Except in special situations, human beings' battle with mosquitoes will not be won by a simple campaign to eliminate the insects. Social tradition and habits, it seems, do much to ensure continual contact between mosquitoes and people. On the slopes of Mount Kilimanjaro, for example, mosquitoes breed in the leaf axils of a plant called dracaena. Although dracaena is not a food plant for humans, its use as a hedge or boundary marker is deeply rooted in tradition. Here, as in other parts of the world, human behavior ensures contact and conflict between people and mosquitoes. I am not advocating a policy of live and let live; we already know that living with mosquitoes is very unpleasant. But until we accomplish the difficult task of understanding how our habits often perpetuate – even create – our problems, efforts to resolve our battle with mosquitoes will probably fail.