What it’s like to cover the Ebola crisis as a dad

After I learned that I would be traveling to West Africa to cover the aftermath of the Ebola outbreak with Miles O’Brien, I spent a lot of time thinking about and preparing for the trip: what cameras to bring, what food to pack, how to fly a drone. I also invested a whole lot of time on my health and safety — acquiring vaccinations, malaria pills, first aid kits, and of course, thinking about how not to get Ebola.

What I couldn’t have prepared for was the psychological toll the trip would take. I’ve traveled all over the world, filmed in a variety of dire situations, witnessed extreme poverty, and I’ve generally made it through okay. It turns out once you’re a father, everything changes.

I have two sons, ages 5 and 2. Going to Africa was my fourth international trip this year and my fourth time leaving my sons and wife behind to cover a sobering news story. But it was the first time that being away from them really hurt.

About a week into our trip, the World Health Organization escorted us to a market town near Kambia, Sierra Leone, to meet a family under quarantine. Eleven days earlier, a woman in this house had died of Ebola. This meant a 21-day quarantine for the five family members living in the home. “Contact tracers” were visiting them every day, taking their temperatures, checking for symptoms and providing them with food and supplies. The day before we arrived, health workers removed the deceased woman’s husband from the home — he too was showing signs of Ebola. Left behind were their two children, two little boys, almost the same ages as mine: 5 and 3.

By the time we arrived, only the aunt and uncle remained with the boys. We observed the aid workers delivering supplies — hundreds of plastic pouches filled with water and some food. Then, one by one, everyone in the family got their temperature taken.

By this point in our trip, this had become routine. We’d had our own temperatures taken dozens of times — on and off every plane, before every building we entered, and at every checkpoint we crossed. The procedure was so common to us now, and I had already filmed it so many times, that it was just a regular part of interactions between people. It goes like this. The aid workers point a funny little gun-like device at the head, click a button, and within a second, the temperature is displayed in Celsius on the thermometer screen. They usually say the number (for me, it was almost always 36.5), and then they turn the device around so you can see it for yourself. I watched through the viewfinder as the uncle, then the aunt, then the 3-year-old boy had their temperatures taken. The screen on the back flashed blue and read 37.0, then 36.4, then 37.2 — that’s 98.6, 97.5 and 98.9 degrees Fahrenheit, respectively.

Then it was the 5-year-old boy’s turn. He looked a bit dazed. A crowd of nearly 100 people had gathered — the health care workers and an American TV crew combined created quite a stir — and although this little boy was working hard to be brave, it was clear the chaos put him on edge. I remained concentrated, making sure to keep the lens focused as they pointed the temperature gun to his head. For the first time on our the whole trip, something different happened. The screen turned red and read 39.6 degrees. That’s 103.3, a serious fever.

I felt a shock course through my whole body, like I had been punched in the gut. My mind immediately flashed to the photo of my own 5-year-old son that I keep as wallpaper on my phone. He’s looking off-camera and curious, and lit just right by the sun. A millisecond later I was back in the moment, choking back the tears I knew were welling up in my eyes — I had to keep the scene in focus, make sure I was pointing the camera the right way, ready to follow the action as the situation unfolded. In that millisecond, everyone’s posture changed, there was a hurried call for additional thermometers, more little guns as well as the more familiar silver-tipped plastic probes that would be held under this boy’s arm. The third, the fourth, the fifth readings all came out pretty much the same.

There was consensus that the little boy’s time standing in the sun may have contributed to a higher-than normal temperature, and they would wait a few hours and then come back to check again. We eventually left the scene, but the images never left my mind. Soon after, we learned that the boys’ father had tested positive for Ebola. Not until I returned home and reunited with my own sons, did I learn the fate of those kids. They never did develop Ebola, but their father died. The disease made them orphans.

Whenever anyone asks me about the trip now, I struggle to say much beyond, “It was awful.” We learned a lot, we will deliver some powerful stories for the NewsHour, but the pain in the pit of my stomach hasn’t gone away, and the aftermath of the Ebola epidemic is only starting to come into focus.

Watch part one of Miles O’Brien’s four-part series, Cracking Ebola’s code, on tonight’s PBS NewsHour.