Hamjatta, The AIDS pandemic was an accident waiting to happen. Like on every other issue, we Africans HAVE TO BE the last to wake up and do the right thing. Instead of investing in the cheapest form of defence against the disease - educating the public, the so-called leaders are spending public money on arms, or other totally useless projects. Look at how the public media is being used in Gambia. Instead of the ridiculous "let's praise Allah that we have 'prophet' Yaya as president" themes they put out on both Radio Gambia and the TV station daily, many lives could and would be saved if they are to aggressively embark on an AIDS education campaign. This clearly isn't the case down there. I personally know of ten people who have been killed by this disease in the last four years. Sadly, that tragedy is bound to continue. Given polygamy, loose sexual behaviors, and sheer foolishness, we're sure to loose a very large segment of our population to this terrible disease. The sooner Tombong as manager of the public media in Gambia musters the courage to invite creative people to start life-saving programs, the better off we'll all be. Barring that, we'll just have to accelerate our appeals to those we know. There's not much else one can do, because our Dictator has a more important thing to worry about: turning his native hamlet into a world-class town complete with mansions, 24hrs power and water supplies, and a hotel. All that while most people can't even afford headache tabs at the hospital. Great Leader this boy really is! Saul. ________________________________________________________________________ Get Your Private, Free E-mail from MSN Hotmail at http://www.hotmail.com ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe/subscribe or view archives of postings, go to the Gambia-L Web interface at: http://maelstrom.stjohns.edu/archives/gambia-l.html ----------------------------------------------------------------------------