MONROVIA, Liberia — Liberians have become accustomed to living with demons.

Long before Ebola arrived, the people here endured 14 years of civil war, one that snuffed out 200,000 lives and ignited acts of barbarism that laid waste to the country. The war produced mad generals who led ritual sacrifices of children before going into battle, naked except for shoes and a gun. It produced amphetamine-fueled 10-year-old fighters wielding M16s while toting teddy bear backpacks, and rapists who wore Halloween masks and wedding gowns.

When it finally ended in 2003, what was left was a nation of survivors, a place where nearly every person of a certain age has a painful story to tell.

I know this all too well, as a native Liberian who emigrated to the United States. My family has our own war stories. One sister was kidnapped and fought to protect her 1-year-old son while marching for days behind rebel lines. Another sister sent her son away to avoid the war and spent two years — two years — hiding deep up country in an area known only as Territory 3C, far from the worst of the conflict, after witnessing gunmen disembowel a co-worker in front of his son.

I have long stopped asking people what happened to them during the war. But as I moved in recent weeks around this city where I was born, reporting about the Ebola epidemic, I was aware of this: There is a strength here that I had never before realized.

My friend Wael Hariz, a Lebanese citizen living here who had been away for a couple of months, said he came back in late September expecting the worst, after watching the coverage of Ebola overseas. Standing just off Tubman Boulevard, Monrovia’s main road, at midday, he looked at the cars, taxis and pedestrians going by.

“I had forgotten, after what they’ve been through, how resilient people here are,” he said.

They came by that resilience the hard way. This is a staggeringly beautiful place, where tropical rain forests give way to pure white sandy beaches dotted by coconut trees. But the average Liberian lives on $1.25 a day, has no access to clean water and does not have a flush toilet at home.