DURHAM - Five years ago, Bouna Ndiaye was listening to National Public Radio when he heard a gloomy report about malaria killing people in sub-Saharan Africa.

For Ndiaye, who grew up in Senegal, the story was not news; he had contracted malaria many times as a child and once as a grown man. But he sat up and listened when he heard that known cures for malaria were no longer effective because the virus had mutated.

"Now that freaked me out," Ndiaye said.

So he decided to throw a party.

That party, held a week later in the clubhouse of a Durham apartment complex, drew 200 people, including Durham Mayor Bill Bell. The guests gave more than $7,000 to buy medicine. Ndiaye was pleasantly surprised by the party's success.

"There were competing events, and it rained, but that did not prevent people from coming," he said.

Bell said that the party drew people from all walks of life and that Ndiaye's engaging personality makes it easy to support a worthy cause in a faraway place.

"I haven't been there," Bell said. "But after listening to Bouna, I have a much greater appreciation for the problem he's trying to solve."

Ndiaye, 55, is the oldest son of seven children, born in Barkedji, a small town in the northwest region of Senegal, West Africa. He grew up about 30 miles away in Linguere, a flat, sandy agricultural town of about 13,600 people. Ndiaye said the region is very dry and people use wells to water their crops, mainly millet, peas and peanuts.

Ndiaye's mother, Fatou Ndiaye, was a housewife. His father, Ibra F. Ndiaye, was a trader who would often travel to the interior of the country to buy vegetables from local farmers to sell to wholesalers, who shipped the produce overseas.

More than two decades have passed since Ndiaye first moved to America, but he's still deeply connected to his homeland. When he moved from Senegal to Durham in 1982, he was shocked at the number of Africans living here who had no intention of ever going home.

"I am Senegalese. I am going to have a home there, and I am going to live there," he said. "I just cannot understand people who turn their backs on their hometown."

It's a quality Bell praised.

"They say you can't go home," he said. "But with what he's trying to do, he obviously hasn't lost touch with his native land."

Inspired by the NPR report, he decided to send money to his hometown to buy medicine to help the 22 boys who were members of a neighborhood soccer team he sponsored.

But Ndiaye knew so much more was needed. That's when he decided to give a party. He called several Senegalese women living in the Triangle and asked if they would cook. He also called friends.

"When I told them I wanted to do it in a week, they said, 'Bouna, you're crazy,' " Ndiaye said. "I told them malaria can't wait. Malaria is a killer."

Since then, the party has become an annual event known as the African Dinner-Dance Party sponsored by Bonjour Africa Malaria Projects, or BAMP.

His party saves lives

The "party with a purpose," as Ndiaye calls it, features African food and music with education about the malaria problem in Africa. Last year, the event raised enough money to provide nearly 3,500 bed nets to pregnant African women and children in his hometown.

The malaria project is supported by a local advisory board that includes Bell, historian John Hope Franklin, former N.C. Central University Chancellor Julius Chambers and Peter Agre, who shared the 2003 Nobel Prize in Chemistry. Ndiaye recently spoke about the scourge of malaria with Agre.

Malaria kills 1 million to 2 million Africans every year, according to The Bonjour Africa Malaria Project of Durham.

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