I spent just under three months in Durban and returned to England over the last weekend in July. There was virtually no rain in Durban, and while it is the dry season, this was exceptional. We know, thanks to El Nino, there is an impending drought across Southern Africa. This dry spell suggests it may be severe, perhaps even the worst since 1983/84.

When I got back to Norwich, I knew that much of the UK was already experiencing drought. It has not rained for months, and the garden is bone dry. The grass is brown and parched and many plants are looking stressed. There are water restrictions as the levels in the reservoirs are dropping fast. The news from Europe is dominated by out-of-control wildfires in France and Spain. I find it unbelievable that there are those who deny climate change!

I mostly enjoyed my time in Durban. Unfortunately, I developed sore Achilles tendons, which limited the amount of walking I could do. There is, however, a gym close to the flat and I was able to do workouts combining the cross trainer, which interestingly didn’t affect my Achilles tendons, and various exercises with weights and machines.

The gym belongs to Robin Gant and is run by his sister Michelle, who trained me a few times a week. It is in a lovely 100 year old house. Because I have been going to the family’s gyms for so long I can arrange to just pay while I am in town, and it is reasonably priced. It has excellent equipment, all imported from the USA. I don’t mind doing solo workouts because I simply listen to programmes on my phone. It is now very hard to get BBC programmes outside the UK, I believe it is very shortsighted. BBC Sounds is simply not available, although one can find some of the programmes on other podcast websites.

Of course, there was also my social life. I had two regular weekly dinners: on most Tuesday evenings I met with people from the University; and on Wednesday there was a gathering of old friends who live in the area.

Among my dinner companions on a Tuesday were some who ran the Comrades Marathon, which I wrote about in my last post. I have to say I am still in awe of people who do that long a run between Durban and Pietermaritzburg. We used to go to a pub in the lower part of Glenwood. The food was good but very basic. The area is a bit dodgy and we, at my instigation, moved to Poke Box on Esther Roberts Road down the hill. The food was exceptionally good and competitively priced.

The owner, Tom, does not have a liquor licence so you have to take your own alcohol. This is a plus because it brings the cost of an evening right down. There is no website for the establishment but there is a presence on Facebook and Instagram. He and his staff recently moved to new premises in the grounds of the Phansi Museum a few hundred yards up the road. We managed to fit in one visit to this venue just before I returned to Norwich. I strongly recommend it. Tom has a dog, a black labrador called Mo, and he hangs out at the restaurant. He was a source of concern to Tom, and me if I am honest, because at the previous premises he tended to wander off and do doggy things.

Poke Box is where the Wednesday gathering of old friends met. They are: Sam, a brilliant investigative journalist, and his wife Christina who works on a range of local community initiatives; Chris, a former music professor at the University, and his wife Evelyn, who is a talented musician; Jeremy, an academic and long-time squash partner, and Judith who is an excellent editor; Brigitta, and Richard, an advocate who I got to know recently, although, as is the nature of Durban, we knew of each other.

Brigitte moved to Durban with her partner, Jurgen, who worked as a music professor at the University (RIP and very missed) a year or so after us in the 1980s. They lived on the same road as us, in the suburb of Manor Gardens, and the children grew up together in the 1990s and 2000s. It is great to get together with people one has known for a long time and hear news of family and absent friends. The conversations flowed and evenings were great fun.

I left my flat on the last Saturday afternoon of July and drove to King Shaka International airport, just north of Durban. I had to catch an internal flight to Joburg to connect with the KLM plane to Amsterdam. I do not like this journey; I find it quite stressful. I think in the future I will travel from Cape Town. I can travel to the city, spend a few days and take the direct flight to Amsterdam. It would give me an opportunity to see friends and generally be more relaxed when I get on the plane.

At the airport in Durban I bumped into Mark Heywood, who I first met as an activist working on AIDS with the Treatment Action Campaign decades ago. He then moved on to Section 27, a human rights organisation ‘that seeks to achieve substantive equality and social justice in South Africa’.

It has been years since I saw him, but it was good to catch up, albeit at speed while walking through the airport. He is now working on health equity. This issue needs a high level of input because the health sector in South Africa is in a mess, especially with the proposed introduction of a National Health Insurance scheme. This is in my view unthought through, and I doubt it will come to pass!

After disembarking, and as I was walking through to the international departures section, I bumped into Amarnath Singh who was a couple of years above me at Waterford. He worked for many years as a journalist on the South African Financial Mail, a weekly business paper. I have seen him occasionally over the years. I hope he will make it to the proposed Waterford gathering in October of this year.

Getting back to Norwich is always a relief. The process for leaving South Africa is: drive to the airport; fill the tank to the brim and return the hire car; check in and wait for the plane, browse the bookstore; fly to OR Tambo, the carrier Safair is always packed; collect luggage (on one occasion I thought it was checked through and had to scamper back to find it).

In Johannesburg I go to international departures (on this occasion getting lost on the way, to my shame); drop my bag at the KLM desk and confirm my seat (22H), the seat next to me was vacant when I did the online check in and, oh joy, it was still empty; go through security which is a pain; have a shower at the lounge; board at 10:30 and read until the drinks come round; take a pill and sleep for about 4 hours; in Amsterdam go to the lounge and shower again; wait for the Norwich flight; board it and get home at about 12pm (Douglas came to pick me up); luckily it was not quite 24 hours of travelling.

What amused me on this trip was that on the Amsterdam/Norwich leg, the cabin crew gave me a special sandwich because of my frequent flyer status. They came to my seat with this little package just for me! I was the only one to be given this treat, and was shrimp. It is not something I would normally eat but I felt obliged to! I wonder what the rest of the passengers thought, or if they even noticed.

While in Durban I am always careful not to interrogate or pry into goings-on at the University, other than to be aware that the organisation I established, the Health Economics and HIV AIDS Research Division (HEARD), continues to operate and, hopefully, thrive. It is a difficult time for organisations working on HIV. The unilateral un-anticipated withdrawal of funding by the major American donor the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR) hammered many organisations. This included NGOs and academic establishments in the US and many Western Nations as well as, and most concerningly, organisations at the coal face in the developing world (and Eastern Europe).

It undoubtedly means that we will see an increase in the number of infections and consequent deaths over the coming years. I get it that the US could not go on supporting this forever, but the way it was done, with no grace or kindness, was disgraceful.

Back in Norwich my goal is to get my office tidied up and find homes for some of my books and papers. Most books can go to the local Oxfam shop. But I have a folder of academic articles on Swaziland that I collected over many years. There is also a large copy of the 2007 Demographic and Health Survey. I didn’t want to throw these away so I put a note on Facebook to see if anyone might want them and offered to post them to any UK address.

To my delight and surprise, I got a message back within hours from the daughter of academics I worked with for many years in Swaziland a long time ago. She would like them and asked me to post them to her sister. The address she gave me is in Norwich and is just a short distance away (less than a kilometre down the road to town). She is also a Waterford graduate whom I met a few times. That was easy and serendipitous. I have a good feeling about not putting material into landfill or recycling, but finding a home where it might be used. At least the long term decision on what to do with it has been delegated.