To paraphrase Lucretius, there’s nothing more useful than to watch a man or woman in times of contagious deadly disease peril combined with his or her assumptions of financial adversity to discern what kind of man or woman they really are.

It’s a lot like the Wild West out here... just with tea shops instead of saloons. Wild West Sahara, that is.

Malnutrition can be as common in poverty as in wealth; one from a lack of food, the other from a lack of knowledge of food.

Shovels aren’t very glamorous, but they’ve been liberating entire communities from malaria for the past 5,000 years.

If people’s night fears of sorcery – which negatively influences their decision to use mosquito nets – fail to impress the outsider, the brute everyday reality remains; in a number of rural African villages it is still much too common for very real hyenas to snatch people, especially children, out of their own homes as they lie sleeping at night, because of the lack of a good front door.

It is not possible to live in a malaria endemic zone without either being sickened by it oneself or without knowing someone who has had it or been hospitalized with it or without personally knowing at least one man, woman or child who has died from it or without knowing at least one woman who has lost her unborn baby from it.

Malaria-hosting mosquitoes will not wait politely during their most active evening feeding hours for people to go to bed under mosquito nets.

They won’t turn away a father who has come to find his son.

Rainy season should fill us with joy, not malaria parasites.

If one could speak two languages well and was raised on tea and baguettes for breakfast,in places where the most mundane daily business on the street is conducted in four languages, where horse carts park at cyber cafes, where would one go? Where could one go? Why,with a smile and a handshake, very far, indeed!