I in the 7am blackness, the lights in the windows of three dozen numbered buildings peppering the Microsoft campus in Redmond, Seattle, tell of all-night sessions at the screen or early-morning logging on.
There are no trappings, no demonstrative wealth and little color -- brown carpets, beechwood tables and off-white walls hung with grey-toned linocuts and silk-screen paintings that have about as much impact as computer print-outs.
In these low-key surroundings, the richest man in the world sits at the head of the table discussing the ravages of disease in almost unimaginably faraway Africa. In an amiable fashion, Bill Gates refuses to be provoked by the reluctance of wealthy governments to put in the large sums needed to get children vaccinated against diseases such as diphtheria that are a fading memory in the developed world.
In spite of what some might consider the sluggishness of wealthy countries to get their wallets out for the very needy, Bill and Melinda Gates are "hopeful," not frustrated.
Gates is worth an estimated US$46 billion, according to Forbes magazine which has put him at number one in the rich list for years. He has reportedly said he will give away 95 percent of it. "I'm not sure we've ever been that precise but it's accurate enough," says Gates. "We've always said the vast majority."
Much of it will go on research efforts to find vaccines for Aids, malaria and childhood killers that affect the poorest countries. His latest and biggest donation of US$750m will help the Global Alliance for Vaccines and Immunisation (GAVI), which he was instrumental in setting up.
But it's hard to see what draws this multibillionaire, who made his vast fortune from a love affair with a machine, to the poorest people on the planet. The answer may sit beside him. While Bill appears to be talking Microsoft Basic, the language he created for the first personal computers, Melinda is warm, human and engaged with the men, women and children whose lives their generosity will save.
Personal Experience
"I go to these villages and I sit with these women. That could be me in a heartbeat. Just like they could be on the other side if they happened to be born in the United States," she says.
"And so it is incredibly easy, I find, to connect with these women because they feel the same way about their children that I feel, or they feel the loss or death of their mother or father no differently than I would feel if I lost one of my parents.
"Some of my favorite days in the year are when we are out in these rural places or in a city slum and really connecting with the people and finding out what are their needs -- not only what are their needs but what are they doing and how are they already lifting themselves up and for me it's how do we stand beside them and help them in that work that they're doing?"
It's she who recalls the impact of the first trip to Africa in 1993, before they were married, touring and spotting chimps on safari with a group of friends "... just watching who had shoes on their feet and who didn't. And how it was different by country. And then when we would get out at some places to talk to the women in the villages and just hear what it was like for them and the long distances they would travel to go even to buy a few vegetables for their family it just -- it moves you."
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