When I was living in Buguruni last fall, particularly after succumbing to malaria in September, my circadian rhythms were set such that sunset launched me full-tilt into no-holds-barred, anti-insect warfare. In the hours after 7pm, I underwent ritual applications of 100% DEET spray, (which stings mightily when applied to pores opened by a full day of heat and sweat); to avoid alerting my wily insect adversaries of my exact whereabouts, I rarely (even when there was electricity) turned on the fluorescent overheads, making do with candles and my flashlight (There were other reasons for this, too, as per a conversation with Mr. Gao, the director: “Maria, the guards, they are never seeing the lights inside your house at night. They are wanting to see what you are doing. With no lights, they cannot watch you…”); and I had an extreme, pathological fear of being awake past 10pm, the time that, according to some research, marks the prime period for malaria transmission—thus at 9:59 you could find me making a beeline for bed, hurdling furniture in a single bound, hell-bent on evading the impending enemy ambush.

Because there was only one place to hide safely during the night time hours—on my bed, shaded by the plastic, insecticide-impregnated expanse of my blue Olyset net, a net through which I had to maneuver by prying it up from the edges of the mattress and limboing underneath the hem, and then, kneeling on my pillow, methodically tuck back into the bed frame, my fingers squeezed together and bent to form spade-like tools.

How does one imagine the little cave a mosquito net describes? If it’s a really good net, the cave is square, the net suspended at four corners from two wooden T’s tacked on to the head and foot of the bed frame or from hooks screwed into the ceiling plaster. (This prevents touching it at night.) The net’s top never seems to be pulled fully taut but instead sags a bit in the middle, drooping under the weight of all the N2 and O2 molecules bearing down from above. Climbing in under a net is sort of like being tucked in at night: both the physical act of pushing in the mesh all around and the idea of having, through that ritual, shut out something quite dangerous, something that—even though you can look out at it from your safe haven—cannot get in at you.

A net really only works, though, if the mesh is intact and has been treated with insecticide—it is only protective if it can entangle and poison whatever is trying to pass through it. An untreated or hole-filled net is about as helpful as the preferred technique of one of my study subjects in Buguruni: lying underneath a mattress—i.e. it’s hot, inconvenient and completely ineffective.

Here at Olania, none of the girls have square nets; none have insecticide-treated nets, either, and most of their nets wouldn’t be useful as rags. To make matters worse, there’s not a lot of other protections out there: the classroom and dormitory walls have never been sprayed with long-lasting insecticide (too expensive), none of the buildings where the girls study at night have screened windows, let alone screen doors; and no one really likes to put on long pants and long sleeves when the temperature is 85 F with 100% humidity, even at midnight.

And the girls drop like flies from malaria. Many have it monthly—lying on their bunks, self-administering quinine injections, missing class and taxing their tired bodies still further. It’s brutal.

Sitting here at Olania, I’ve felt almost as if I’m being assaulted by needs on all sides—the unfinished laboratory, the Form IV girls who will be cut loose next September, the eroding hillside, the broken fish-dam. Mosquito nets, however, are something I know a bit about; that is a world where I have some connections.

So I spent Thursday back in Buguruni—my old house has been taken over as the public health center, and it required a weird mental readjustment upon seeing Cecy, the MEA secretary, with her desk full of three (all broken) printers in the middle of my old living room. Most of the time there I was talking with Mr. Gao, who agreed to give me nets at a marked discount, and—once the full order arrives—to drive them out to Olania along with a community health educator for a day of instruction about net-use and malaria prevention. I plan to use the remaining funds Ann and Alan put together to see if anything can be done to screen the buildings.

You see, it’s not just a matter of abstract sympathy; it is more practically personal. I—like the girls—have been going to bed these last weeks under the exact same type of nets as they do. For the past weeks, my bed—like theirs—has been not a fortress but rather an indefensible battle zone. And it’s scary, knowing that the one place I’m accustomed to finding safety has become, instead, the one place I’m most vulnerable. I hope the nets arrive soon.