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Meriatu Kamara, 35, lost her husband and two children to Ebola. But she and three of her children survived: (from left) Sallaymatu, Abubakar, Aminatu. They've lived in the survivors' ward for two months. They're from Makeni, a city 130 miles away and haven't yet been able to make their way home. Anders Kelto/NPR hide caption

itoggle caption Anders Kelto/NPR

Meriatu Kamara, 35, lost her husband and two children to Ebola. But she and three of her children survived: (from left) Sallaymatu, Abubakar, Aminatu. They've lived in the survivors' ward for two months. They're from Makeni, a city 130 miles away and haven't yet been able to make their way home.

Anders Kelto/NPR

Jusoisatu Jusu, 24, lives in a room in an abandoned hospital ward with her six-year-old son. They've survived Ebola. And now they're stuck.

"It's terrible," she says. "We have a lot of things to do, so we want to get back."

But they can't. They live in a town called Makeni, about 130 miles away. Public transportation around the country is limited or canceled because of the outbreak. And Jusu doesn't have the money to pay for a private ride.

About 30 Ebola survivors live in this hospital ward in Kenema, a city in Sierra Leone. It was once a center for doctors who did research on Lassa fever, caused by a virus that was in Sierra Leone long before Ebola arrived. When Ebola hit, many staff members in the ward died, and the building was abandoned. Now, it's essentially a squatter camp.

Like other survivors, Jusu had to hand over her clothes to be destroyed when she arrived. She's been given one new outfit — a long, green skirt and pink tank top.

"I wash and I wear it the same thing, every day," she says.

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Kitibe, 26, has recovered from Ebola and was ready to go home. Then the hospital told him he might have TB. Anders Kelto/NPR hide caption

itoggle caption Anders Kelto/NPR

Kitibe, 26, has recovered from Ebola and was ready to go home. Then the hospital told him he might have TB.

Anders Kelto/NPR

Some survivors are able to go home, but they're not always welcome. Many are told they can't get water from a shared tap or sell food at community markets, says Elizabeth Boakarie, a counselor at the hospital. Every night, she and her colleague, social worker Gladys Gassama, speak on radio shows, telling listeners to stop shunning survivors.

Another survivor at the hospital is a 26-year-old man named Kitibe. "I was tormented when I was in the Ebola ward," he says. "There was [so much] pain within my body."

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Kitibe has recovered and is ready to be discharged. Social worker Gladys Gassama takes a seat next to him for a counseling session about life after Ebola. She tells him that people in his community probably know that he had Ebola. She says when he goes home, he should try to educate people about the disease and should not act as if he's contagious because people might think he is.

Then Kitibe gets some bad news. A nurse named Donnell Tholley tells him he will not be able to leave the hospital today because he is suspected to have tuberculosis. If his test comes back positive, he'll have to spend a few weeks, possibly up to six months, in a tuberculosis unit at the hospital.

Only the TB ward is not able to accept him at the moment. So he wanders into the building where other Ebola survivors are hanging out. The room feels like a jail cell — brick walls, metal bars over the windows, a filthy bathroom off to one side. He sits on a wooden bench, next to a teenage boy, and watches the children play with a toy car.

And no one in the crowded room seems to know he likely has a contagious lung disease.

Ebola survivors

Sierra Leone

According to Navajo law, Navajo Nation presidents must speak the Navajo language to hold office. Chris Deschene is a strong contender for the position, but there's a problem: He's not fluent in the language.

The challenge to Deschene's candidacy has become a window into how the Navajo Nation views itself and its cultural future, as well as how Native people continue to define themselves in the face of cultural change.

In August, the Navajo Nation held primaries for candidates hoping to become the next Navajo president. The two men with the most votes were Dr. Joe Shirley Jr., a two-time former president; and Deschene, a military veteran and member of the Arizona State Legislature.

However, within weeks of clearing the nation's primaries with 19 percent of the vote, Deschene was challenged by another candidate who hoped to have him disqualified for lack of language competence.

Fifty years ago, almost 90 percent of Navajo first-graders spoke Navajo fluently. Now, just over 7,000 tribal citizens are monolingual Navajo speakers, and fewer than 30 percent of first-graders can claim some level of language fluency.

Today, the Navajo Nation, much like the rest of Indian Country, faces the prospect of language loss. While the Navajo language is still spoken widely across the Southwest, it's threatened, and Deschene has come to represent that fact for people on both sides of the language divide.

"It's a really personal issue to me," says Melvatha Chee, a Navajo language instructor at the University of New Mexico. "I would like to vote for [Deschene], but I feel like I'm voting against myself if I support him. If I support a nonspeaker, I feel like I'm voting against my own work."

Others feel that they can support their language and Deschene's candidacy.

"If Deschene is told that he can't be president because he's not Navajo enough because of language, that's like telling a lot of young Navajo people that they're not good enough either because they don't speak the language," says Meredith Moss, a doctoral candidate at Arizona State University who has focused her studies on Navajo language and sociolinguistics.

At the heart of the matter for Deschene, according to Moss, is the need to use English in the context of being a representative to other nations and groups, but also being an authentic, trustworthy voice at home who can represent the positions of the Nation's elders. It is a struggle between an older generation that is genuinely Navajo and a new generation of tribal members who may see themselves more closely represented by Deschene than by his opponent.

"I think many feel that the youth are being told they're not good enough," said Moss. "They're not Navajo enough, and supporting Deschene is kind of like moving toward the new guard and saying, 'We really are Navajo; we can have that authenticity while moving forward together.' "

For many, language is the embodiment of culture, and tribal languages contain history, cosmology, traditional values and identity. Supporters of the language requirement argue that without tribal languages, Native Americans are lost, and distant from the ancestors who came before them.

But for much of history, this loss of language was not a choice. For centuries, the policy of churches, educators and government officials has been to stamp out tribal languages, through education, abuse, and any other way possible. As the saying went: Kill the Indian, save the man.

By federal government standards, there's no question that Deschene is Navajo, regardless of language. He is a citizen by blood quantum standards. He was born, raised and lives within the borders of the Navajo Nation. He is a participant in cultural events, from social dances to ceremony.

Deschene is also a graduate of the U.S. Naval Academy and a Marine Corps veteran. He has earned a law degree. Yet his lack of fluency in the Navajo language may disqualify him from becoming the next president of the largest Native nation within the United States. And people like Chee think that's fine.

"How do we approach teaching Navajo language to children so that we can actually produce speakers?" said Chee. "If I support a nonspeaker then I'm saying, 'You're invalid because Navajo language is not needed.' That there's no reason for it. It's not used."

Deschene himself has spoken out about efforts to disqualify him. "These decisions have sent a message to our young saying despite all your accolades, success and everything you've done to help our people, you're not welcome," he said. "It's separating, dividing and isolating ... and the people deserve better."

As of now, Deschene has been officially disqualified as a candidate by Navajo officials after a series of closed-door hearings. However, election officials have refused to remove his name from the ballot, and early voting is already in full swing in the Navajo Nation. A spokesperson for Deschene says it is unlikely the situation will be cleared up before Nov. 4 and that it's unclear what will happen should Deschene win the majority of votes for Navajo Nation president.

"The people get to decide what their standards are," said Deschene. "For me, as an individual, I know I'm a member of the Navajo Nation. I know I'm a member of our people."

Oscar-winning actress Geena Davis has played unforgettable roles in movies like Beetlejuice, Thelma and Louise and A League of Their Own, and she's been an outspoken advocate for female representation in cinema and TV.

But long before her acting debut, Davis had a surprising job at an Ann Taylor clothing store. She wasn't just selling the merchandise; she was displaying the clothes alongside the mannequins.

'An Uncanny Ability To Be Still'

"One time there was a window display where the mannequins were sitting at a table eating plastic food," Geena Davis tells NPR. "There was one empty chair and I kept looking at the window."

She asked her coworkers if she should go sit in the empty chair. They advised against it.

But Davis sat in the chair anyway.

"Somebody saw me do that and then he stopped to see what was now going to happen. But I just froze," Davis says. "I didn't know, but I had an uncanny ability to be still."

Eventually, a crowd gathered on the sidewalk outside the window display. She could hear the comments from the onlookers, who couldn't tell if she was real or fake.

"When I felt like their attention was drifting, I would move kind of like a robot," she says. "But then somebody said, 'Well, that's not an electric mannequin because it's not plugged in.' "

So the next time she sat in a window display, she put a tiny wire down her leg.

"Because it was really subtle, it really worked," she says.

The store eventually hired her to be in the window on the weekends.

"Yes," she says. "I was a live mannequin."

Casting Call

After her career as a mannequin, Davis signed with a modeling agency.

"At that time, the big models like Christie Brinkley and Lauren Hutton were getting parts in movies. I thought, 'Oh well, all I have to do is become a successful model and then maybe I'll get hired for movies,' " she says, laughing at her idea that becoming a supermodel would be a breeze.

Meanwhile, the 1982 film Tootsie, starring Dustin Hoffman, was going to shoot in New York.

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"There was a part as Dustin's dressing roommate for someone that's going to be in their underwear a lot of times," she says. "So the casting director thought, 'Let's call model agencies and see if they have any models who can act.' "

Sure enough, Davis was called in for her very first movie audition.

"They said, 'Wear a bathing suit under your clothes because if you read well, they're going to want to see you in a bathing suit to see how you would look in your underwear,' " she says.

But during the audition, they never asked to see her bathing suit and Davis assumed she didn't get the part.

"I put it completely out of my mind," she says.

'Perfectly lit, airbrushed, wind-blowing-in-your-hair photos'

Little did she know, director Sydney Pollack had reviewed her audition tape.

Since they forgot to get a picture of Davis in her bathing suit, Pollack asked if she could come back and take a photo. But Davis had since moved on from her audition and was on the other side of the world modeling at runway shows in Paris.

"My good fortune at that moment was that I had been in the Victoria's Secret catalog," Davis says. "So they sent over the catalog with these perfectly lit, airbrushed, wind-blowing-in-your-hair photos."

That's what did it. Geena Davis got the part as April.

"My big break was getting cast in Tootsie as my very first acting job and as a result of my very first audition," Davis says. "That's a ridiculous, ridiculous break to get. But that is exactly what happened."

models

actors

Moffie Kanneh is angry at the United States. When I meet the Liberian lawyer, he asks immediately where I am from. "Take this back to Washington," he says. "I am extremely furious."

In the days after the death of Thomas Eric Duncan — the Liberian man diagnosed with Ebola in Dallas last month — Kanneh was one of many Liberians who told me that case changed the way they see the United States. Many noted how different Duncan's experience in the U.S. healthcare system seemed from white patients who contracted Ebola, like Dr. Kent Brantly, who recovered from the disease last month, NBC cameraman Ashoka Mukpo, who is making progress in his treatment there, and most recently two nurses who treated Duncan, both of whom are doing well.

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Ebola Evacuees: Who Are They, Where'd They Go, How'd They Fare?

Sitting outside a small caf in Monrovia, Kanneh explains that he feels U.S. attitudes toward Liberians are tinged with both racism and xenophobia. "The combination of African, black..." he shakes his head. "I still think if Eric was an American they would have given him preferential treatment."

Some people also see Duncan's case as evidence that the U.S. doesn't want West Africans to seek treatment in the United States. "It was a racist approach in a larger sense," explains Franklin Wesseh, who describes himself to me as an opposition party member and writer. He's referring to the slow response by the Dallas hospital that initially sent Duncan home despite a fever and weakness.

"I personally think [Duncan] could have been saved," he says, sipping coffee after church on a Sunday afternoon. "He was given less attention. It was a way of probably discouraging Liberians who contracted the disease and want to go there."

But while many Liberians I spoke to are frustrated by what they see as anti-African prejudice, some within the government urge less focus on race and more on fighting the epidemic.

"When we play the race card there will be problems," says Nathaniel Toe, the superintendent for Maryland County, Liberia. His county, in the southeastern part of the country, doesn't have an Ebola treatment center yet, and Toe is concerned that the U.S. could react to charges of racism by slowing down delivery of aid. One of the 18 U.S.-built treatment centers is planned for Maryland county.

"We are being distracted," he says. The real issue, he thinks, is not racism or American attitudes toward Liberia. It is access to healthcare. "I would like to see the intervention reach all of Liberia, [with] the same quality of service as in Atlanta, in Dallas."

"Take that to Washington," he says. "We need better hospitals."

Another government official I meet, Mitchell Jones of the Liberian Ministry of Commerce and Industry, echoes Toe's sentiments. "This is not a time for politics," he says.

Jones speaks poetically about unity and democracy. "We Liberians must be as one people," he tells me. As he talks, he slides away from me on the bench we share.

"I'm sorry," he says. "Now we are all afraid of touching, of the brushing of skin even."

He equates the Ebola epidemic in Liberia to the 9/11 attacks in the US. "This is the time that we all hold together. Like when Bin Laden attacked the United States, it was a time for every American to hold together to fight their common enemy. Liberians today, our common enemy is Ebola."

Despite such calls for unity, the Liberians I met were frustrated and angry at the U.S. And those emotions are coloring the way they view U.S. aid. Even after Thomas Eric Duncan's story fades from the headlines, Wesseh says he will think of it when the U.S. says it is committed to helping Liberia through the crisis.

That a Liberian citizen died of Ebola when American citizens have survived makes him feel that America may not be truly committed to helping the Liberian people.

"America protects its interests," he says. "Yes they are here today, making sure Ebola can be kicked out of Liberia, but only for their [business] transactions. I personally am disappointed."

Back in the U.S. this week, Duncan's nephew echoed some of the comments I heard in Monrovia. In an essay written for the Dallas Morning News, Josephus Weeks stated that his uncle did not have to die and that his treatment had been substandard.

Weeks brought up the issue of race in his opening paragraph: "He told the nurse he had recently been in Liberia. But he was a man of color with no health insurance and no means to pay for treatment, so within hours he was released with some antibiotics and Tylenol."

He went on to say that "Thomas Eric Duncan was a victim of a broken system. Some speculate that this was a failure of the internal communications systems. Others have speculated that antibiotics and Tylenol are the standard protocol for a patient without insurance. ... Their error set the wheels in motion for my uncle's death and additional Ebola cases, and their ignorance, incompetence or indecency has created a national security threat for our country."

Weeks captures what everyone I spoke to in Monrovia agreed with: that Duncan had not been treated with dignity and that his death was a tragedy.

Thomas Eric Duncan

Dallas

ebola

Liberia

racism