In recognition of World Malaria Day this past Friday, P+P has a related offering from contributing author Laurie Lathem.

St. Louis University medical students Andrew Sherman and Jesse Matthews refer to the summer of 2005 as their “last summer” because it fell between their first and second years of med school. Facing three more years of medical school and three grueling years of residencies after that, they might have been expected to take it a little easy as most of their colleagues were doing. Instead they formed a non-profit organization called NetLife Africa, and spent several weeks bicycling over dirt roads in rural Senegal distributing anti-malarial bed nets to villagers.

Malaria is the number one killer in Senegal, as well as in other parts of Africa, with children the most vulnerable. It is estimated that malaria kills one child under the age of five every 30 seconds in sub-Saharan Africa which amounts to 3,000 children every day. Picture four 747 jumbo jets loaded with children crashing every day, or a 9/11 every single day of every year. While there is treatment, many malaria sufferers have no access to medical care, particularly in rural areas. The prospect of a vaccine remains poor. Spraying DDT is unpopular and safe only under certain circumstances. As the parasite carrying mosquitoes are nocturnal, the best prevention is the simplest: long-lasting insecticide-treated bed nets (LLIN’s) that provide protection while children and their mothers are sleeping.

Concentrating on an area of Senegal called Kedougou that is largely without roads or health care facilities, Sherman and Matthews distributed 600 nets in 2005 and 1,110 more on a subsequent trip in 2007 (their next trip is planned for 2009). They have protected approximately 3,400 people from malaria carrying mosquitoes and have saved an estimated 85 lives (on average, two or three family members sleep under one net, and for every 20 nets delivered, one life is saved). Adamant that NetLife Africa remain a zero overhead organization and that every dollar raised go to the cost of bed nets, Sherman and Matthews pay for their travel with their student loans and raise money from their friends and families to pay for the nets. The cost of one LLIN is $5; the average donation to NetLife Africa is $20.

Asked where they got the crazy idea of going around Senegal on bikes loaded with bed nets, Sherman says, “When I was in the Peace Corps in Kedougou, I saw that the main problems were diarrheal diseases and malaria.” But water problems, as Matthews puts it, are “harder to get your arms around” than malaria. As a Peace Corps volunteer, Sherman recruited a troupe of non-performers from his village to perform a theatrical presentation on the cause and effect of malaria and take it around to neighboring villages. Everyone, Sherman said, had the same question. “How do we prevent this?” After educating the villagers on how to best prevent malaria, he had no way of helping them obtain the nets which at that time in 2002 were about $10 each, roughly double their current cost. Sherman “was stuck with one hand tied behind my back.” It was this feeling he says, and the fact that the price of LLIN’s was dropping, that made him want to go back to Senegal during his “last summer.” “I wanted to do something,” he says. “I didn’t want to go back as a tourist.” So he teamed up with fellow medical student Jesse Matthews and NetLife Africa was born.

Their method is simple and efficient. Sherman and Matthews (who incidentally look so much alike they could easily be mistaken for twins) fly to Dakar where they pick up the LLIN’s, rent a minibus and drive the sixteen hours to Kedougou where the nets are stored in rented rooms under lock and key. There they work with a local health official to identify which villages are at most risk, a determination made on the basis of access to health care, amount of stagnant water and high incidences of positive malaria testing in the past. In each village, they work with a community health agent to make up a list of recipients, prioritizing married women and children first. Sherman, who is fluent in Pulaar, the local language, and Matthews who is becoming proficient, greet the villagers, and give an educational talk on the nets and how they should be used.

Everyone wants a net. They are hard to come by. When a local police officer attempts to bribe Sherman and Matthews on the roads, for example, he wants a net, not money. As they hand out each LLIN, Sherman and Matthews write down each recipient’s ID card number in order to keep the distribution organized and to track their coverage for future visits. Even though Netlife Africa works with the larger organization Against Malaria to buy LLIN’s for the low price of five dollars each, this is still beyond the reach of most rural Senegalese. But the .20 cents that Sherman and Matthews charge is a minimal, symbolic amount that they say helps give a sense of ownership. NetLife Africa then donates the proceeds to a group called Senegad that works to educate adolescent girls in Senegal. Once the distribution is complete, there is singing and dancing, Sherman and Matthews are fed and, once they have slept, they pack up, get on their bikes and do it all over again. The process is physically punishing (Matthews lost 25 pounds in one month in 2007), but the reward keeps them going. The people receiving the LLIN’s are extremely thankful, and the impact is obvious and immediate. Matthews likens the trip to backpacking. “It’s satisfying because it’s hard,” he says.

While the response to NetLife Africa both in Senegal and here in the United States has been almost entirely positive, resistance has come from the most unlikely corners. Some Peace Corps volunteers in Senegal have been unwilling to work with Matthews and Sherman, subscribing as they do to a more free-market enterprise approach to humanitarian work. They believe that LLIN’s should not be given away for free ($0.20 is negligible) and that money is better spent paying for ads that encourage people to buy them. The opposing view is that the urgency of malaria is akin to that of a famine or a natural disaster, both instances in which other outreach organizations such as the World Health Organization routinely give handouts. “There is a fence within the Peace Corps,” explains Sherman, “and Peace Corps volunteers fall on either side of that fence.” Sherman explains his position this way: “These are people who are below the first rung on the ladder of poverty. They need a little help.” Health problems as persistent and devastating as malaria help keep poverty’s oppressive grip on the population he works with. “They need a boost in health to reach the first rung.” Nevertheless, Sherman says he was asked by a Peace Corps volunteer in Senegal not to distribute the LLIN’s in her village, an encounter that left him in tears.

However, recent developments in relations between NetLife Africa and the Peace Corps have changed for the better. The new Peace Corps country director in Senegal, Christopher Hedrick, has announced that volunteers in Senegal should also be “anti-malaria volunteers” and has agreed to work with NetLife Africa to distribute LLIN’s over a wider area and with a larger workforce. With these new promising collaborations underway they hope to distribute 4,000 nets in Senegal this summer and eventually to partner with other organizations in neighboring countries such as Guinea

Now that Sherman and Matthews are about to enter highly pressurized medical residencies, and with the Peace Corps wiling to take over the responsibilities of distribution, how much involvement can they realistically expect to have in the future of NetLife Africa? Says Matthews, “malaria is not going anywhere.” And with a new study showing that widespread distribution of LLIN’s and medical therapies in Zanzibar reduced mortality in children under five by half, they have every reason to continue what they started. They only considered residencies whose directors were receptive to their efforts in Senegal. Matthews will be specializing in infectious diseases and Sherman in pediatrics, all the better to serve the population in Kedougou with such things as staph infections and water borne illnesses. Mr. Sherman’s fiancée, Chrystal Jenkins, also a doctor, will travel with them in 2009 to work on programs that empower women. Having scoped out this remote 30 by 40 mile rectangle of the globe where each corn stalk growing between the huts holds enough water to breed mosquitoes, Sherman and Matthews plan on going back to Kedougou every two years. They will even buy a hut there to use as a home base for the price of $500. However grueling their methods seem, they say they have the process streamlined.

“The better we can do it, the more we can do it,” says Sherman. “Besides, we like to get on the bikes.”

Because he’s not yet a legal adult, sixteen-year-old master drummer Magatte Sow’s MySpace page is set to “private” and therefore gives precious little information. It tells us that he’s an African-American male and that he lives in Los Angeles, California. Three photos run in rotation: Magatte in a baseball cap over a do-rag; two drums lying on top of each other like lovers; and Magatte playing the talking drum. Next to the rotating photos are the words “mou serigne fallou,” which is Wolof, the language spoken by 90 percent of the population of Senegal and the Gambia, and they convey the facts that Magatte’s parents are Senegalese and that he is a practicing Musilm and a follower of Serigne Fallou, a Senegalese caliph of great renown. Perhaps the most telling thing about Magatte’s MySpace page, though, is his choice of mood icon, the little happy face graphic meant to describe the profilee’s overall mood. Of the many available mood icons (sexy, cheeky, sad, devilish, etc.) Magatte chose a green face with a toothy grin and the word “accomplished.”

By anyone’s standards, “accomplished” is an understatement. Magatte Sow is a master of several West-African percussion instruments: the talking drum or tama, the djembe, and the sabar. Like many other Americans of blended cultural identity, Magatte straddles two worlds: his “drumming life” and his “non-drumming life,” as he describes them. Asked if he considers himself American or Senegalese, he says he is both. He speaks Wolof at home with his parents and listens to Senegalese mbalax and to American rap. He fasts during the month of Ramadan and transferred to a high school farther from his Inglewood home to avoid gang violence. Still, in order to avoid trouble, he has to keep his head down and “stay in class.” He plays basketball on his school team and with his friends, some of whom have no idea about his “drumming life.” His weekends are spent playing djembe for his mother’s dance class, sabar for another class and performing at various events and shows around the city. His hands are often shredded and bloody.

Senegalese society is extremely conservative by American standards. It is devoutly Muslim. Both girls and boys are expected to save themselves for marriages that are still often arranged and respect for elders is deeply ingrained. To western eyes, a striking contradiction is the culture’s intensely sexual sabar dancing, characterized by suggestive gyrations and pure sensual joy. Perhaps Magatte’s American life is circumscribed and given meaning by the Senegalese customs followed by his family. It might explain his innate politeness and the discipline he brings to his playing. After opening for superstar Baaba Maal at a club in Hollywood, Magatte, then fifteen years old and set loose in a club, might have been expected to do what most other fifteen-year-olds would do: head for the bar to try and get a beer. Instead, he positioned himself in front of Baaba Maal’s sabar players and watched their every move.

We’ve come to expect the culture of the immigrant family in the U.S. to sputter its last breaths in the face of the indifference, even the disdain, of the Americanized first-generation children. Not so in the case of Magatte Sow. To be so good at what he does requires dedication and passion for the music, which is to say, the heart and soul of his Senegalese culture. He started playing djembe at age two (his father, Malik Sow, is a drummer) and sabar at age five. His uncle gave him his own tama when he was four, cutting the stick short to fit his tiny hand. For years, Magatte concentrated on the djembe and without ever having had a formal lesson, became a master by the time he was eleven or twelve. He did this while living in L.A., not Senegal. Although he visited there often when he was younger, he has not been back in seven years. There, children born into griot families— that is, families of traditional storytellers and musicians (in Senegal they are called nguewel)— are saturated in traditional rhythms. Not given to bold compliments, they might say about a good young drummer, “It’s in the blood.” Magatte’s mother, Mareme Faye, is nguewel. But no one seems ready with an explanation of how one could have mastered this art in so few years and so far from the land of its birth and practice. Asked what they would think of his playing in Senegal, Magatte shrugs. Perhaps he doesn’t know. There are many boys his age in Senegal who know as much as he does. Yet one wonders how common it is for any musician anywhere to make the music his own the way Magatte does. The question of talent doesn’t really arise in Senegal the way it does in the west. But Magatte’s explosive djembe and sabar, and his deeply expressive tama leave little doubt that by Western standards, he is a huge and precocious talent.

As a teenager, Magatte turned in earnest to the sabar and the tama, both played with a stick and a hand. He studied with the masters Aziz Faye and N’Dongo M’baye, who was for years one of Baaba Maal’s dancers. Although the tama is perhaps the most expressive of the instruments Magatte plays (it is called the talking drum because it is meant to do just that), tama players are the biggest showboaters. The drum is small and held under the arm, so tama players dance around wild-eyed, inciting the audience to throw cash at them and to stuff it into their mouths. Magatte does all of this, and yet his solos are gorgeously restrained and inventive, the work of a mature and sophisticated musical talent. He began playing tama just four years ago, when he was twelve years old. Of the instruments Magatte plays, the sabar may be the most notoriously difficult. Supporting the lightning quick, athletic sabar style of dance, the sabar is a family of six drums of varying pitch played as an ensemble. The polyrhythms are maddeningly complicated and difficult to master. To know all the parts of the sabar is to have memorized hundreds of complicated patterns and breaks (called bakks) and the puzzle of how they all fit together. None of it is written down. To top it off, the principal skill of master sabar player is to seamlessly follow the wildly frantic dancers as they improvise (not the other way around), anticipating each touch of the bare foot to the ground and punctuating it with a loud crack of the stick, as though dancer and drummer were one.

At Aziz Faye’s weekly sabar dance class, Magatte slouches into the room wearing baggy jeans, do-rag and T-shirt in neutral, non-gang colors. He checks his cell phone and then checks his look in the mirror. When he starts playing, a switch is turned on, his love of this music an electric current running through his tall thin frame. Within minutes, his drum is up on a chair and he is standing, pounding on it fiercely, stylishly, thumping his foot for those who have lost the beat. Shy no more, he catches the eye of whoever is watching as though to say “Watch this,” and then launches into a fiery lick. He moves from one drum to another as needed in deference to the older drummers, some of whom he has easily and almost embarrassingly surpassed. Occasionally he jumps out of the pack of drummers for a herky-jerky dance solo of his own. Pape Diouf, a master sabar player who drums with Magatte, nods his head and says in typical Senegalese understatement: “He’s ready.”

But ready for what? Great artists tend to defy categorization and maybe Magatte Sow is one of these. Watching him play begs the questions: How good can this kid get? Where does he go from here? Will he parlay his musical mastery into Western stardom, go to college, teach drumming like his father? For now, Magatte has more immediate concerns. He needs to finish school. He needs to earn money to fix the drum skins he regularly thrashes. He hopes to go to Senegal this year where they might well ask where this American kid learned to play so well. Just as it can be inferred that the culture of his parents is what guides Magatte through the stresses of being young and black in L.A., it is also true from the Senegalese perspective that the luck of his American birth keeps him from the grinding poverty of West Africa. On a recent Sunday after a particularly scorching dance class, Magatte helped carry the drums to the sidewalk where he was met by a couple of friends, all speaking Wolof. Indistinguishable from thousands of other L.A. teenagers in a woolen hat and black sweatshirt, Magatte waited for Aziz Faye to come out and pay him for providing the soundtrack for the dancers. He thanked Faye for the cash, put his leathery hands into his pockets and headed off with his friends to the Crenshaw Mall.

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Laurie Lathem is a writer who lives in Los Angeles.
Images and YouTubes: Lynette Wich. Thanks Lynette!