They act as giant petri dishes, where creative types and entrepreneurs rubup against each other, combining and recombining to spark new ideas, new inventions, new businesses and new industries.
Both for what it says about changing attitudes towards aid in Africa, as well as the more familiar chaffing that occurs when pride, philanthropy, poverty and celebrity rubup against each other.
McClung asked a cosmetics lab to whip up a rub made from the oil and aloe vera, which he started selling to his aging, aching restaurant customers in sterilized ketchup bottles in 1998.