EXCERPT: 'The Imaginations of Unreasonable Men,' by Bill Shore

Anti-hunger activist writes about the quest for a malaria vaccine.

ByABC News via logo
October 12, 2010, 10:36 AM

Dec. 9, 2010— -- In "The Imaginations of Unreasonable Men: Inspiration, Vision and Purpose in the Quest to End Malaria," author Bill Shore examines the drive behind scientists' quest to achieve the seemingly impossible: a vaccine for malaria.

Malaria is a disease that is transmitted by mosquitoes. In 2008, there were between 100 and 300 million cases -- an estimated one million of which were fatal, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Most deaths caused by malaria occur in sub-Saharan Africa.

Shore is the founder of Share Our Strength, a nonprofit group that fights hunger across the nation.

Introduction, The Imaginations of Unreasonable Men
By Bill Shore

At my dining room table, the glow of two flickering candles illuminates the photograph of a beautiful young woman. In the image she is thirteen years old and sitting attentively at a polished wooden desk. Her skin is coffee brown, her eyes bright and searching, and her dazzling smile and gentle expression hold the promise of a limitless future.

The picture was taken in an Ethiopian village called Yetebon, about a three-hour drive south of Addis Ababa. I was there in 2002 with a delegation of business and philanthropic leaders who support Share Our Strength, the anti-hunger organization my sister and I founded in 1984 following one of Ethiopia's most devastating famines. We started the organization with the belief that everyone has a strength to share in the global fight against hunger and poverty, and that in these shared strengths lie sustainable solutions.

Project Mercy is a U.S.-based nonprofit that seeks to educate and supplement healthy lifestyles for impoverished communities around the world. Its first and main campus is located in Yetebon, where Project Mercy had built schools and kitchens and helped to plant community gardens. In the wake of a famine, the group was in the midst of a new construction project -- a hospital. Share Our Strength had gone to Yetebon to partner with Project Mercy and to generate more awareness and resources for its work.

At one point in our trip, a few of us stepped into an English class in the Project Mercy campus school. The teacher asked one child after another to stand and tell us what they wanted to be when they were older. After each child had spoken, and after I had thanked the class for allowing us to visit, one girl said something so quietly that I could hardly hear her. She was the only person who spoke without being called upon. I walked over and knelt down to ask her what she had said. She repeated so that I could hear it: "God bless you."

Like any child, she was shy, but unlike many she did not look away. Something about her presence set her apart. She told me her name. I asked her to write it down for me so that I would know the correct spelling. She searched her notebook for an empty space and carefully formed the letters of the English alphabet she had learned in school, writing "Alima Dari."

We talked for five or ten more minutes. I told her where we were from and why we'd come to visit. I complimented her on her English. She told me about her brothers and about her walk to school, and where her family lived.

Eventually, I rejoined the Share Our Strength group to tour the cattle shed, the gardens and kitchen, and the partially built hospital. When finally it was time for us to leave, all of the children, hundreds of them, lined the road from the school to the main gate. As I walked toward them, I scanned the faces for Alima's. There were close to three hundred children, standing three rows deep. It should have been impossible to find her. In fact I soon realized that it was impossible not to find her.

She beamed at me, and I waved and yelled "Alima!" I reached across the first row of children and we shook hands again.

On my way back to Addis Ababa, and to the United States, I asked myself why one young woman among so many had made such an impression on me. I didn't fully understand it then, nor do I claim to understand it now. I just knew that it moved me. I was simply delighted to have met Alima. I was struck by the sense that anything was possible for her -- or for anyone who was so ready to live life to the fullest. From that day forward I followed her progress. For a little over a year we exchanged letters. I received pictures of her reading her graduation speech. I have had many different experiences in my travels for Share Our Strength, but never have I connected with anyone quite the way I did with Alima.