I’m on day one of my Tanzania vacation and I have to laugh. During the afternoon I sipped Johnny Walker in the cool, wood paneled calm of the Prestige Lounge at Dakar International Airport, a fringe benefit of my business class ticket. My original ticket was economy class but never arrived in the mail so my mom had to claim it lost, purchase another ticket, and look forward to being reimbursed for the first ticket within one year of the date of purchase. One would think that she could simply repurchase the seat with my name already on it, but not so, hence my business class seat and luxury afternoon. I share a drink with a Kenyan-American woman named Catherine Wachira who is director of the Drug Quality and Information program and International Affairs at USP- the US Pharmacopoeia, a foundation that sets drug quality standards adopted by the USDA. Catherine leads the USP’s efforts on malaria and HIV/AIDS treatments across Africa and Southeast Asia. Her soft spoken manner betray her obvious prestige (her business card has her named followed by MBA, MPA). She talks to me about pricing of pharmaceuticals, the high costs of research and development according to her, the reason for high drug costs.

I listen intently but don’t entirely believe it. When I worked for the PIRGs in Oregon, we lobbied in the state capitol for the creation of a prescription drug bulk purchasing program that would allow the combined buying power of Oregon and Washington to negotiate lower drug costs, something that would greatly help seniors who often choose between paying for life-saving medicines or paying the monthly gas bill. The pharmaceutical industry lobbyists were at the Capitol in force, many well-dressed, well-versed, and well-connected advocates who used the same argument Catherine was making. I told her about my experience and she said she was familiar with the “Oregon case.” Still, I enjoyed our conversation and soon enough we boarded for takeoff. My flight has a stop in Bamako, Mali before going to Nairobi, Kenya where I take a small plane to Tanzania.

Sitting in Bamako, I go through the complimentary toiletry kit in my seat pocket, enjoying a quick tooth brush and a little moisturizer, as I look back sympathetically at economy class and reflect on my first class situation. An announcement is made that there is no fuel at the airport in Bamako and we will be stopping in Lagos, Nigeria to gas up. I think to myself, “it’s another case of WAWA: West Africa Wins Again.”h I just can’t imagine how an international airport can’t have fuel, but there is no point in thinking on it too hard, I have another scotch coming and a big, fat seat to recline in along the way.

Later in the flight I go to the bathroom and come across one of my first and likely favorite words in Swahili: Choo Cha Maji. Flushing Toilet. The novelty of a flushing toilet is really something for me after 11 months of squatting over a hole, but to call it the Choo Cha Maji just adds to the mystique.