Malac Visit Transcript

Malac Visit Transcript

And then the next point was, of course, President [Barack H.] Obama's announcement that he was sending the military, and all this other stuff that came out in mid-September. That was the other interesting event because just the mere announcement that the US military was coming, literally the next morning--that was about eight o'clock at night Monrovia time, I mean it was what, three or four in the afternoon at CDC when he made the announcement, so eight o'clock in the evening. The next morning, the atmosphere in Monrovia had completely turned because it was this idea--we were all feeling a little isolated and forlorn and people didn't want anything to do with us because we all had Ebola. And suddenly that sense that Liberia was not in the fight alone, that the Americans were there even though we'd been there obviously throughout, that they were so serious that they were willing to send the military. It was almost as if Liberians themselves said we can do this, we will find a way to beat this. It was really an interesting morning because there was just a buzz in the air that there was going to be an end at some point. How long it would take we didn't know, but that there was going to be one.