In preparation for the visitors, the house was being cleaned from top to bottom. Everybody was miserable.

The professor was miserable because it was impossible to concentrate as mattresses were carted onto the patio, beaten with sticks, and abandoned in the sunshine. Since the operation his attention had not fully returned.

After scanning the Lancet in preparation for court--the government was trying to deny his vaccine a clinical trial--his gaze wandered to the front of the house. There was glass on the tiled section of the driveway. Estella had managed to break a window while moving the mattresses onto the veranda.

Late in 2007 I arranged a meeting in Arusha, Tanzania with an American in the travel business. Underneath a pile of titles and affiliations, this big gregarious dude, whom I'll call Morgan, worked to bring tourists to desolate villages, a specialty sometimes called 'poorism.' I'd planned to write a magazine story about delivering tourism dollars to the Barbaig, a polygamous tribe who wear plaid blankets and sandals cut from tires, like the more famous Maasai. Read More