Ruskin Kaibanja

Ruskin Kaibanja

Q: This is Sam Robson with the David J. Sencer CDC Museum. It is March 9th, 2017, and I am here in the Peace Corps offices of Monrovia, Liberia, speaking with Mr. Ruskin Kaibanja. This interview is part of our CDC [United States Centers for Disease Control and Prevention] Ebola Response Oral History Project. Mr. Kaibanja, thank you so much for being here with me today and talking about your experiences. I appreciate it.

KAIBANJA: Thank you.

Q: If we could start out, would you mind saying "my name is" and then pronounce your full name?

KAIBANJA: My name is Ruskin Kaibanja.

Q: Thank you. What is your job, what is your position?

KAIBANJA: Here at the Peace Corps Liberia, I'm the general services manager.

Q: And what do you do as the general services manager?

KAIBANJA: The general services manager is responsible for coordinating all aspects of maintenance, expediting, coordination of the vehicles, the drivers, 00:01:00keeping the generator running, ensuring to collect mail from the post office and all of that.

Q: You keep it all working.

KAIBANJA: Keep it all rolling, yeah. Those are the real moving parts that will keep moving every day. These things got to keep running to make sure the office keeps rolling.

Q: If you were to describe to someone in just a few sentences--two to three sentences--what your role responding to Ebola was, what would you say?

KAIBANJA: Our role was positive, and it was mainly sensitization and coordinating with the drivers because CDC most of the time used our vehicles here at the Peace Corps to do their outreach. We were responsible to assign 00:02:00vehicles and to ensure that these vehicles are in good shape. Because really, we operated in the remote areas because that is where really the disease--people were ignorant about it and all of that. We had to coordinate well to ensure that we always had our vehicles out there when they were needed by CDC.

Q: Thank you. Starting on a different tack here, would you mind telling me when and where you were born?

KAIBANJA: I was born in the west of Liberia. I was born in Bomi County, which is the west of Liberia, in 1974. My grandfather previously worked with a big mining company that was there, the LMC--the Liberia Mining Company. It mined iron ore.

Q: Did you grow up with your grandfather around?

KAIBANJA: No, my grandfather died shortly after I was born, when he had come back from Russia, where he studied as a bone doctor. That is why if you listen to my first name, you will see it sounds Russian--that is where I got my "Ruskin" from. My grandfather died before I could get to know him myself, so I didn't know much about him.

Q: Who did you grow up with?

KAIBANJA: I grew up with my mom, because at the age twelve, my mother and my father broke up. He left us with our mom, so I spent most of my life with my mother, even though there were times in life when Mom decided to send us to the boarding school, my elder brother and myself. We spent quite a time in the boarding school.

Q: How did your mom make ends meet?

KAIBANJA: My mom was a nurse. My mom was a registered nurse by profession, and if I remember well, she would work two places. Sometimes we would only see her in the morning when she comes home after night shift, and then when we were going to school, she goes off to dayshift. Then sometimes we would only see her in the evening again when she comes to change her clothes to go to night shift. Mom had to work two jobs to send my brother and myself to school.

Q: Where did you go to boarding school?

KAIBANJA: It was in neighboring Sierra Leone. Boarding school in Sierra Leone. Somewhere in Sierra Leone called Bo.

Q: You went to Bo District?

KAIBANJA: Yeah. Bo District, yes.

Q: Was it the town of Bo?

KAIBANJA: Yeah, Bo Town itself. It has another name, they call Kakwa [note: unconfirmed spelling]. That's the difference between Bo Waterside, which is the 00:05:00border between Liberia and Sierra Leone, and Bo Kakwa [note: unconfirmed spelling] is somewhere in Sierra--province in Sierra Leone that is called Bo Kakwa.

Q: What was it like in boarding school?

KAIBANJA: Boarding school, there were times when it was lonely. When you are coming up, you are used to your parents. Then, for this first time, you are sent to the boarding school, you are not even used to the kind of food that they cook. Luckily for us, we would take something we call our provision bags where you have some sardines, you will have some corned beef, you will have some luncheon meat. Mainly, you would have something we call garri, which is made of cassava. That's a very popular food around West Africa. Most people know it--something like a fast food. You could either eat it with sugar or eat it with soup. It's very good. Most people from West Africa will know garri. That 00:06:00was another, real thing that you needed to have in your food bags, which you can use as fast food. But it was difficult because I wasn't used to the type of food that was being prepared in the boarding home. But as time went on, the body adapts. The body started to get used to those things, and when you exhaust all your provisions, you have no alternative but to eat what you are given. So later on, we got used to it, and there's all these adaptations that we use today in life, what we learned from those situations then.

Q: About what ages were you in boarding school?

KAIBANJA: Immediately after our father died, Mama had to take us to the boarding school. It was around twelve, thirteen.

Q: Until when?

KAIBANJA: Let's see, '86, '87, '88, '89, '90, '91. I think after about five years I left because I couldn't cope with that situation. I came back to Liberia, but my elder brother stayed there until he completed high school. He went there when he was in something around sixth grade, seventh, eighth, ninth, tenth, eleventh, twelfth, thirteenth.

Q: When you say you couldn't cope with the situation, what do you mean?

KAIBANJA: As I'm telling you, the food continued to be a problem for me because I was younger than my brother, and so my mom saw it necessary for me to come back home. But my brother was able to cope a little bit more than me, so he 00:08:00stayed on.

Q: So you were about seventeen when you came back?

KAIBANJA: Yeah, I was seventeen, I came back to Liberia.

Q: What did you do then?

KAIBANJA: I got registered to go to school here. I ended up attending the AME [African Methodist Episcopal] Zion Academy, which is on Benson Street here in Monrovia. In fact, that is where I graduated from high school. During that time, the war was here. It hadn't conquered Monrovia. The rebels hadn't taken Monrovia, so Monrovia was relatively safe, and we'd still go to school. But later on, in '94, it became worse when the rebels overran Monrovia, so I had to go back to Sierra Leone as a refugee this time. I went back to Sierra Leone, then I graduated from high school. I ended up going over there to trade school, 00:09:00where I trained as a technician, a diesel technician, and graduated sometime in 2000, was it? Yeah.

Q: When you went back to Sierra Leone as a refugee, were you alone? Were you with other people?

KAIBANJA: I was with other people, there were other Liberians that had run away from the war. They were over there. As you know, when I was there earlier, I made friends, even though this time I went to the capital, Freetown, whereas previously I stayed in Bo, which is hundreds of kilometers away from Freetown. I could be able to understand Krio, which is the simple language. I was able to know at least their way of life. I didn't need to be taught their dos and their 00:10:00don'ts because I was in that culture before. All of that made me to have a little bit of edge over people who were there for the first time.

Q: What did you do then? You graduated high school. Oh, that's right, you became a diesel technician.

KAIBANJA: A diesel technician.

Q: Why did you do that?

KAIBANJA: I decided to do that because that opportunity was there at that time. UNHCR [United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees] had some programs where refugees could go to learn trades, and I thought it was necessary that even if I come back one day, if Liberia settles down and I come back, I wanted to be someone useful in society. I wouldn't want my colleagues from school to see me and say, he didn't do anything. All of that was on my mind. I knew whatever the case may be, that wars have been fought before, even the great United States, 00:11:00they fought wars, but things will always get better. After things have gotten worse, the only thing that they can do--they can't get worse more than that--they start to get better. I was sure that one day, Liberia was going to normalize again, and I would want to be counted among the useful people in society. So I decided to take this opportunity to go and learn something for which I would be marketable. What prompted me to go in that direction, previously when I was here going to school, there's a time in this country where our curriculum required that you would take one trade. You had to do one trade. If you don't go practice as a carpenter, as a mechanic, so that was the trade that I practiced. Mainly, it was electricity. I liked electricity, and when I went over there later on, I had a friend or some kind of a relative that had a 00:12:00vehicle garage in town here, where after high school or close to the end of my high school, I used to go to that garage to practice, to help in the garage. I started to get these ideas about fixing vehicles. I also loved driving. I learned driving from that, my family friend or uncle, at a very early age--whereas my elder brother didn't know how to drive. When I went across there, I saw all this opportunity. I knew that work. I have ideas in this area, and if this opportunity comes up, I think it's the best thing for me to do to go and get a paper in this direction, learn some more about this, and then I can be useful. Today, this is what I use. I came to the Peace Corps. I started as a driver from the US Embassy. I came over here later on as the general services transportation--I worked as the transportation coordinator for about two and a 00:13:00half years. I was also given the task of maintaining the generators. Later on, we had this advertisement of a job for general services manager, and I applied, and the administration thought that I was fit. Now I am the general services manager.

Q: Do you remember what year it was that you made that transition to general services manager?

KAIBANJA: Oh, yeah. It was late last year. It must have been somewhere around October.

Q: So it was after Ebola had settled down.

KAIBANJA: Oh yeah, after Ebola had settled down. After we brought a few volunteers back. We knew that we were going to grow because now everything was behind us. We were then allowed to bring volunteers back, and this is Peace 00:14:00Corps, every year we bring in new volunteers. We grow in capacity, in size. We have to raise our capacity to be able to serve these volunteers. We knew that things have started to get better, and we were going to bring in more volunteers, so we started to prepare for that. You can see we have a big premises. Before our building was a little bit like that one.

Q: How did you first start hearing about Ebola in Liberia, and what did you think?

KAIBANJA: Ebola came about, when was it, 2014?

Q: Mm-hmm, in Liberia. I think March 2014 it was first announced.

KAIBANJA: Yeah. We started to hear about this because things come as rumors. We started to hear about this epidemic that had broken out somewhere between the border of Guinea and Liberia, and the first story we heard was that there was a 00:15:00funeral somewhere in Guinea, on our border areas and our borderline. It's just like Mexico and the USA. It's just next door, anybody can cross. There's intermarriage and all of that. We heard that someone had died over in Guinea, and people from the Liberian side went to attend the funeral. They had come in contact with Ebola, which is a viral disease that someone could get from just touching a dead body. They had partaken in that funeral, and they had brought this disease, or this virus, across, and it's affecting people. From what I heard then, this had started--because people distrust their government so much, 00:16:00so people started to feel that it was just [a front], it was not true. You understand? And that the government was planning to request money from WHO [World Health Organization] and all of those people, so that is why they are playing those tricks. Those rumors were in town. People didn't believe it for the very first month or two.

Then it showed up in Monrovia, where mainly it started to affect doctors. You understand? Doctors--we see prominent doctors die. There was one from Firestone. He lost his life, and he was one of Liberia's most educated doctors. Because you know, Firestone is one of the oldest companies in Liberia. For you to have a head doctor in Firestone, that means--yeah, so somebody lost their life. Another person that lost their life was some minister's sister--either his niece or his 00:17:00sister worked as a nurse at the E-L-W-A [Eternal Love Winning Africa] Hospital. That was big news because if a minister lost his sister--so this sister got sick, she died, and then people started to know that yes, there's something wrong. Even at the JFK [John F. Kennedy Medical Center], four or five of the prominent doctors that are there got sick. I think most of them died. A few of them survived later on. This is what began to make this thing look real.

After that, we saw CDC come in later on. We that were fortunate to be working with this organization started to get some training, some awareness about what is this virus. We, too, were lucky because the main issue about this virus was 00:18:00ignorance. That was the main thing that killed people. And this has never happened before. If I can remember when I was a boy, there was a virus that I remember that we had to fight was polio [poliomyelitis]. But polio mainly affected babies, so it was not as--and it does not really kill, it just makes you deformed. Maybe it spoils your hand or your leg. That was one of the things that I ever heard about was a virus in this country. But something that would kill a full-grown person in a very short time--never heard about that. That was the first time.

I can remember I think there was an arrangement--somebody came from CDC or from the embassy to teach us about this virus or to tell us things that they needed, 00:19:00they felt that we needed to know. It was a great opportunity, I saw it at that time, because I could see that it was because of ignorance. People believed that it was a lie. But yet you see people dying, so maybe there were many other things we needed to know. This was an opportunity for us who were in the American system to get firsthand information about what is going on. We had this person come over to teach us more about Ebola: what are the preventive measures, what are the dos and the don'ts. We were able to get all of that information. You understand? And we, too, were able to take this information home and make our family aware of what they're supposed to know to be able to keep themselves safe from this virus.

Q: What happened then?

KAIBANJA: We went, and people continued to die because no one knew these things. 00:20:00Our society--if you were my friend and you were sick, I'm supposed to come visit you. Otherwise, that means you're not my friend. If you are my relative and you are sick, I'm supposed to come and visit you. That is how our society looks at things. You understand? If I'm coming to visit you, it does not mean where you are sitting and where I'm sitting. Maybe I have to come and sit by you on the bed and touch you and say I'm sorry, which is the means by which I can catch whatever disease you have. So this thing continued to spread and spread and spread, and people continued to die. Then they knew--it seems that the government realized that the main cause of these deaths were ignorance. So they 00:21:00decided to enforce the awareness about this. One thing that they promoted: if somebody is sick, don't touch them because you don't know what is wrong with them. It might be Ebola. The next thing they started to disseminate is they decided to make everybody to know what the symptoms of this virus are. Another thing that they targeted was what is the right action to take if you see any of these signs and symptoms. Little by little, they built the momentum to get everybody sensitized about everything surrounding this virus.

Q: How did you get involved?

KAIBANJA: That is where we got involved. There was a time in that same 2014, late, we were asked to evacuate all of our volunteers because it was getting so scary. People in the [United] States were worried about their children because this is a virus that can spread. Even people in the States did not have a real good idea about it. Only maybe the people that are working with CDC and maybe their families, but many, many people in America did not know. They were afraid because they hear people dying, and you even get the firsthand news that we, here, don't get because they have easy access to the media. People were afraid, so people decided to withdraw our volunteers then. I think there were about a hundred or so. We evacuated them, and we evacuated them, and when they left, we were left at the office. We had to come to work every day, and even the embassy 00:23:00advised nonessential staff--most of the Americans left then. We were here, we still had to come to work. We were being paid for just coming to the office and sitting down. We had a contract, so we were still paid.

There was a time in the office, at that time a few of our American staff were still here, and this memo went out to say there was this collaboration between CDC and Peace Corps. This memo came out from the country director that said, "We plan to do this collaboration between CDC and Peace Corps, and we want people to volunteer if they're ready. These are going to be the roles that you're going to 00:24:00play. By the end of the day, from now till tomorrow, all those who are willing to volunteer, please just send me a line and say yes, I'm in or I'm out." So yes, we did that. Most of us volunteered, if not all of us, that yes, we are willing to go ahead because this was not even the Americans' fight, it was our fight. Most of us, before the day ended, were able to send that email that yes, we were in.

We started from there, and then we started to coordinate with the embassy because CDC was based out of the embassy. The embassy started to coordinate with our American staff to work out all the plans, what would be our role, what CDC would need us to do. All of these things started to unfold. We would have one of our drivers and one other program staff with a CDC staff or two, going to a 00:25:00particular location hundreds of kilometers away. Everything was being planned from the embassy. People started to move out. At that time, we had about seven vehicles. There were times when all our seven vehicles would be out there for weeks, in different areas of the country. At that time, I played the role of a driver. I think that my position was general services transportation. I would talk with our American staff, and we would plan, and then we'd do exactly what the plan says. On one occasion, I went to [Grand] Cape Mount County. That is 00:26:00somewhere in the west, close to the Sierra Leonean border. On another occasion, I went to Grand Kru County. There is one other time where I went to Nimba [County]. These are the main areas where--you have Cape Mount, right?

Q: Yes, Cape Mount, Grand Kru, Nimba.

KAIBANJA: Yeah. Sometimes we had--like Cape Mount, we had about three or four three-week trips. Of course, in Grand Kru, we stayed there a whole month.

Q: Which was the first one that you went to?

KAIBANJA: The first place I went to was Cape Mount.

Q: Can you describe that first trip for me?

KAIBANJA: Cape Mount? Cape Mount was crazy because western Liberia, that's where mostly people practice Islam. Ebola hit very hard there because they have this custom of bathing bodies. From what I understood, the Ebola virus is even more aggressive when someone has died from it. That's why later on, we were able to understand from the CDC why so many people died then, because when Islamic people die, you have to bathe them, you have to pray for them and go bury them. 00:28:00Even water that you bathe someone with--if that were to splash on you, they say it's possible you can catch Ebola from that. So you see why Ebola hit Cape Mount so hard. There was one town there they call Chenewandi [note: unconfirmed spelling]. Lots of people died. In fact, the CDC had to set up some kind of a holding center for people whose families died from Ebola. They had to hold them up there for observation instead of allowing them to come and live among other people. That was the problem. Even though we intensified our sensitization about bathing bodies, but for religious reasons, people disregarded this advice.

Q: Were you part of the sensitization?

KAIBANJA: Oh, yeah.

Q: Can you describe your role, what you did to help sensitize?

KAIBANJA: Our role was--

Q: You specifically.

KAIBANJA: We had all of these posters that CDC brought about washing your hands, about not bathing dead bodies. So, we would explain to--because we go to remote areas where people are not educated. They only know maybe our local languages or maybe our broken English. So I would explain this. They call a forum, we would go to a village, and they would call a forum. We asked the town chief--mainly we'd go to the town chief, or to some authority, or maybe to the city mayor or 00:30:00maybe the superintendent, any authority that we were able to get hold of. We would ask them to provide us a forum of people that we can talk to, and we will try to give them all this basic information that we had on this. Handouts and posters and all of that. It was just basic things.

The language in your poster in that area would depend on what CDC sees as the problem. Like Cape Mount, I will tell you it was bathing bodies. Our main message was, don't bathe bodies. If someone dies, have these people informed, 00:31:00the emergency response unit, and they will come and take care of that body. They will bathe that body for you with proper protective clothing on, and will handle that burial in the best way that no one would get infected from that person. So, wash your hands. Stop shaking hands. Those were our kinds of messages that we would go around with. If someone is sick and if you observe these symptoms, these are the numbers to call. Explaining the process to them, because there was a time that they believed that anyone that gets taken from the community and taken to the ETU [Ebola treatment unit] dies. There was sometime a belief that a 00:32:00person gets killed by someone. All of these things made it difficult for us to be able to really get this thing--that is why it took so long. When the people began to see the real, real, real impact of this, that is when people began to conform to these guidelines that they were given. Those were the kind of messages: don't shake hands, don't go close to a sick person.

It came to a time when people started to absorb this and it became a problem. If someone gets sick in the house, they would lock that person up in one room and nobody would agree to go there because you are told not to go close to a sick person. Later on, some amount of training came out, because as I told you, the 00:33:00kind of sensitization was based on what you see affecting the people in that area. Because as I tell you, ignorance was the big cause of all of this. There was a time again where people say, so if my father is sick and he's in the room, should I lock him up and not take water for him? Should I lock him up and never give him food to eat? That was another reason--there were people I'm sure who did not even have Ebola, but because the sensitization had put fear into them, most people would leave even their parents, their old parents to die in the room because they were not sure.

Q: Were you able to relay that feedback--what you were seeing about what the sensitization campaigns were doing--back to CDC staff so they could change?

KAIBANJA: Oh yeah, we talked about it very much, and most of the time when we went out, every morning there was a briefing. Then at night, when we come back to our hotels, we would have this small discussion about what we did today, what we observed, so that was always there. You would have the chance to say, I observed this today--whether it was being taken seriously or not, but you had the chance. Yes, I observed this. Oh, this was scary. You did this today, this was very scary. You're riding with us in one car. So we had that chance to guide one another and say what we thought was so scary, what we thought we needed to disseminate again with regards to the reaction of the people from the first information that we gave them.

There's a time when we got some training. Somebody came again for the second 00:35:00time from Peace Corps to train us about in case your relative is sick, and you lock them up in the room, and observing them to see whether they show these signs and symptoms--because there's this big difference between signs and symptoms. If you listen to both of them, you will see the signs and symptoms are the same, but CDC taught us that these are not the same. Signs are different from symptoms.

Q: What does that mean? What is one example of a sign and a symptom?

KAIBANJA: Well, a sign will mean if you see somebody with red eyes, that could be a sign.

Q: But a symptom is more like--

KAIBANJA: Like vomiting. Like running stomach. You understand? Temperature--high 00:36:00temperature also could be considered a sign.

Q: Why was it important to make that distinction?

KAIBANJA: It was important to make that distinction because you might take someone who just has malaria and dump them among people who are already infected. There's this thin line that you had to observe. Otherwise, you'll take some--because malaria has some symptoms that this virus also claims as its symptoms. Malaria, if you get malaria, you run high temperature. That's one of the symptoms of malaria. There are times when you might throw up, which is also a sign or a symptom of Ebola.

Q: So you need to also pay attention to the signs.

KAIBANJA: Yeah, you also need to pay attention to the signs. You need this small period of observation before you can call up that Ebola line to say, you can come take my relative to the ETU.

Q: Did you see changes in the community once you got that message out there?

KAIBANJA: Oh, yeah. That's what I'm saying. That is when people started to--the first message was, don't go close to a sick person. Then people had a lot relatives that died because they had malaria. The second thing is, you have to observe first and make sure that you see symptoms before you call the Ebola line--the next message. You see, we had to play skillfully to make sure that we 00:38:00attack any form of ignorance that was going to come into play, which was going to cause more deaths.

Q: Did people adapt to that, and so they stopped locking away their relatives?

KAIBANJA: Yeah. It also came with this--as I'm telling you, this demonstration that I'm telling you. They taught us how you can wear a plastic bag on your hand and on your feet and be able to give somebody water to drink who is sick in the room. Be able to give them food to eat, be able to even clean their vomit without getting infected, or even their stool. That was when we were taught 00:39:00about the percentage that is involved in Clorox, using Clorox to sanitize or to protect yourself from getting infected. We had this other mixture that is not too concentrated. They had this other mixture that is concentrated. Even though your hand is in plastic, how to remove these things, these coverings without infecting yourself. All of that. We had somebody come and do a practical show for us. So you see, after we told them, no, you cannot leave your relative to die, you have to also observe them to make sure that they're showing symptoms and not just see people showing signs and dump them away. We also had to back it up with, how do we take care of this person to make sure that even if they start 00:40:00to show symptoms, we do not get ourselves infected because we want to keep them alive? You see how these desires come about. About case-to-case basis. So, a new reality comes. CDC quickly designs something so we can put that reality behind us and get better. Every night then, we had to adapt to this kind of--

Q: What you're actually seeing.

KAIBANJA: Yeah.

Q: Were the situations in Cape Mount, Grand Kru and Nimba--were they different in any ways?

KAIBANJA: Yeah, in the sense that Cape Mount as I'm telling you mainly was from funerals, washing dead bodies, and all of that, whereas when we went to Grand 00:41:00Kru, there's one typical place CDC people would know about. It's called Parluken. Many people died there. In this case, it was a doctor--not any old doctor, but this guy--if you go to remote areas, you will see people that travel with tablets in a black bag, going about treating people, claiming to be doctors. Or maybe these are physician assistants who maybe did not even complete their certificate, but have some knowledge about treating people. There was this guy in this village who used to go around treating people, and he goes to treat 00:42:00people, and Ebola struck the area because as I'm telling you, it was so dangerous that if someone gets infected here and they travel from here all the way to Maryland [County] and they die there, they infect people there. No one knows why they died. Or maybe they went to see a doctor over there, and this doctor takes some blood, maybe to do a test or something. You could even get this thing from someone's sweat. When they're really infected from their sweat, you can pick it up from them. So this thing--someone traveled from somewhere and traveled into that area, and that's when the person would put their sick to this 00:43:00unqualified doctor--or maybe qualified, we don't know, but he lives in a village and he goes around treating people. And doc [the doctor] catches this stuff from that person. He goes to treat the person one or two or three times. This person eventually dies. A week or two after, doc gets sick. Nobody knows why doc is sick. He's sleeping on the same bed with his children and his wife. He throws up, and his daughter comes and helps to clean it. It's malaria. It's malaria. Then one week after, four persons died from that house. Some other people are leaving who already came in contact with him, who came to visit him. All run 00:44:00away because a very small town, and eight people die. Oh, there must be a spell in this town. Four, five, or six people that doc had treated that same day he went and treated that Ebola person start to show signs and symptoms, and they're afraid and they run away and go two or three, four villages away from here because they know that they are sick like that. People who are sick like that get taken away by the ambulance, get reported, and they come and get taken away to the ETU. I don't want to be taken away because all the people who are going to the ETU die. I'm not going to that ETU. I don't have Ebola. I have malaria. I'm going three villages away from here and hide myself. Then this person dies over there after three weeks. Other people over there don't know where he came 00:45:00from, what he came with--collect his body, bathe it up, go and bury it, or even make a funeral, and everybody comes there and dances around the casket. This is how this thing moved from one place to another. That's the difference. Over there, it was a doctor treating people who brings it to his family and it spreads. Over here, it's trouble. Some people who have been told, don't bathe anybody, just leave those bodies, call the Ebola response unit; they wash that body up and make sure that it's buried according to the best practice that more people will not get infected from it.

Q: So what did you do in Grand Kru to address this different situation?

KAIBANJA: Over there, these people who ran away were already infected. We were 00:46:00able to gather information of the towns that they went to about three or four hours away from where we had our vehicles stationed. That was where we had these two CDC ladies. There was one they called Grace [D.] Appiah. There's another one they called Barbara Cooper. They asked the county health team at that time--because as I tell you, that was the center of attack in that region. The county health team too have focused on that area. All of us were around there working, because you know the epidemic, if it hits somewhere, that is where you 00:47:00have to go and start your route from if you want to follow where it went to. So Barbara and Grace followed the county health team. The county health team had motorbikes. Only motorbikes could go to those directions. They followed those guys and rode with them on the motorbikes, and they went to trace those people who they got information were in contact with these people that already died, to advise them and tell them that it's not true that if anybody goes to the ETU you're supposed to die.

I stayed in town because this is a situation what I'm telling you, this is a town where you will never sit. You are even afraid to sit down because you don't 00:48:00know whether an infected person was sitting down there. We stand the whole day. I just stand by the vehicle like this. You don't shake hands. You don't go close to people. There's this distance that you had to measure. You're scared because every day you hear the news that thousands of people, hundreds of people are dying. But you went to that forefront there. You didn't stay home. You're also thinking in case you get infected, you will bring it to your family and get rid of all of them? All of those kind of things are on your mind.

Barbara and Grace went over there, got in contact with those guys. It's scary because Barbara and Grace go over there and talk with these guys, they come 00:49:00back, all of us get into the same vehicle, drive back to our hotels. You never know because you never went on that trip, you never know what risky actions they have taken. All of that was in play. That was the strategy, sensitize people and make them to know, don't run away from the ETU. It's the best place for you to go. That's the only place where I think you can survive this, even if you're already infected. That is what we were doing down there.

There was also a riot there when we arrived there. They decided to drive away the county health team people because they say the county health team people were not coming until somebody dies, and then they come to take the body away. But if somebody is sick, they will never come to treat the person. So they don't 00:50:00want to see them there. A few days before we got there, there was this something boiling. I think they chased them out of there.

Q: Did that affect your work while you were there, the community mistrust?

KAIBANJA: Yeah, there was this mistrust. That is why people ran away. Barbara and Grace went over there to convince these people that no, there's a better way that we can address this. You guys need to come over, go to the ETU--we will make sure that you get firsthand treatment if you come over to the ETU. That does not mean that you're going to die. We were there to give this assurance to those that had run away who were in contact with people that died from Ebola, but had run away to other towns, and our fear was that they were going to spread 00:51:00it over there. The best way to stop it is to go convince them, to bring them back into the fold.

Q: What role were you able to play in that process?

KAIBANJA: Well, we stayed in the center of town where we were based, as I told you, where we had our vehicle parked. Every morning, we do something like one hundred fifty kilometers to go into that town--another one hundred fifty to come back in the evening. As I'm saying, we used our language to disseminate the best information that we got from CDC that they wanted us to pass to the people in our own languages that the people will understand. Most of the time, you will see the CDC staff--I think they would stay something like a month, and then 00:52:00immediately, they would get swapped. They will go back, and then a new person will come. Sometimes we even used--there was a Samaritan's Purse plane. There was a time when we were in Fish Town, which is somewhere around Grand Kru County, but it's another county I think [note: River Gee County]. It's another section of that area. The new CDC person came with new sets of posters and handouts. It's the information that we get for the day is what we disseminate in our local languages. Most people won't understand as much English, like when the American speaks, but we work with the Americans so we were able to understand what they're saying and explain it to our people in our vernacular or whatsoever.

Q: Would you mind describing some of the CDC people who you worked most closely with?

KAIBANJA: Oh, there's another lady they call Marjorie Mascarinas. Marjorie, I think she's working in Atlanta.

Q: What is she like? What do you remember her doing?

KAIBANJA: Marjorie is a good person. She's very compassionate, she's very patient. There are areas where we would go where people are suspicious, because I'm sure you must have heard that this thing was like a Western thing and it was 00:54:00brought upon us. There are areas where people wouldn't want to even listen to us. She requested us to be patient with these people, and that all they lacked was information that they did not get. So we should try as much as possible to come back the next day. But her main contact was being able to target the authorities like I'm telling you, like the superintendent, like the town chief. We start from those people. If we find out that all the locals don't want to listen, we will target those people and try to convince them to make sure that they can bring the people into our fold to get this information. Emphasize to them why it's good to get this information. Tell them why we feel that this virus continues to spread and why it's good for people to get information and 00:55:00why ignorance is not good. Marjorie would be very patient, and would always come back the next day, and she will always try to open narrow ways where we can be able to get some audience because, as I say, they discover that it is because people never got information surrounding this virus. That is why more people were dying. Those who were infected were already infected. What we were trying to do was to make sure that more people don't get infected because of ignorance. So Marjorie's area was that kind of an area where she wanted to break that barrier to make sure that as many people as possible in those remote areas get the information that they need to get. That is what made Marjorie--but I'm sure 00:56:00that was how she was trained. Because among the CDC people, they got people who they call "contact tracers." The contact tracers, I'm sure that was Grace and Barbara. Those were the contact tracers. You see them, the way they behave. Then you see Marjorie. You see her more concentrating on sensitizing. That was the difference. They will not tell you, all of them we know come from CDC, that is all they want us to know. "All of us work for CDC." But you being among them will know--see the direction, if you are smart, see what direction they're taking and knowing what their priorities are.

Q: That makes sense. How did your experience on the Ebola response conclude? How 00:57:00did it wrap up?

KAIBANJA: It started to slow down eventually, after all this hard work. The infection rate started to go down and down and down. Also, the rotation, the amount of staff coming on CDC began to slow down, but the reason why they used us was because the embassy has so many cars that you would think they don't even need to use Peace Corps cars. But at that time, the sensitization and the 00:58:00contact tracing was intense, so they exhausted all the embassy cars, so they had to use our cars. You see? Everything started to push back towards the embassy vehicles. As CDC began to pull down their staff, we began to see a reversal in the demand for our vehicles and all of that. That is how it went slowly down until the infection rate started to go down, even though after some time it rolled itself back again. Infected--we hear that some people died, but this time they were able to contain it in a very small area because many people were aware now how to behave in case someone is infected or someone shows symptoms or signs--the awareness has gone out. Even this family close to the airport, I 00:59:00think all of them confined themselves when they discovered that this little boy among them was proven to have the virus. The boy was taken away to the ETU. That family agreed to isolate themselves for that twenty-one-day period, so there was no fighting about that. Everyone knew that if you run away from there, you were going to infect other people in other areas. Whereas, it was good for you to undergo that here. As I tell you, awareness has grown. Which was the great problem in this thing, doctors did not know. I did not even know that there's an instrument that you can take somebody's temperature without touching them. That was the first time that we saw that in this country. Previously, it was this small thermometer.

Q: Put under the arm?

KAIBANJA: Yeah, and they wipe it and put it under another person's arm, and they wipe it and put it under another baby's arm. We did not even know that those things existed. This whole Ebola thing opened our eyes about shaking hands, even though we still do it because it's part of us. It's an insult if somebody tries to shake your hand and you refuse. But there are people up to today who will not shake anybody's hand no matter how you look at them because--I remember, because they were infected before, and they're so afraid, and they want to be very strict with all the guidelines and all the possibilities that they might have thought caused them to get infected. But there are many things, now we know what is an epidemic. No one will say it's a lie. If you hear that ten people in one area die, you will begin to understand if you are told that it's because of 01:01:00this. The best thing you will try to do is to try to go on the internet and find out more about what that particular issue is and try as much as possible to absorb all the guidelines, because you saw how Ebola behaved and people were adamant that it's not true. People were adamant that it was brought in by the West. All of those things, that's not the issue, but there's something that is killing people, and I think I've got to protect myself from it as much as I can do, maybe by reading more about it. Maybe about asking more people or doctors to tell us more about it. Now your attitude will not come back again because people are seeing examples of what happens when you try to be adamant about information, about epidemics. The epidemic, we hear about it in many other 01:02:00countries. Maybe it's Zika today. It was Ebola the other time. There was one time I think when we were in Sierra Leone at that time, it was Lassa [fever]. Lassa killed people, too. I was too small to comprehend really, but I heard about Lassa. There was even a special hospital for Lassa over there in Sierra Leone. Yellow fever killing people. Sometimes even people would be reluctant to--if they are supposed to travel, they say go and take a yellow fever vaccine--people won't want to take it, all of that. But now we know that epidemics come about. So even if you want to travel to another country, because yeah, the Peace Corps will get it--sometimes will get a chance to travel. Every Peace Corps country, maybe sometimes there's training. Maybe there's a conference. Maybe this bacteria is there, maybe this virus is there, maybe this 01:03:00epidemic is there. All of that will make you to say, I'm going to take my yellow fever before I go in case I go over there, because anything could happen. You saw when we got infected, all those Caribbean countries sealed off us and said nobody from our region can go there. And all of that. That was why maybe they were not infected, because they were so bold to say no. We don't want people from that region here. Who knows whether they were right do it? Who knows whether they were wrong?

Q: Were there any memories of the Ebola response or any reflections that you'd like to give before we finish the interview?

KAIBANJA: Reflections like--

Q: Just anything that you'd like to say for the record, or memories that you didn't share that you think are important.

KAIBANJA: Well, as I was saying, it also highlighted the shortcomings of the 01:04:00World Health Organization. This whole issue. The UN [United Nations] pay their workers millions of dollars. My brother works with the UN, and they gets lots of money, and we were wondering why the World Health Organization did not respond as early. Because this thing started from Lofa [County], and we expected the World Health Organization to advise our government and say, this is a bloody--so you have to quarantine that whole area. It was at the end that our government began to know what it meant to quarantine a whole area. There were several quarantines here. Some whole counties were quarantined. Some whole communities 01:05:00were quarantined. Why did they not do that from the start? Which means they were not prepared. I'm sure you know about those quarantines I'm telling you. Communities, whole communities were quarantined. Why did they not take these actions where this thing started, because we heard about it that it was in Lofa? Why did they not quarantine Lofa? They allowed it to come to Monrovia and other areas. So next time, it would be good for the World Health Organization to work hard and be able to help governments make decisions, because the reason why they are here is because there are many things that the government does not know about. That the United Nations--the government spends time fighting to campaign 01:06:00to win other elections. But the United Nations hasn't got any campaigning to do. These are jobs that they get appointed and they're paid huge sums, so they should be researching to know about these things and to advise governments promptly. That is why they are here. They don't spend time campaigning. They don't spend time fixing our roads. They don't spend time making farms for us. Their business is research, and they're supposed to provide all this information to our governments to help our governments make the right decisions in times like that. Times like that hardly come. People get paid for the past twenty-five years for that day to be able to respond promptly. For the past twenty-five 01:07:00years, surely the UN people that benefit that they give to their children. Some of their children get to go to good schools in America on the UN scholarship and all of that. For the past twenty-five years, why have they been paid that money if they are not able to contain or advise the government promptly? Because the government hasn't got much idea about medical things, but the WHO has all the resources that it needs to know where this virus started, where next is it going to go, what are the implications, and all of that. The UN needs to wake up and do its act in telling our government the right decisions. If our government does not listen, that's another thing. You can't force the government to listen, but 01:08:00they were supposed to make all this information public so that we will see that our government was the one that did not take the right decision. But they were caught unawares.

Q: Thank you so much, Mr. Ruskin Kaibanja. This has been really helpful hearing you talk. Thank you.

KAIBANJA: Thank you so much.

END