My life as an enzyme

For the past two weeks, my desk has been buried under an avalanche of papers about malaria. Innumerable papers printed off the WHO website, the Global Fund website, Medecins sans Frontieres, AllAfrica.com...they've blanketed my desk and its surroundings by several inches.

A couple of months ago I was surfing the Web in conjunction with my ongoing interest and involvement in developing plant-based products--especially medecines--in Senegal. My long-term readers will remember a past postcard called "Dateline Dakar," where I explain some of this saga. Although I haven't written any more postcards since that one about my work there, suffice it to say that I spent about six weeks all told in 2003 in that country, working with the First Lady, the President, and an organization called ASNAPP (Agribusiness for Sustainable Natural African Plant Products, www.asnapp.org). On the one hand, our effort has been to identify indigenous plants with economic potential that may be developed for the good of the country's people, and on the other hand, to find solutions to the ravages of malaria in Senegal.

The two arms of this project are interlinked in that the most effective medication currently available for malaria is derived from Artemisia annua, which gardeners in the States know as the fragrant herb Sweet Annie. Doctors of traditional Chinese medicine have used this plant for thousands of years to cure malaria. But only recently has modern western science latched onto this plant. And wonder of wonders, they have been unable to synthesize its active ingredients at a financially viable price. Imagine! Big pharma is forced to extract the magic elixir from the humble plant itself.

In a manner of speaking, my story in Senegal began with Artemisia annua. In the airline magazine of all places, on the plane to Dakar for the first time, I came across an article about the effectiveness of this plant against malaria. I happened to mention this article to the First Lady, Mme. Viviane Wade, when I met her, and this saga was launched. Over the next two years, I found myself involved in a way I can best described as a catalyst--an enzyme causing things to happen.

Apparently, what is sometimes needed to shake things up at the level of national politics isn't necessarily a great expertise in any certain area, but rather an ability to see the big picture, think in new ways, and most of all, to not be afraid to point out that the emperor is wearing no clothes. Since I work in Senegal entirely of my own volition, without being paid, I have the privilege of being just that free.

If you had told me two years ago that I would be dining in the Senegalese presidential palace regularly, that I'd be on first-name basis with the country's first lady, speaking on the phone to her regularly, that my advice would be delivered by the President to specially convened meetings of his cabinet, I would have shaken my head and told you that you were certifiably nuts.

Yet, almost in spite of myself, that's where I find myself. I seem to have discovered an uncanny ability as an enzyme to make things happen in Senegal. About two months ago, I was surfing the web for information on malaria when I came across the Global Fund's website. The Global Fund is the arm of the World Health Organization dedicated to AIDS, Malaria, and TB, the three scourges of the developing world. I saw that they were calling for Fourth Round grant proposals, and the rest, as they say, was history.

By innocently suggesting to ASNAPP that we apply for Senegal, I seem to have unleashed a torrent of concerted effort and perhaps even--who knows?--some real change in the battle against malaria in Senegal. The long and the short of it is that, following a whirlwind 4 days in Dakar two weeks ago with Denis, I have been ears over eyeballs in preparation of a proposal for the Global Fund.

As a proposal had apparently already been submitted or was being submitted (it remains bureaucratically unclear), I had to propose a sort of addendum or add-in to the existing proposal, and I had to do it fast. Not only that, but maneuvering these new ideas to their destination was more politically complicated than you can possibly imagine or than I can say in these pages. Somewhere along the line I innocently suggested that what was needed was a presidential initiative against malaria, and that our proposal should be presented as part of this national plan.

Last week the President incorporated this idea into his planning and communications, and today I looked at AllAfrica.com to see a news item clearly reflecting this new initiative. He convened his ministers twice last week to receive our proposal and its followup. It's true that I worked feverishly these two weeks, and that Denis helped me each night. We were often up till after midnight, thrashing out ideas and crunching numbers, talking on the phone to Dakar even late at night.

This weekend we declared a moratorium on the Global Fund, which had monopolized our brains and our conversations for the last 3 weeks. Denis painted and filmed gardens, and I worked feverishly on my wildflower plantings in the orchard and on my potager. We ate a spectacular home-cooked dinner (rack of milk-fed spring lamb in the fireplace, fava beans with sage and pancetta, baby potatoes of Noirmoutier in cocotte, and a home-made blanc manger made with some of the precious bitter almonds I'd bought at the Salon d'Agriculture). While the torrent of activity we'd unleashed in Dakar unfolded, we relaxed.

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