Malaria!

Farmers all over Burkina are staring hopefully (and more than a little desperately) at the skies these days.  The skies are lovely, sunny, cloudless--a perfect day to relax under a mangoe tree and chew on kola nuts--and 100% empty of the monsoon like rains that are usually in full force by this time in June.  The earth, just beginning to erupt in little patches of green grass from the early rains in May, has begun to draw back in, re-drying and baking into clay basins.  When one of those cataclysmic rains does finally come, all that dry soil is going to have a hard time soaking it up--instead, it's going to collect in little ponds all over town.  These little ponds will be the cause of death for hundreds, thousands of children all over Burkina and Mali in the next six months, all from a seemingly innocous little creature, smaller than the tip of my finger, with a big appetite and an unbelievable ability to spawn--mosquitoes are on the prowl.

The female anopheles mosquito is the culprit, and her weapon of choice is malaria.  Malaria is probably much different from what most peope think, especially if you've never lived in a country as inundated with and jaded to malaria as Mali or Burkina Faso.  In these countries, malaria is thought of and treated like the flu--it's everywhere, it sucks, everyone gets it, it's definitely no fun, but your not really afraid it's going to kill you--just a week or two of misery.  Some people, most people even, live with it in their system most of the time and just don't have symptoms until their immune system is weak.  There are even some people, by a genetic quirk called sickle cell anemia who don't get it all (their funky shaped red blood cells just hold no apeal to the virus).  Pregnant ladies and children, however, are not so lucky and are most often victims of fatal cerebral malaria.

The most frustrating part? IT IS SO EASY TO PREVENT! The female anopheles mosquito only comes out between 10pm and 4am (generally speaking)! Literally, just sleeping under mosquito nets would prevent such a huge number of cases that it would for all intents and purposes rid the world of malaria (from an epidemological perspective). So, why oh why don't people just sleep under a damn mosquito net? Here are the reasons I hear:

1) Those nets don't let in any airflow (Answer: A little true, but rainy season is cooler anyway)

2) I never get malaria anyway (Answer: Maybe not, but it could be in your system and you could unknowingly transfer it to your pregnant wife or little child)

3) And anyway, malaria doesn't come from mosquitoes, it comes from Mangoes and Corn, you silly toubab!

(Answer: Raaaar! This one frustrates me the most, not because it's silly and not because I get mad at the people that think this, but if you have ever tried to have an intellectual show down with an uninformed or ignorant thought shared by several people who don't know or care about the scientific method and years of research in labs, you can't begin to understand my frustration.  At home, if you want to prove a thought, you whip out that smart phone, you punch in that question, and blast the oposition with your superior knowledge.  Burkina Faso: Non-applicable on so many levels, and further more, we toubabs are always coming up with the craziest ideas anyway (remember when she wanted us have gardens in water bottles! Ha!))

So, I'm going on a mosquito rampage this year, by golly.  Just handing out gazzillions of mosquito nets is clearly not enough (Burkina has been doing that for a while).
Step one: Sweet mural of a lady and her baby under a mosquito net
Step two: A little harassment of villagers in the streets of my village, namely badgering them to enter a contest for a super cool american mosquito net by  promising to sleep under one during rainy season

Step three: Make mosquito repellant with my assocation out of shea butter and neem oil to sell all over town.  Step four: Save babies! End malaria!