ontrack

How many times does it take for your newscasters to do the video news clips with a straight face?

I'm an American living in West Africa for 10 years now. The addiction to Maggi cubes and salt in cooking is prevalent across the region. Here in Senegal around a third of the people have high blood pressure, and Senegalese adults aren't nearly as fat as Ghanaians tend to be.

But yeah, I've traveled over much of West Africa and haven't seen much obvious malnutrition (kwashiorkor etc.). If obesity counts as malnutrition (and for some people, it does) then much of the developed world is in the same boat.

Have the Palestinians ever tried a Gandhi-like non-violent approach?

Yeah I visited a windmill in Haarlem last year and was pleasantly surprised at how complicated the internal mechanics and structures were. I obviously knew that the primary purpose was grinding, but the other ways that the mill was used was quite impressive.

You should come to Senegal. I am quite impressed with the professionalism and knowledge of the doctors here. I even had skin surgery done on my neck here and the doctor did a better job than a doctor in the US did (I had to have the surgery re-done because the US doctor didn't do it right several years earlier).

The main thing is lack of equipment in rural hospitals. One of my friends who is a local doctor says that kidney failure is basically a death sentence outside the capital, and the doctors will send people who are clearly dying home before they actually die so that the family does not have to rent the hearse to transport the dead body--as long as they are alive any vehicle can take them.

Nurses aren't really at a very high level, in my opinion, though I am not in the health profession.

Edited to mention that the cost of the surgery in the US was $2000 in 2005 and here in Senegal it was $300 in 2014.