Brooklyn, in the US state of New York, doesn’t often see mosquitoes this time of year. In fact, most folks living in the northeast US spend the month of March praying for a break in the cold.
But one woman’s recent pledge to the Mosquito Net Campaign proves that warmth and generosity are two qualities that can withstand any weather.
Dervala Hanley caught word of The Cambodia Daily’s mosquito net campaign earlier this year and established a net of her own: www.dervala.net.
The Web site solicits monetary donations from Internet surfers concerned about Cambodia’s fight with malaria. To date, it has raised $436.57 to help with the fight.
Hanley’s check arrived with a note bearing witness to her benevolence but not to her identity. It is on her Web site, full of observations from her travels throughout Latin America and Asia, that her identity became known.
On the site, she writes: “Dervala Hanley decided on a whim to go to Mexico because she couldn’t afford rent in New York.
Many of her friends had liked Mexico and, conveniently, she already spoke Spanish. She also felt it would be reasonably safe for a solo woman traveler, an important factor since she is not very brave.”
Contrary to her self-described cowardice, it appears Hanley had the courage not only to journey to Mexico and Cambodia but to make a change along the way.
