Conakry, Guinea (CNN) -- It's hard not to be nervous, standing outside the Ebola isolation wards.
The wards are a cluster of unassuming white tents in the middle of a large field, not far from the center of the city. Each is just big enough to hold around 10 cots. Two layers of zippers keep the outside from getting in, and more importantly here -- the opposite.
Nobody goes inside the tent without spending 15 minutes putting on isolation gear. The nurse handing over my garb calls it my "space suit."
I can't help but think that going into an Ebola isolation ward is a little bit like going to the moon.
In H.G. Wells' "The War of the Worlds," seemingly invincible invaders from Mars are laid low by Earth's microbes, for which they have no defense. With Ebola, we humans are the invaders. The sense of being an alien in the world of this virus is jarring.