Dear Friends,
 
I've returned home from Uganda, arriving last Tuesday and so after a couple of days getting over jet lag and a couple of days getting personal stuff done, I'm here writing to you again. I have to tell you that the first night home my sleep was interrupted in the middle of the night - by a mosquito buzzing in my ear. In Gulu I slept under a net every night and used DEET flavored insect repellent in the evenings to keep the critters at bay.
 
My visiting mosquito got me to thinking about some of the differences between the U.S. and equatorial Africa. That buzzing would be a worry in my hotel room but is only an annoyance at home. How I respond to that high piercing sound in two different places is fundamental to describing two ways of life.
 
It comes down to a question nobody has actually asked me but that I hear bits of in people's curiosity about African life: "Why don't ?those people' act like us? What's their problem? All that poverty and disease!" Somewhere in there is an assumption that African people are just lazy and if they really tried hard they'd be much more successful. I'm sure that question passed through my own mind before I went to find out what life is like there.
 
Back to that mosquito. If it been an anopheles mosquito, it might have been infected with malaria parasites and a bite might have inject 50 thousand or so plasmodia into my blood stream. About a week later there would be billions and I would have developed the symptoms of malaria and been in very bad shape within hours after that. So the mosquito becomes emblematic of some of the forces aligned against people in Africa and many third world nations. Malaria, Dengue fever, west Nile virus, AIDS. Those are human diseases. Then there's the forces of nature - heat and humidity, drought and flood. And relationship problems that include tribalism and authoritarian rule. But I want to stick with just malaria as my exemplar of problems in Africa.
 
Back in the 1930's malaria was common in many more countries than it is now, including here in the U.S. There was a world-wide (almost) effort to eradicate malaria. Starting in 1936 the Centers for Disease Control started applying what would become over three million doses of DDT inside U.S. homes. They also advocated window screens and getting rid of stagnant water where mosquitoes can breed. By 1948 malaria in the U.S. was almost gone and the government DDT effort ceased in the early ?50's. We still have vector control districts that spray for mosquitoes. Malaria was pretty much wiped out in Europe down to the Balkans and in the South Pacific. And it was lessened in much of Asia and South America.
 
But no effort was made to contain the disease in Africa. In many countries in sub Saharan Africa the incidence of malaria in children under three is about 1350 per 1000. What? More than 100 percent? That must be a typo. No, it means that many children get malaria more than once a year. Since children so young have no immunity built up, it is a very serious infection that is likely to kill them if it isn't treated. But even adults are severely affected my it.
 
What happens is that the plasmodia parasite is injected with the saliva that the mosquito uses as a lubricant for its proboscis as it penetrates the skin. Within two hours they've found their way to the liver where they attach themselves and replicate for a couple of days. Then they move into red blood cells until they have replicated again, destroying the cells. Only now does a body detect that something is wrong and it's too late. Billions of plasmodia attack the red blood cells. The body becomes starved for oxygen and turns up the heat to high - fever. A baby cries in pain, sweats out fluids and becomes dehydrated. They become very quiet - semi-conscious and they have terrible muscle spasms and their backs and extremities stiffen with pain. Sometimes the plasmodia can attach themselves in the brain and that is the worst form of the disease, killing its infant host within hours. Untreated, many babies die within two or three days.
 
Rosette is our country administrator in Uganda and college educated. She has a year and a half old baby, Christiana who I met in January. Rosette had to take Christiana to the hospital because she had developed a fever - malaria. Rosette knows about how malaria is spread and has a mosquito net that Ken had given her. But was she using it? No. Nighttime temperatures don't drop much in Uganda and it's hard to get to sleep. Putting a mosquito net over you stops whatever little breeze of comfort there might be. Can't sleep because you're too uncomfortable? Take off the net! Now if Rosette who knows better does that, what chance do babies in the IDP camps have where they have no net and don't even know why their babies get sick and die?
 
Nets are not a simple solution even under the best of circumstances. There are programs that hand them out for free. But without education, they may be used for fishing, or as a bridal veil or they'll lie about unused. Just a slight rip and our buzzy little friends will find their way in. Since cooking is over an open fire inside the huts, the net may catch fire, burning the person sleeping under it. When Christine was in Tanzania, she used mosquito netting over her windows to keep the anopheles outside. When I was at the Lira Hotel two years ago, the staff would spray the rooms every evening before I got there. But as I entered the room, fifteen to fifty of the little buzzers would follow me in and I'd have to spray again - with me inside the room.
 
In September 2006, the World Health Organization okayed the use of DDT in homes to control malaria. A single spray costing less than a dime lasts more than a year and kills mosquitoes that land on the walls. The problem with DDT is that farmers used it in excess, using many times more than was required and since it is very slow breaking down, we're still paying for it.. Rachel Carson wrote about the problems of DDT in her book, Silent Spring, published in the 1960's. I remember being in the ninth grade and my mother made me read it. After that (the book, not my reading it), DDT was just about impossible to find worldwide. It's finding its way back in what I hope is an appropriate way. Even so, plasmodia were finding ways to become immune to DDT back then.
 
There are many companies that are working on a vaccine, but plasmodia are much more complicated than a bacterium or virus. A virus may have as few as eleven genes, plasmodia over 500. And the plasmodia replicate and mutate so quickly it become immune to many of the anti-malarial drugs so there may never be a vaccine.
 
Billions of dollars have been spent over decades on just this one disease - perhaps the most significant in the world, even considering HIV/AIDS. I've gone into such detail to illuminate just one problem the people of Africa have in overcoming their environment. The people I know in the IDP camps are hard working farmers. They walk to their gardens about 8 in the morning and return mid-afternoon. They grow maize (corn) cassava, groundnuts (peanuts) sesame, sorghum, peas and beans. All are basic food crops. Well, they use the sorghum to make a little moonshine ☺. If there is a health dispensary, or an assistant medical officer, they can take their sick children there and get a referral to the hospital if they have malaria symptoms. A referral, eh? The hospital is miles away, it's a scary place they don't feel entitled to go to and admission and treatment costs about 60 cents for children five and under. Each is an insurmountable problem that leads to the death of their baby.
 
Aid Africa is a very small organization with four employees dedicated to visiting the camps to teach about stove building. But we have recently placed more emphasis on childhood diseases; malaria, anemia and diarrhea - what we call MAD. In a month we carried over 100 babies and their mothers to Lacor Hospital and almost all were admitted, many with malaria. We're not doctors, so if a mother says her baby is sick we take them, mother and child. We pay the 1000 shillings admittance, and for food for the mother while they are there. We check back everyday on each baby to see if they are progressing and if we need to, we advocate to the staff on their behalf. The staff there is wonderful and absolutely willing to help however they can. What chaos! What service! Then, when they're ready to go home, we transport them back to the camp.
 
My point is that we don't understand the privileges we enjoy that nature inflicts harshly on the lives of most people elsewhere in the world. We need to develop understanding of the problems they face and look at reasonable solutions to the poverty and diseases. From that understanding comes concern and from that action. Outlining malaria here describes just one of the myriad problems people face.
 
Then there's Aid Africa. We feel our Six Brick Rocket Stove is an integral part of bringing people out of poverty. Increased safety, better health, less work - I've outlined in the past for you before the benefits of the stove. We know there are other huge problems, but we have just a small part of the solution. We can work on them as we have resources. In just the last month, we've already made a difference in the lives of 100 babies and their families near Gulu and before that we've built thousands of used now not only in Uganda, but Central America and the Darfur district of Sudan.
 
A friend was thanking me just yesterday for making the trips to Uganda and doing the little I do. But I had to turn it around on him and thank him for his support. There are countless good projects in the world - art and music, athletics and all those special interest groups we support. All are part of the human experience land deserve support. I couldn't travel to Gulu without the wealth, work and support of all the people I know and thousands I don't know. All the money I've earned or had donated, all the knowledge I have is part of what you all give me as part of the larger economy we live in. Thank you for the support that you may not even realize you give me.
 
I have once again gone on way too long.
 
Peter