...and then I just sent off an article to the LANCET (!!!) on the malaria situation in Djenne. Yes, yes, I know, I have no medical expertise whatsoever of course, but I was encouraged by my pal the psychiatrist Yonatani who thought that a word from the grass roots as it were might be interesting for an international medical conference in Bamako in November on the subject of health and inequality…This article has of course more or less zilch possibility of being accepted, but I couldn’t help myself I just had to do it- would love to see my brother’s face (an eye surgeon) if I had an article published in the LANCET! (The article is called ‘Money can’t buy you love but it can prevent death from malaria).
All this is exciting of course, but it is exhausting and I am quite aware that nothing may come of anything. I am also painfully aware that I am irritated by more or less everything here in my daily life: by the slow pace, by the carefree attitudes, the forgetfulness and the lack of responsibility and the more or less total lack of community spirit all around me.
So, am I joining the ranks of the many who ‘love humanity’ as a whole and want to ‘help people’ but can’t stand the individual representatives of the human race?
If so I am going to have to leave and admit defeat. That is my greatest challenge here in Africa.