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Another BAMP advisory board member, Andrew Rothschild, said he first became aware of Ndiaye while tooling around on the radio dial and finding his music program, "Bonjour Africa," on WNCU-FM, broadcast from NCCU. Ndiaye's easygoing, lyrical voice can be heard each Sunday from 4 until 6 p.m. while he plays West African music. He has hosted the program since 1996 and calls it an open forum.

"It's great," Ndiaye said. "Anyone who is an African music lover finds themselves as part of this forum."

Rothschild is a physician and urban developer with Scientific Properties in Chapel Hill. He has attended two of the malaria project's parties and described Ndiaye's efforts as an important cultural and educational bridge for West Africa to the Triangle. He said the project inspires people who are "interested in what's happening outside their own communities" to help.

"This is an area where an impact can be made in a low-tech, low-cost way, and the impact is enormous," he said.

A man of the world

Ndiaye's experiences as an educator, fundraiser, diplomat, activist and disc jockey make him a great host for the annual party.

Ndiaye moved to Durham in 1982 after befriending the son of John Hope Franklin, a professor emeritus at Duke University best known as author of "From Slavery To Freedom: A History of African Americans."

Ndiaye lived with Franklin while graduating with honors from NCCU in 1986 with a degree in business. He earned a master's degree in Japan and worked awhile in Senegal with an accounting firm before returning to Durham in 1996.

The first two years, Ndiaye used the money from the party to buy medicine. Then he decided to take a more preventive stance with the bed nets, especially after he heard about a medical policy in sub-Saharan Africa called the Bamako Initiative, which was trying to provide essential drugs to people in the region.

But Ndiaye said the policy had another effect.

"The opinion was if the people's health care was cheapened, they would not value it," Ndiaye said. "They felt nothing should be 100 percent free."

The local hospital, despite his insistence that the nets be free, wanted to sell them to create revenue.

Ndiaye called an FM radio show in his hometown, Djoloff, in 2006 and announced that the hospital would be selling bed nets that he intended to be given away free. The resulting calls from people were so intense that the head physician at the local hospital called in to assure the community that the nets would indeed be free, Ndiaye said.

Now Ndiaye depends on The Women's Organization, a Djoloff FM representative and a trusted friend to ensure the nets are not sold.

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