Table topics

I had dinner with three fellow guests at York Lodge—a Belgian diamond trader, a Brazilian AIDS consultant and a member of the Danish embassy in Zambia.

The diamond trader was in Zimbabwe to help the government secure the spoils of a recently discovered field—supposedly among the largest and most easily accessible in the world—and the Danish embassy worker was helping his colleagues reopen his country’s consulate in Harare.

The Brazilian AIDS consultant described the challenge in getting patients to cooperate in their treatments.

Infected people in rural areas, she said, have discovered that a new treatment also accelerates the growth of poultry. Expensive medicines intended to fight the AIDS virus are being fed to chickens instead.

I love meeting people with different backgrounds.