A trip to Ndola in Zambia's Copper Belt showed that journalists -- and their best opportunities -- share common ground on either side of the AtlanticNdola, Zambia — I have wanted to come to this Copper Belt city since I arrived in Zambia, as I have seen it as the place behind the events that move this nation. That is probably an overstatement, as in reality the far-flung villages, the border towns, the tourist attractions, and certainly Lusaka, the capital, all shape events here. But still, when people talk, I get the impression that when the Copper Belt gets cold, Lusaka sneezes -- or gets more crowded, its hospitals more overburdened, its streets more crime prone. (It always seems to start with "after the mines started failing . . .")

So, for all that this was the financial center of this country (the aorta, so to speak, of the heart of Africa), in recent years the news has seemed to be what wasn't happening here. As one of those things as mines privatized in recent years was health care, this seemed like an important place to visit.

I found pleasant, quiet town of well-planned streets and a bureau staffed with brisk, efficient, hospitable journalists -- who, like bureau staff everywhere were glad to be included in a project the paper is working on. I was reminded, once again, that even halfway around the world from each other, with different training, different resources, different issues to cover, journalists inevitably turn out to be more alike than different. Those of us in bureaus tend to feel forgotten. Sometimes we are right.

It was working in a bureau, and feeling forgotten that led me to turn to a reporter friend turned journalism professor who advised me how lucky I was. This is the chance most reporters dream of, she explained -- time and space to follow good leads. She was right, of course. In a circuitous way it was working in that bureau, where I found the pleasant quiet town we covered was home to more new HIV and AIDS patients than any other in our coverage area -- that had led me to this bureau, in this pleasant quiet little town.

On Friday the Ndola bureau chief and I went to the local hospital. We found a battered building, an underpaid staff on "go-slow" (slow down, we would call it), and the region's premiere disease research center operating on the top two floors, exploring the usual suspects -- malaria, HIV, TB -- as well as a whole group of scientists dedicated to "neglected diseases."

The bureau chief is a resourceful former radio reporter, so doesn't need me, as I once needed my friend, to understand the benefits of bureau life. Still, sometimes they can be hard to find and seize. So it was nice come to this soot-streaked hospital together and find a treasure trove.