Opening The Gates

Ever wondered how the world’s richest man spends his money? And what makes his life worthwhile? MARY RIDDELL spent three months with Bill Gates to find the answers.

- Mary Riddell

MICROBES fascinate Bill Gates. On his arrival for a recent meeting with Canadian prime minister Justin Trudeau, Gates was spotted clutching a book on bacteria, presumably so that he might devour a chapter or two should any lull occur in the conversation.

When we meet soon afterwards, Gates – though minus microbe book – has the faintly restless manner of someone who finds micro­organisms more absorbing than some dignitaries and most journalists.

Gates and I have met several times, and I think I know his approach. Although unfailingly modest and courteous, he loathes wasting a single second.

But when it comes to changing the world, no topic is too small to engage his attention, and none too vast. He is, for instance, so intrigued by chickens and their potential to feed the hungry that he recently addressed a conference accompanied by a coop full of the fowl.

On the practicalities of rearing poultry, he’s vague. “I’m very much the product of an urban upbringing. Once, in high school, we went to someone’s farm and had to kill the chickens to eat them. I was like, ‘This is horrific. Somebody actually has to choke these things. Oh my God! Why am I being asked to do it?’

“Then, when we were in Africa, somebody sacrificed a goat and we sat and watched them skin it.”

More accustomed to the world of corporate bloodletting, Gates allows himself a shudder at the memory. At 61 the founder of Microsoft remains the world’s richest man, whose estimated wealth of about $80 billion (about R1,12 trillion) is a subject of endless fascination to almost everyone apart from him.

Rumpled, bespectacled and unassuming, he focuses solely (apart from the odd bridge evening) on eradicating disease and deprivation in countries whose GDP is frequently dwarfed by his own vast fortune.