Africans

A genetic mutation that originally protected Africans from a virulent form of malaria now renders them 40% more susceptible to HIV infections, offering a partial explanation for the disproportionate spread of the virus among Africans and African Americans, researchers reported today. The mutation, however, has an unusual benefit. It also slows progression of HIV, the virus that causes AIDS, giving patients an extra two years of life, said Dr. Sunil K.

Race is not an issue for Tony Gleaton, the photographer told students at Loyola Marymount University recently. Yet an irresistible musing on the meaning of race has been his destiny. Born with blue eyes and a fair complexion, Gleaton, 59, has spent his life explaining to people that both of his parents were black and that he is "not biracial," while wondering why anyone should care.

Re "Malaria's Toll Fuels the Case for DDT Use in Africa," May 29 Malaria is a devastating health problem in Africa that is finally getting the international attention it deserves. Unfortunately, some want to bring back widespread use of DDT for malaria control -- a "silver bullet" approach that saved lives in the 1950s and '60s but stopped working as mosquitoes became resistant to the pesticide. Like most Africans, I do not want a toxic chemical known to cause cancer and low birth weights sprayed on my walls and contaminating the home where my children play.

Boubacar Joseph Ndiaye, 86, curator of Senegal's historic House of Slaves, died Feb. 6 in Dakar, according to an announcement from the country's culture ministry. Ndiaye oversaw the memorial on Goree Island, off the coast of Senegal, for more than 40 years. The island was used to hold captured Africans before their perilous voyage to the Americas. "He was the main architect of the defense of the memory of the Atlantic slave trade, the man most fervent and unrelenting against any revisionism," said Hamady Bocoum, director of cultural heritage at Senegal's Culture Ministry.

Nelson Mandela's fans celebrated the anti-apartheid icon's 91st birthday by emulating him with good deeds: reading to the blind, distributing blankets to the homeless or refurbishing homes for AIDS orphans. Mandela had called on people to spend time doing good on the first Mandela Day, which his charity foundations hope will be an annual event. South Africans collected clothing for the poor, painted schools, planted trees near Mandela's boyhood home, and renovated a building in downtown Johannesburg for people left homeless by a fire.

Terry George's article about apathy over Africa's suffering (Commentary, Jan. 16) could not have been more appropriate. The extensive press coverage of the tsunami has helped generate well-deserved sympathy and financial aid for the victims. It is a heartening reminder of how Americans rise to support fellow humans in distress, especially from cataclysmic natural disasters. Surely the press and the administration can do a better job, however, of focusing attention on the ongoing, man-made tragedy in Sudan.

Get ready to program Africa into your TV remote. If James Makawa and his partners at the North Hollywood-based Africa Channel have their way, your cable menu soon will include round-the-clock programming centered on Africa and Africans. With Jacob Arback, a former vice president of DirecTV International, and Richard Hammer, a former executive with Columbia Pictures Television, Makawa, a native of Zimbabwe, hopes to show audiences facets of Africa not frequently seen in mainstream media reports.

Back in the Horn of Africa, ethnic Somalis often treated Hussein Abdi's ethnic group with disdain. "We just worked for them," Abdi, 28, recalled. "I felt under them.... Sometimes they called us 'slave.' " Abdi is a Bantu, and Somalis once kept Bantus as slaves. But as Abdi and other refugees from Somalia continue to settle in San Diego, Bantus and Somalis are recognizing that their similarities matter more than their differences.

If you could pick one photograph that tells the story of Africa, what would that photo show? Would it try to capture the origin of humanity, wildlife, famine, despair, genocide? Would it try to juxtapose sorrow and political corruption, incredible wealth against incredible poverty, birth against death by AIDS, the ugliness of war or the simple beauty of a land called the first and last place on Earth?

Mourad surveyed his cold concrete world. The official name of the housing complex, a wind-swept corridor of towers crammed with 17,000 people, is the Valley of Silver. Its nickname: the Slab. "It's very simple," Mourad said. "There is a border between here and Paris, between rich and poor. And you can never really cross it." Mourad, 25, and his friends had taken refuge from the chill in a vestibule of an aging high-rise. Outside on the weather-beaten esplanade, mothers hunched behind strollers.