Blood and water. It was the summer of 2013, and the words ricocheted through press accounts, as tensions in Africa’s Nile Basin reached an all-time high and the media trumpeted the possibility of war. For generations, conflict had been brewing along the Nile, where 11 countries—more than 400 million people—depend on the world’s longest river for drinking water, electricity, irrigation, and transportation.

In the basement of the American Repertory Theater, Matt Gould (’01) is pulling on his favorite leather boots—the ones with the soles that can really hammer out the sound. Outside, the February night in Cambridge, Massachusetts, is bitterly cold, with wind chills pushing temperatures into the single digits. But in Gould’s tiny, brightly lit dressing room, the radiators are on overdrive.

The man in the black Cadillac showed up late in the summer of 1973. Plenty of people had seen him, driving back and forth along Bay Road, the ribbon of pavement that winds around the edge of New Hampshire’s Great Bay between Durham and Newmarket. He was knocking on doors as he went, talking to property owners one by one. He wanted to buy land, he told them. For a bird sanctuary. For a family estate. For a golf course. People were mystified. Rumor had it there was money to be made. Lots of it.

In the spring of 2012, when Ellen Paquette ’72 arrived in Tunis, a city of white buildings set against a glittering Mediterranean Sea, she was eager to get to work. This was something she was good at—starting a new job in a foreign country. Something she’d done many times during her nearly 40 years in the Peace Corps. This time, Paquette had been appointed country director for Tunisia, where the program was reopening after 15 years, and she was hopeful about the work ahead as she settled into her office in the capital city.

Rick Marini ’94 is moving at warp speed—working 80 hours a week, barely stopping to eat, hardly pausing to sleep. The pace is relentless. But Marini is pumped. He’s building a new company, and he’s pretty sure it’s his billion-dollar opportunity. “Being an entrepreneur is a rollercoaster—you have to have a strong stomach,” says Marini. “It’s hard, but I love it.”

It was the color that had her worried. Martha Carlson ’09G had never seen syrup like this before—and she’d been tapping maple trees on her Sandwich, N.H., mountainside property for more than 30 years. In 2009, though, the syrup was dark and glistening, more like molasses than the clear amber liquid she and her husband, Rudy, always produced in their tiny sugar shack. It smelled odd, too, and needed extra filtering, leaving behind a sticky residue. . .

The tiny crab is fast, skittering just out of reach, headed for cover in a pile of oysters. But Ray Grizzle is faster. “Ha!” He plucks the critter, about the size of a nickel, from the pile of shells and holds it between his thumb and index finger, squinting against the brilliant September sunshine. “See this? He’s one of the main culprits. These guys love baby oysters.”

Like a lot of guys, Will Carey puts on a suit before he goes to work. Unlike most of them, he has to zip himself in—one heavy-duty zipper up the front and another across the upper back, which requires a hook, a piece of line and some serious body contortion to get the thing to close. . .