and 02:50:00 you're

being called by, "Maybe you'll go back to India, mom, and take me," you know, on

this trip and stuff. But remember, she was in India with me during the second

time around (1995-98). She does remember India and riding horses in the desert

and going to stay with my guide Pram in his ancestral home when he had retired.

I think, it was just a fluke opportunity that was given to me to work in

smallpox. But it was--those people had a vision. I mean, clearly, D. A.

Henderson wanted more young doctors to go into 02:51:00public health. On a certain

point--you know, as a clinician, you're treating one child, one case. You could

treat--you had an impact when you worked on public health because there were

hundreds, thousands of people that you could really make a difference on. In all

of the work that I've done, from childhood immunizations to malaria control, to

yellow fever, cholera, Rift Valley [fever], hemorrhagic fever, HIV/AIDS, TB, I

can look back and say, I feel really good, the work that I've done, that I've

saved thousands and thousands of lives, and trained national workers. Have seen

over the thirty-five years, 02:52:00when I first went to WHO/AFRO in Brazzaville,

sitting around the table of consultants, they were all white males, and Connie.

Over the years they have been replaced by Africans who have been trained, some

of them by CDC, some of them with others. But that's the way it should be. There

are more women now when I'm ending up than when I started. That's really good to

see that Africans are taking care of Africans. But there's been that transfer of

knowledge and information. If you give people the resources, they can do it!

Q: Yes. Okay, that's a good place to stop right there. I want to thank you for

your time. I'm going to stop the recording now.