According to recent media reports, an experimental HIV vaccine has for the first time cut risk of infection. I was invited by OUPblog to post my views on this recent development. OUPblog is Oxford University Press’ blogosphere for learning, understanding and reflection. To read the posting, click here.
AIDS, Security And Conflict Initiative
Alan Whiteside, will be a discussant at the HIV/AIDS Security and Conflict Initiative: A Briefing and Discussion, to be held 21 September, 2009 at the Hague.
The event marks the release of the new report, “HIV/AIDS, Security and Conflict: New Realities, New Responses.” The results of 29 global research studies on HIV/AIDS and fragile states, uniformed services, humanitarian crises and post-conflict transitions will be presented and discussed.
When: September 21, 2009, 11:30 – 16:00
Where: Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Bezuidenhoutseweg 67, The Hague De Oude Perszaal 00C 33
Presenters and Discussants: Alex De Waal, Georg Frerks, Charlotte Watts, Manuel Carballo, Anyieth D’Awol, and Pamela De Largy
Contact: Georg Frerks, + 31 (0) 30 253 6549, g.frerks@uu.nl
Aeroplanes And Odd Water
It is nearly a month since I last wrote a letter that could also be posted to the website, hard to believe. It gives me a new respect for bloggers and newspaper columnists. How do they manage to churn out a 1000 words a day, every day, for weeks and years at a time?
While it has been an very interesting month I have not achieved as much work as I wanted. The themes have been aircraft, time out and odd water, which, come to think about, it are not bad! Since I was a teenager I have wanted to learn to fly. This desire is quite hard to explain as aircraft were not part of my childhood. When we arrived in Swaziland there was not even an airport, the small planes used to land on the 9th hole of the golf course in Mbabane. I did not get on a plane until I was 19 and heading for university in the UK. In those days the 747s, (which was a new aircraft), took off from Johannesburg, landed in Nairobi to refuel, then travelled on to London. On my first journey I was with two friends who were seasoned air travellers. They ‘kindly’ told me they would let me know when to change into my pyjamas on the plane.
I was bought a voucher for a trial flying lesson for my birthday back in March. Finally in mid-August I booked the lesson. The plan was, provided I did not throw up on the instructor, find myself unable to distinguish up from down or in anyway disgrace myself, I would book some flying lessons. I really enjoyed the lesson and so have started learning to fly. It will take some time, I guess at least nine months and possibly more. The good news is hours in the UK count in South Africa and vice versa.
The Norwich School of Flying teaches their pupils on an aircraft called a Piper Tomahawk. It is an American two seater plane designed specifically for training. It takes off at about 60 knots per hour and the cruising speed is about 90 knots, so it is slow and tolerant. There is a picture of me standing proudly by the plane on the website. Their plane is definitely, from a cosmetic point of view, frayed at the edges. The plastic trim in the cockpit is worn and broken and the exterior needs a paint job. Mechanically it is sound though. While all the lessons have been interesting and challenging I have been astonished by just how long and how careful the pre-flight checks are.
The plane is easy to fly and I am having great fun. We take off from Norwich and head for the coast where we carry out the lesson’s exercises. So far we have been lucky with the weather, beautiful sunny days with scattered clouds. Learning to fly one stays low, at between 2000 and 4000 feet. The mix of measures is interesting, the aircraft flies in units of speed called knots. A knot is one nautical mile per hour, which equals 1.852 kph or 1.151 mph. The height is measured in feet above the ground, but the altimeter has to be set according to the pressure and this can change, even during a one hour flight. The time used to record the flight and period in the air is Greenwich Mean Time.
Also remarkable has been learning how close to the financial margin the industry operates. This school, the one that has been at Norwich the longest, has two planes. One is being serviced and has been out of commission for months. It seems odd to have such a major capital item not available. The instructor is self employed, paid per lesson, so no flying no pay. The other day the wind was blowing across the runway and it was not safe to use the Piper, so we went to visit the control tower instead. Effectively the instructor was experiencing a day without any income! There is a constant turnover of schools. But for the trainee it is not cheap at all. The minimum requirement is 35 hours of flying (and of course passing all the exams) for a National Pilot’s License and 45 hours for a European Private Pilot’s License. In addition each landing costs £9.
The instructors organised a dinner for their pupils at a local restaurant. It was fascinating. I think there were about nine people who had learnt or are learning to fly and we divided into three groups: the boys who want to become pilots, their average age was perhaps 18; those of us with a bit of time and some spare cash who have always wanted to do this; and people who scraped together every spare penny to cover the costs of lessons. There was one woman who took five years to get her licence. All talk planes incessantly and I am not sure it is my natural home.
Oddly when we went away for a few nights this week we ended up staying in a very beautiful Yorkshire village which is adjacent to a Royal Air Force Training base complete with airfield and all that goes with it see http://www.raf.mod.uk/raflintononouse . At the gate of the base was a sign with their mission statement: “To train tomorrow’s fast jet-crew”, alongside the ones warning you not to enter etc. The cottage we were in was not very far from the end of the runway. There was a fairly constant stream of aircraft doing circuits and bumps which is what I hope to be doing soon! There was also the firing range! A military equivalent of a dawn chorus!
The village had the unpromising name of Linton-on-Ouse (the Ouse being a major Yorkshire river). To me Linton is attractive, bringing to mind ethereal beauty, but Ouse just drags you down in the sludge! The cottage was a converted barn at the back of a house belonging to an older couple who have lived there forever. He had been a farm worker and is a keen gardener. They had two superbly appointed cottages each with two bedrooms. At the back was a large games room which had a pool table, darts board and ping pong table as well as a range of other activities, clearly there if the weather was not good, but well thought out. The garden must have been about one and half acres and was planted with the most amazing variety of trees from all over the world.
Getting to the village one had choices, but the quickest way involved going over a toll bridge at a village called Aldwark, the alternative route is 25 miles. This little bridge on a very minor road is one of the last private tolls in the UK. We were told when the toll is put up it has to be done by the Secretary of State. We went over it about six times, paying 40 pence each time, to a range of elderly weather-beaten Yorkshire men who staff it. Actually I think they may have been trolls who only came up onto the bridge when they heard a vehicle approaching. Apparently it is not manned 24 hours though, even trolls have time off.
We had days in Knaresborough, York and Harrogate. In Knaresborough the main attraction is Mother Shipton’s Cave and Historic Park which claims to be England’s oldest visitor attraction. This may mean it attracts old visitors! According to legend Mother Shipton, England’s most famous Prophetess, lived in the cave during the reigns of Henry VIII and Elizabeth I. Beside the cave is the Petrifying Well, this is a little steam with a great deal of dissolved lime which fans out into a small waterfall. As the water falls over the edge it deposits small amounts of lime and this, similar to the development of stalactites and stalagmites, builds up. Apparently as early as 1538 people started travelling great distances to bathe in the waters as they were believed to have miraculous healing properties.
Water was also the theme of the visit to Harrogate which is a Spa Town. This is beautiful and has an expanse of open area called ‘The Stray’, it would be called common land in other settings. It was developed around the Spa waters, which contain iron, sulphur and salt. In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries these waters were a popular health treatment and lead to an influx of wealthy but sickly visitors. The pump room is a museum (not visited), but on the outside is a tap so visitors can taste the water from this spring. It is totally disgusting, it smells and tastes of rotten egg, and the tang lingers at the back of one’s throat. Just walking past the tap one gets a whiff of the rotten egg. It is quite astonishing how the bad smells and tastes were assumed to have restorative properties.
The summer is over. Driving up to Yorkshire it was hot and sticky. Norwich was really dry and we desperately needed rain. On the Wednesday afternoon a front swept across the country, tipping rain everywhere. Thursday morning was very wet and when we drove back on Friday it was cool and grey. Some varieties of trees are already loosing their leaves. This seems quite early, but may be due to the stress of a long dry spell. There is no doubt it was a glorious summer.
The school year starts on Monday and this is a really critical time for Douglas as he has GCSE exams to get through. Rowan enters her second year of University. I have a book and five articles to complete before the end of the year as well as heading back to Durban and take up the reigns of HEARD again. Of course that does mean that in October I will be going back to the Southern Hemisphere summer, so I guess I come out of this as winner, not having had the Durban winter – not that it is really cold. Even my time in Cape Town in July was pleasant.
I feel I have been really lucky this sabbatical because I have seen most of a northern spring and summer, and will see some of autumn. My year began with the end of winter and first few days of spring in Ottawa. By the time I depart the first frosts will be here. It is, strangely, a privilege to enjoy the seasons and see how the land and wildlife reacts to the changes. Being in Yorkshire on the cusp of autumn was deeply fascinating. I don’t think seasons are usually so clearly demarcated, and it is not something I take a lot of notice of normally. We are isolated in our various urban settings.
Desperate In Durban
I am back in the UK after about three weeks away. It was generally a good trip. The other day I was listening to the news and was hugely amused by a very South African item. A road block was set up in the Cape in the run-up to National Woman’s Day. This is a public holiday and is taken very seriously. The initiative was taken by women: female police officers, community leaders and so on – powerful women one and all. They were, it seems, effective; catching vehicles without road tax or that that were not roadworthy and arresting drunk drivers. I had to smile when the (female) announcer ended the piece by saying: “the roadblock was ‘manned’ by…”.
There is much going on in South Africa and some of it is really good. Last week President Zuma made a surprise visit to the little town of Balfour in Mpumalanga where there have been protests over non-delivery of services. It was so unexpected that the ANC mayor, who goes by the delightful name of Lefty Tsotetsi, had already knocked off the day. The press reported that his secretary dropped her lunch at the sight of the President walking into the council offices. It was 3.30 in the afternoon which begs the question as to why the mayor had gone and what was the secretary doing eating lunch at that time of day.
The Mayor was hastily summoned back to the office. The Mail and Guardian interviewed him and his municipal manager and got a lot of prevarication and banality. To quote: “The function of the municipality is contained in the constitution. It focuses more on basic services, so issues that pertain to health, education, safety and security are not in the competency of the municipal offices”. There are many challenges over service delivery and growing frustration about the slow pace, so it is good to see the politicians taking this seriously. Indeed one of the other senior ANC leaders Tokyo Sexwale, spent a night in an informal settlement.
During the two weeks I was in Durban HEARD hosted a number of meetings that I was able to attend. One interesting meeting was on HIV/AIDS in cities. A striking statistic bandied about was that there are more HIV infected people in Durban than there are in the whole of Brazil. Having checked the numbers and found that in 2003 there were 660 000 infections in Brazil I suspect this may not be true and it is being thrown about as a good sound bite. However what is certain is in Southern Africa AIDS is an urban epidemic. Ironically this may be a good thing because it allows us to put service delivery in place. I was not the first to suggest that the project we develop be called “Sex in the Cities”. The agenda is being driven by UNAIDS, Southern Africa AIDS Trust and HEARD.
The cities meeting was held at the Balmoral Hotel on the Durban beachfront. If the room had a window then we could have seen the surf, but it was an internal dungeon. Although the sun was shining and it was a beautiful day we sat in a dark room. The air-conditioning had two settings: freezing cold and airless and stuffy.
There was also a small meeting on designing interventions for schools. It is clear that older female children (or learners, as we call them in South Africa) are very vulnerable to infection. I think that with the right environment in schools it will be possible to begin making changes, because educational establishments can do so much. They can be places of safety, pick up on social issues and provide food. In Swaziland school and early childhood development are core policy areas needing attention.
The one issue that I want to work on is the role of faith based interventions. It seems to me that there are real issues about religious organizations being involved in prevention because of the nature of sex, sexuality and what they are prepared to accept as norms. Perhaps only the Catholics – who have the possibility of forgiveness on earth – can deal with this, and as we all know their view of condoms is unhelpful. So here is my thought, it is a P x problem. P is the probability of something being ‘wrong’. So having sex before marriage is wrong, using a condom is wrong. P x P= P2 which is of course worse that P + P=2P. Add additional issues and the P value goes up exponentially P x P x P=P3. This is really something we need to consider in our messaging and perhaps in who does the interventions!
One initiative I had not heard of before has a catchy slogan: “Fifty/fifteen”. The goal of this would be to halve the number of infections by 2015, the year of the Millennium Development goals. That would be a significant achievement, although would still not stop the epidemic.
When I am in Durban I support local theatre. I got tickets for three shows and went to two. The first was a stand-up comedian at a theatre called The Rumbelow. This is an odd place in a former white working class suburb called Umbilo. The theatre is in an old M.O.T.H. hall – this stands as the Memorable Order of the Tin Hats. It is an organization that was set up after the First World War for ex-servicemen. It was, of course, a totally white organization and was a source of social cohesion and halls for this particular group! The hall and grounds are quite substantial and patrons are encouraged to come and braai in the grounds before the show, and are seated at tables rather than in rows in the theatre.
The comedian, Mark Banks, had a go at various sectors of society – from poor white beggars, who always start off with ‘let me tell you my story”, to the ANC women’s’ league via politicians and budget airlines (people who travel on these should be taking the bus!!). He did a good routine on geckoes and how to get rid of them. There were four of us in the group. None of us knew quite what to expect and we had not eaten. At the end of the evening (9pm) we tried to find a restaurant but all their kitchens were closed! We ended up with take-away pizzas and even then ours were the last pizzas out of the oven.
The second show was also at a supper theatre the Barnyard at Gateway shopping centre. Gateway is a monument to mammon. Durban has beaches aplenty with great surf. Gateway has a mechanical wave! You can ride a board while looking at the real thing less than a kilometer away. The show was called ‘LM Radio’ – the first ‘pirate’ radio to broadcast into South Africa. This was based in Lourenco Marques as Maputo was known under Portuguese rule. Apart from the old tunes they played the jingles and adverts. The station closed in 1975, one of the side effects of the Portuguese revolution that brought down the Salazar and lead to the independence of Mozambique and Angola. A scan of the audience showed that most of us had listened to the station in our youth. Older white people! The music was great.
The show I did not go to was an Athol Fugard play ‘Master Harold and the Boys’. The reason is that it is a serious and rather depressing play about the relationship between a youngish white boy and two middle aged black men who work for his father. I think it would have been difficult, but I do need to see it.
Durban was incredibly beautiful. It is a magnificent time of year. One of my colleagues described it as: “the time of year when I want to kiss the sky”. Soon it will be spring and the jacaranda trees will begin to blossom.
I left Durban and flew to Johannesburg where I met with one of the people who is conducting the mid-term review of HEARD. She needed to interview me ‘formally’, and it was good to be asked some searching questions. I then hopped on the plane from Joburg to London, an SAA flight which does not have the range of movies that I expected. The purser commented, “I am really sorry we have a rubbish video system on the airbus 200’s, most people (that is people in business class I think) catch the earlier flight to London because of this”.
This ticket was bought with air miles. I have been a member of the SAA Voyager programme for many years and had never succeeded in spending miles. I was determined to manage this time, with about 460 000 miles it seemed silly not to. So I went to the SAA office and it was extremely simple and they could not have been more helpful. The payment required was for the airport taxes and this came for R5000. However my last trip to London on SAA was marked by a non-functional video system and a strong letter of complaint was duly sent off to them. They responded by sending a voucher worth £150 for future travel, so I only had to pay R3000.
Books
Sadly most of my reading over the past couple of weeks has been work related. I bought myself a copy of Lord of the Rings. On the bookshelf in Durban are the first two books of the trilogy but not the third. This story is my comfort reading, which means that if I don’t know what to read I will pick it up. However missing book three was proving to be increasingly frustrating.
There is an excellent report by the British All Parliamentary Group on HIV/AIDS called “The Treatment Time bomb” which asks some of the difficult questions about how we are going to manage to provide treatment to the many millions of people who need it.
Lost Computers And Conferences
My most recent travels were marked by a minor disaster. On the 15th July I headed for a Cape Town for a week for the Fifth International AIDS Society Conference on HIV Pathogenesis, Treatment and Prevention. I was there for a week and then on Friday 24th I headed for Swaziland via Johannesburg.
I got to Cape Town airport early, checking in, went to the lounge and sat and wrote about the conference, what I had been doing, who I had met and what I had learnt. The writing flowed, which is something one should never take for granted. Once on the plane I sat and typed away. I was in a seat by the bulkhead and had nowhere to put my computer other than behind my knees, which would not have been approved of by the cabin crew if they had seen this. In Johannesburg I got my carry-on bag from the overhead luggage bin and walked off the plane. At the security screen for international departures I opened my bag to take my laptop out and put it through the machine. It was not there; as you can imagine there was a sense of absolute panic. My heart leapt and I actually shivered with concern, or something similar.
What can one do? I went back to the South African Airways lost property desk in the International Arrivals section. There I shamefully told them what had happened. They were extremely helpful, phoning through to the ramp agent and the cleaners. But it was gone! I left my number and a few prayers!
None-the-less I had to fly on to Swaziland where I spent the next two days. On the Sunday I returned to Durban via Johannesburg. Again I went to the Lost Property section to see if by any chance it had been found. The same lady kindly told me that in all likelihood it was gone forever. So the next step was to go to the police station at Oliver Tambo International Airport report it lost/stolen. Here was an interesting clash of technology: the police sergeant who took my statement wrote it out in laborious longhand but told me I would get the notification of the case number by SMS to my mobile phone. This happened within hours, and was followed up by a phone call and SMS from the detective in charge of the case! I wonder how one can combine technology with procedures to make life easier. Of course not having to take statements at all would be the ideal world.
It could have been worse. I had backed up everything two days before I left the UK so all I lost was the material in Cape Town, and I, in fact, did little additional work mainly downloading documents which should be accessible in other ways. It was an old computer that I had just purchased from HEARD for R500 as it was being written off so there was not a financial loss. Finally, and fortunately, I had a new work computer waiting, indeed it had been in Durban for four months, I had not picked it up because the old one was still working and I was rather fond of it. The really pain is the writing I did, four good hours of work gone. And I think it was good writing with lots of soul! But maybe that is just hindsite.
Travelling to Cape Town was long. With all the conference attendees the international flights were full so I had to go via Joburg. My brother is immigrating to South Africa and had given me a suitcase to carry as there are five of them and they will have a mountain of luggage. Although I took the train to London, there was no way I could travel across the city on the tube to get the Heathrow express with all the luggage. I needed a taxi.
I walked from the train to the rank at Liverpool Street Station with my carry-on bag precariously balanced on the handle of one of the large suitcases. It is possible to negotiate fares and with traffic it could have been very expensive to get across London to the airport. I asked the first driver on the rank if he was prepared to agree a fixed price from Liverpool Street to Heathrow.
“No way” he said, “It has to be on the meter, mate”.
I asked approximately what he thought it would cost and was told £70. Experience is that it can be cheaper. I asked the next cabbie if he would give me a price.
“Yeah,” he said, ” I’ll do it for £50 mate, hop in. “
In fact the journey took an hour and the amount on the meter was £74. I told the cabbie that I was quite happy to pay £55, as that is what I had budgeted for and felt was an appropriate fare. He would not accept it. What a nice man. Mind you by the end of the journey I knew quite a lot about him, his wife, children, dog, goldfish and where he was taking everyone for supper that evening.
On the whole the trip over was good as I was able to read all the papers, chapters, theses, inputs etc that I had in my folder and in addition to that watched the film “He’s just not that into you”. This is a fairly light, but nonetheless thought provoking insight to behaviors among men and women in the dating game and beyond. Apart from Jennifer Aniston and Ben Affleck it was really nice to see Kris Kristofferson on the screen. The other film I have seen recently was “Sunshine Cleaning”, the story of a single mother who takes on cleaning up after crime scenes and biohazards as a way of making a living. It was astutely observed and very funny. I believe it is by the same team as made “Little Miss Sunshine”.
Cape Town was beautiful especially since the weather was superb nearly every day. On the Friday we had the IAS Governing Council Meetings, a Finance Subcommittee and then the Executive Committee (for additional information see www.iasociety.org). (We had hoped that our web address could be http://www.ias.org but that had been taken the International Association of Sufism. There was a preconference meeting on “Accelerating the Impact of HIV Programming on Health Systems Strengthening” for Health Systems Experts, HIV Researchers and Implementers. This was on 17th and 18th July organized by Jac Jacqueline Bataringaya the IAS Senior Policy Advisor ably assisted by Jennifer Knoester . The opening evening consisted of a presentation by Debrawok Zwedie of the World Bank and a reception. This was notable because the wine ran out before I had had more than a couple of mouthfuls. We went to the bar and ordered a bottle of Beyerskloof Pinotage, an excellent wine, of which I am increasingly fond (although not to excess).
On the Friday I moderated the first session of the meeting for two hours in a draconian protestant manner! I dashed to the IAS Governing Council meeting to give my treasurer’s report, caught a taxi to the Radisson Hotel to give a presentation for Tibotec to a group of German doctors, arriving with 30 seconds to spare, and dashed back to the Health Systems meeting to give my keynote address. This was the last presentation of the evening and turned out to be challenging as the technology failed. I had to begin without a PowerPoint and then discovered I was talking to old slide set. It was a lesson about the need to check and then recheck.
On the Sunday I went to visit my uncle and aunt and leave the suitcase for my brother to pick-up in due course. I went to lunch in Hout Bay, and confirmed that Atlantic ocean is freezing, a little wave broke behind my back and drenched my shoes! In the evening we watched the opening ceremony and had a late dinner.
The Monday was hectic because I had IAS things to do and then in the evening was a panelist for Merck. This was great fun. We sat on a couch in a full room and answered questions! It was good to meet up with old friends. It was followed by a dinner. I did not get to bed until after 12.00, having excused myself before everybody else had finished eating because there was so much to do.
On the Tuesday things began easing down a bit although I was on a panel in the evening presenting the outcomes of our pre-conference meeting. This session was chaired by Debrawok and was rather poorly attended. As she pointed out this was due to the fact that the events we were competing with were offering wine and snacks where we just had intellectual input.
As I got up to speak I said “This is not surprising but as you all know the only way to get a drink out of an economist is to stick your finger down this throat”.
An adaption of a rather good line from The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy.
After this we all went to an excellent Ethiopian restaurant called ‘Addis in the Cape’ where we were joined by Debra’s husband and her daughter, who has just completed Medical School. Again it was a very late night, in fact I think I crawled into bed at 2 am and had to be up at 7am to be at the conference by 7.30.
Wednesday saw the end of the conference with an excellent closing session, thoroughly enjoyed by all. I sat through the track summaries, a really good way of hearing about everything that I had missed. Thursday was a series of post-conference meetings and generally having a chance to relax and on Friday I headed for Durban and as I said as I began this letter, lost my computer.
The Waterford Governing council meeting (www.waterford.sz) on Saturday was smooth sailing, always a relief. The school is in a strong position, numbers are high and funding is flowing. It was extremely cold in Mbabane and I watched the Boks beat New Zealand in the tri-nations game, sitting in my hotel room, heater on and wrapped in a blanket.
It also seems as though the pace of death has slowed down a little, the grave yard at the foot of the Waterford hill had no services going on when I drove up, in the past there have been three or four groups of mourners huddled round the open scars of graves. But the graveyard now has a name, “The Mbabane Resting Place’.
Books
The Comfort of Men by Dennis Altman (William Heinemann Australia (1993) 247 pages).
Dennis is one of the IAS Governing Council members and a pioneers in HIV. He’s at Latrobe University in the Australia and is a noted political scientist. When I sent out an e-mail some time ago talking about the fact I was going to write a novel, Dennis responded very kindly and said he thought it was a great idea and he had written one. He then brought it to the conference. It is a thought provoking, interesting and well-written novel, which talks about what it is like to be gay in Australia in the 60’s, 70’s, and 80’s. It begins with the independence of Tasmania from the Commonwealth of Australia and the story is built around two ‘comings out’., that of the main character and also of Tasmanian and Australian nationhood.
The Northern Clemency Phillip Hensher (HarperPerennial (2009) 736 pages).
Based in Sheffield in England it is a good family saga, which I thoroughly enjoyed and would strongly recommend. Ironically it turns out that Phillip Henshaw is also gay, he appeared on the The Sunday Independent pink list as one of the more influential gay people in the UK. From Amazon: ‘A tremendous book. Against an unfashionable 1970s background Philip Hensher has composed not so much a condition-of-England as a condition-of-humanity novel, which is gripping and surprising and shocking in all kinds of unpredictable ways, and enormously wide in psychological and moral scope. What a writer he is!’ Philip Pullman ‘Wise and strong and unputdownable.’ A.S. Byatt, Financial Times (Book of the Year)
Being a Distinguished Visiting Fellow And Freezing In Ottawa
I am now back in Norwich having completed the visit as Distinguished Visiting Fellowship in Ottawa. Here is my plane letter/diary, which I kept while I was there and finished on the way back to the UK.
The visit was hectic. On my first Friday I gave the Founders Seminar at Carleton which was reasonably well attended. I spoke on HIV/AIDS and social justice, not something I knew a great deal about so it was good to have the chance to get my head round the issue. The following Monday I gave a seminar which was attended by a crowd of two people, a third put their head round the door and fled. Fortunately, for my ego, on Tuesday I gave a class which the students were expected to attend so it was full. This was organised by Chris Brown a Professor in the Department of Politics. He came to get me to walk across the campus. I recognised him. I had met him in Botswana where he had been a District Officer “Development” based in Molepolole in Kwaneng district.
The first weekend was not active, mostly sorting out my work and actually writing a bit. The week had passed so quickly that I was feeling a little panicked at how much I had to do and how much had not been done. I was invited out on Saturday by Carolyn McMaster, a friend of long standing. She was in Pretoria in the early 1980s, handling the CIDA support to Botswana, when I was an ODI Fellow there. She invited two couples who had been posted in South Africa by the Canadian Foreign Ministry. We had a fun evening, mainly talking about things Southern African. I had asked directions to bottle store at the hotel and ended up in one that sold only Ontario wine. I got the most expensive, which was $29-00 a bottle. The fact that this was the most one could spend on a bottle is telling. It was a Syrah, and to be honest it was not too bad. Somehow the words Ontario and wine don”t go together in my mind.
I subsequently had an interesting interaction with the shop assistant at that store. There was a sign saying that they do not take $100 bills. I asked if this were legal. “Yes”, she said, “we don’t keep change”. I thought about this and it seemed a little illogical. “OK”, I asked, “If I buy $96 worth of wine then you will accept the $100”. “No”. “Then this does not make sense”. She agreed but was most upset that I had called her on it.
The 17th March was St Patrick”s day, not marked in the UK or South Africa, but very different here. The streets were full of people wearing green, with shamrocks inked on their faces (and possibly other body parts), and silly little hats. Either there is an Irish community in this city or any excuse for a party.
I usually took the bus from Ottawa University to Carleton. It is the large yellow American school bus. I have always wanted to be on one of those. However, interestingly the seats were really uncomfortable and there were no seat belts. Sitting at the back was quite unpleasant and made me feel ill. So the commute was 12 minutes fast walk to the bus, a 15 minute journey and then five minutes in the “tunnels” at Carleton. The tunnels are amazing, they join all the buildings. It is possible to walk from one end of the campus to the other without going outside. They are populated by people who drive “the carts”, which are sort of golf carts that scoot through the tunnels to do, who knows what missions. I wonder if there is a sub-culture developing, “sub” in both senses of the word.
The hotel room I was in had a small kitchen (it was really an apartment) and there was a laundry on my floor, which was good. Having washed shirts during my first week I set about ironing them. It was a very long time since I had done this, and the iron turned itself off every 15 minutes as a safety feature. So frustrating. I then discovered a laundry across the street that would do all this for $1-49 per shirt. My basic philosophy when travelling is to try to avoid have laundry done when the cost is greater than the price paid for the garment originally, but this was well below that and such a saving on time.
Right next door was a gym. I had originally chosen this hotel, (www.suitedreams.com) because it had the best exercise room of all the ones suggested, but then I spotted the gym. They charged $65 a month ($70 with the tax), so I joined. I figured if I went 10 times it would be worth it and was full of good intentions of going in the morning and evening! Hah! But I did manage 20 visits ($3-50 per visit says the economist in me) and also got a great deal of reading done on the bicycle and cross trainer so was pleased with myself.
Ottawa is an interesting little city. I soon developed a feel for the area round the hotel and the Universities. The weather was kind over the month I was there. There was snow on the ground when I arrived and the canal was frozen. By the time I left the canal was mostly thawed and almost all the snow melted. I got down to a vest, shirt and fleece by the end of the visit, which meant that some of the locals were going round in shirts with the sleeves rolled up. At the beginning my dress was vest, t-shirt, shirt, fleece and coat!
As the 18th was my birthday I decided to go to a “Comedy Club” round the corner, “Yuk Yuks” on Elgin. It was the fourth round of the Canadian stand up comedy championships. The club had an empty bar upstairs, with a faint sour smell of puke, and a packed basement. Some of it was very funny, some was not! Then I had a MacDonald”s vanilla shake as a special treat. I think what I particularly like is the chemical additive taste.
My second weekend was rather fun. On the Friday I was invited to the annual Royal Commonwealth Society Humanitarian dinner. It was attended by the great and the good of Ottawa and I think the average age was 60+. I was the only male present who was not wearing a tie (I simply don”t have one). It was rather like being one of the characters in a Robertson Davies novel. The people were nice and very earnest. The guest of honour had been Canadian High Commissioner in South Africa, where he was mugged rather badly. He spoke from the heart about his impoverished childhood and upbringing, and then went on to describe the despair felt by aboriginal children, who have an alarmingly high suicide rate. He is engaged in trying to improve their lives through literacy.
On the second Saturday I went out to the University and worked all day. I got a great deal done and felt very pleased with myself. My host here, is Michael Brklacich, Chair of the Geography and Environmental Studies Department (to see who he is and information about the department see http://www.carleton.ca/geography/faculty/brklacich.html ), was given tickets for an ice hockey game. His neighbour has season tickets and could not go. These were excellent tickets as well, costing $190 each, and about six rows away from the ice. Mike very kindly invited me to go with him. It was deeply interesting and a lot of fun. I ate the most unhealthy meal I have had for ages, a steak sandwich with fries. I avoided the beer and had a glass of red wine instead. The game was fast and furious and in the end the Ottawa Senators (our team) won by four goals to one.
Sunday I tried working, not very successfully I am afraid. In the evening I went and had dinner with Peter Henshaw who works for the Privy Council as an advisor. He is also an expert on post world war two history of Basutoland, Bechuanaland and Swaziland. I filled about four pages of my notebook which was really interesting (a small but select group of people share this enthusiasm).
The third week had to be one of writing, and it was. I decided, after the discussion with Pete to try “pitch” an op-ed proposal to the Globe and Mail published in Toronto. They showed interest and so that was an additional small task, altogether about a day of drafting, getting comments and submitting it. It was run on the 2nd April the day of the public lecture. An op-ed is only 700 words, so they have to be carefully chosen, see The Globe and Mail.
On Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday I wrote. On the Wednesday evening I gave a presentation to the Africa interest group, made up of past diplomats and are an interesting group of people trying to influence Canadian foreign policy. I then had dinner with Stephen Lewis, who is an iconic Canadian public figure. He is also a thoroughly decent person with a sense of humour, I came away having changed my mind on some things.
Thursday was a pain because I had to travel to New York, and that meant catching the 06h15 plane. It seemed to me, that, as I already had a boarding pass, getting to the airport an hour before departure would be ample time. Wrong! There is a US immigration office at Ottawa and this took for ever, indeed I resorted to asking people in the queue if they would mind me going ahead of them. It was ok but a bit stressful.
The cab ride in from La Guardia was simple and quick. The two day meeting was held at the Desmond Tutu Centre. This is a former seminary with outstanding 19th-century Gothic architecture. The dinning area or refectory was super with stained glass windows and wood panelling. It has been wonderfully developed and the bed was the most comfortable I have slept in for a very long time. The desk and chair were, on the other hand, totally inadequate. It is worth looking at http://www.ahl-tutucenter.com
In addition to the meeting I was able to see the multi-media show that was unveiled in Durban on 2nd April as part of the South African AIDS conference. This is based on the HEARD project on female truck drivers and was shot by Liz Rubincam. The pictures are on her website http://www.lizrubincam.com under “truck drivers”, and I expect both will soon be on ours http://www.heard.org.za.
It was a busy couple of days and I was quite pleased to get on the plane to Ottawa on Saturday afternoon. Both ways the planes were quite empty and so I was able to stretch out and work, although the flight is short, only 55 minutes in the air. That Saturday was apparently the nicest in Ottawa for months but in New York it was grey and rather miserable. On the Sunday it was pouring with rain but Mike very kindly took me to the Gatineau park outside Ottawa for lunch, it is not far, a 20 minute drive. It was amazing to see the amount of snow on the ground as one left the city and headed for the hills. There must be micro-climates. It was good to get out of the city and be reminded that there is countryside. It would, I think, be spectacular in autumn
By my last week the temperature had risen and there were joggers running wearing just shorts and t-shirts. One measure of temperature would be the number of people outside and what they are wearing. It still seems cold but there are chairs outside restaurants and a few hardy souls are using them. Before it was just the smokers! There was one day when walking to the bus I thought my ears were going to fall off!
The last week was really busy. On the Monday I gave a talk in the morning at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs; a lunch presentation at the IDRC, and then had a meeting and gave a seminar at the University of Ottawa (the other university in the city and quite different, it is French and English medium and much more part of the city whereas Carleton is suburban).
On the Tuesday I talked at the Canadian development agency, CIDA. The finale of my visit was a public lecture on Thursday. This was at Carleton and was, sadly not very well attended, hindsight tells us that it was right at the end of the term and so was a time when most students were either gone or rushing to hand in overdue essays. I began with a joke, well actually I began by saying I was going to tell a joke because “Canadians are terribly serious and you need to know that this is a joke”.
On my final night we organised a dinner at Thai restaurant. It was great. There were 12 of us including people I had not seen for a very long time including Chris Brown”s wife who I had known in Botswana. Jonty Crush (a friend from Waterford days – 37 years ago) was there along with his wife. The last week also saw a number of dinners.
It was a really good four weeks and although not as much was accomplished as I should have liked, it was intense and busy. There was not really a spare moment and looking back there were a number of unexpected achievements. It was a window into Canada and Canadians (they are quite serious and apologise a lot, but on the other recognise they are a favoured nation and take global responsibilities to heart).
I am going to end this letter here because for those people to whom it is being posted it in now four pages long any more words and I will have to either reduce the type size or go on for another two pages. Smaller type is hard to read and I want to watch a movie on the plane so two more pages is not going to happen either. It is also over 2000 words long, which is half the length of the article I wrote and more than three times op-ed.
Travel To The USA
When I travel I write a letter at the end of the journey for three reasons. First it helps we think about what I have done; second it is a diary; thirdly I want to write and this is a way of getting practice. You may enjoy it, I believe it is a sort of “blog”.
This is the bank holiday weekend in the UK. I have just returned after two weeks in the USA. I went over on Sunday 19th April to Washington. The queue in the US immigration was the longest, but not the slowest, I have ever been in. It took nearly 90 minutes to get through. Once one entered the end there was no way out if you needed to visit the toilet, faint or generally change your mind. I suppose though, in fairness it, was an orderly, regimented queue (the Americans are surprisingly conformist for a nation that boasts of freedom, getting on the train from New York to Washington involves entering a ‘holding pen’ and then queuing with ID on display). Also it beats the scrums of airports like Kiev where the fittest beat their way to the front.
On the Monday I went to a seminar at the World Bank and then gave a presentation at the Centre for Global Development. The Tuesday and Wednesday were spent at the World Bank for the Economic Reference Group meeting (HEARD is the secretariat). I then flew to New York, this was a mistake as it involves getting to and from airports and all the time checking in and going through security procedures. The following week I had a night in DC, but went up and back by train. One of my Ugandan colleagues was in the meeting in DC with me and was then returning to New York to go to the same meeting as me. He flew and as a result had to go to the airport in Washington at 3pm. Due to over booking and delays he did not get to the hotel until 1.30 am. I, by contrast, on the train, left at 5.15 and was at the hotel by 9.30 pm.
The Thursday and Friday were spent with UNDP and other members of the UN family talking about our work and giving them some thoughts on directions. This included a public lecture at UNICEF. It seems the audiences for these meetings have become smaller, a sign of the diminishing interest in HIV/AIDS. An alternative explanation is that it is me! I then had the week end in New York. On the Tuesday I gave a lunch time lecture at the International AIDS Vaccine Initiative (IAVI) and took the train to Washington for an AIDS2031 financing meeting, returning on the Wednesday night for the IAVI Policy Advisory Committee meeting and then flying out on Friday evening.
So some New York vignettes. – My room was on the 50th floor of the Millennium Hilton Hotel right opposite where the World Trade Centre buildings stood. This area is a building site, with almost round the clock, construction. I started in a room on the 34th floor facing the centre, due to the noise moved up and to the other side of the building. The view was spectacular, Brooklyn Bridge with its tracery of girders, perhaps a mile away, the traffic dominated by the flashes of yellow New York cabs. The Hudson river with bustling boats taking tourists up and down. In the distance Central Park a green oasis in the high rises. And despite being on the 50th floor it was still noisy: sirens, jack hammers, trucks and a throb of people.
At Penn Station I went to buy a book I have wanted to read. There in the bookshop was a stand of Oxford University Press Very Short Introductions. Yes, the VSI on HIV/AIDS was among them, and I had to tell the storekeeper that it was mine. What a nice moment!! When I see it on the stand at Schipol Airport I will know it has made it.
I went out with friends most evenings. On the Saturday we had a pizza and then went to a piano bar called Marie’s Crisis Centre in the East Village. The idea (I learnt) is that the piano player beats out music and people stand round and sing. It was great. The music tended towards Mary Poppins, My Fair Lady and old musicals. I had not realised it was a mainly gay crowd until I noticed that there were very few women and many of the men had their arms round each other.
The cab driver who took me back to the hotel one evening was Irish New York. He travels back to Ireland every two years with an organisation called ‘Sons of Cork’. His father was the last official New York cobblestone layer! He was a fireman and was one of the people called down on 9/11. This brought home to me how traumatic the event was for many people, and of course so many firemen lost their lives.
Walking back to the hotel I asked directions to the World Trade Centre because I can’t bring myself to call it ‘Ground Zero’. The hawker looked at me with disgust a pity and said. “It is not there any more”. So there!
The sunshine was amazing and it is perhaps the New York of streets in shadow that is the most evocative. The hotel was in the financial district. One evening I walked past the stock exchange, but in the side streets though were small shops and union offices. A city of contrast!
And my reading: Nudge: Improving Decisions About Health, Wealth, and Happiness by Richard H. Thaler and Cass R. Sunstein, Penguin 312 pages, 2008 . These professors at the University of Chicago argue that totally free markets can lead to disasters because human individuals are not actually very good decision-makers. They are pushing what they call `libertarian paternalism’. It was an interesting book and gave me food for thought. It is too long and too much is from US examples. Worth reading? Yes and 7.5 out of 10 for content; 8 of 10 for ideas and 6.5 for writing styles.
Deer Hunting with Jesus: Guns, Votes, Debt and Delusion in Redneck America by Joe Bageant, Potobello books, 288 pages August 2008. I really enjoyed this book which was recommended by Lori Tarbett in Carleton. Bageant writes about class in the US and the poverty and inequality. Most striking is the lack of hope. Worth reading? Yes and 9 out of 10 for content; 8 for ideas and 8 for writing style, it does get a bit polemical at times.
The Other Side of the Bridge, Mary Lawson. This is fiction and was nominated for the Booker Prize. Published by Chatto & Windus it is 275pp, 2006. She has written one other book ‘Crow Lake’. This is fiction set in Canada at its best. It begins in the mid 1930s and ends in 1990 and is the story of love and sibling rivalry in a small town in Northern Canada. Worth reading? Absolutely! 9 out of 10 for content; 8 for perception and 9 for writing style.
Let me end there and send this off.
Terrified in the Treetops
It has been quite a couple of weeks what with one thing and another. Rowan, our daughter and Ben, her boyfriend, came over to South Africa for a three week adventure. This began with them going to Cape Town, to stay with my brother and family. They arrived very late on Tuesday evening off the daylight flight from Amsterdam. Derek and Lynn and the girls looked after them magnificently, and they had a wonderful time.
On the Saturday they flew up to Durban which is where they were to be based for the next two weeks. I was at work at the University and at about two o’clock I became aware that there was a southerly gale blowing. This meant the plane might be early and so I headed for the airport at high speed. Their aircraft was indeed 20 minutes ahead of schedule, but fortunately I was there in time. The beasts had organized their social life well in advance. After having supper with me they headed for a party with one of Rowan’s old school friends. I decided that I would therefore go to the cinema as I didn’t want to be sitting at home, (apparently) waiting for their return. I went and saw the chic-flic movie ‘It’s Complicated’ which I rather enjoyed.
Rowan and Ben stayed in Durban for the Sunday and Monday and on Tuesday drove up to the game reserves in the Hluhulwe area staying at a place the family love: Bonamanzi Game farm. Rowan first went there aged nine months. They reported seeing a lot of game; having an opportunity to visit the cheetah farm (cheetah’s purr); and getting drenched in a huge storm which left their treehouse without power or water. They got back on Friday and we went to a ‘standard’ Durban Manor Gardens Easter party on the Sunday. It no longer involves hunting for Easter eggs, most of the children are now way too old for this. It did involve sitting and talking and catching up with our neighborhood.
On the Monday I went to Swaziland to spend a couple of days doing research, but also to give them an opportunity to enjoy Durban by themselves. I returned on the Wednesday and took Friday off as they wanted go on the Karkloof Canopy Tours. According to the blurb “the canopy tour involves traversing from one platform to another along a steel cable suspended up to 30 meters about the forest floor. The tour comprises seven platforms and eight slides that zigzag down a pristine forested valley. The scenery and bird life are spectacular and the professional guides providing interesting facts about the forest ecology during the tour”.
That is the experience that most people may have; for me it was moments of amazement in a sustained period of sheer terror. The mountain is located about an hour and a half drive away from Durban. At the foot is a beautiful little set of cottages where visitors get their safety harness and a briefing. We then climbed into a Landrover and were driven to the top of the mountain. There were four of us doing the tour and there were three guides to make sure we were OK. Effectively one is clipped onto a steel cable, with a second cable as a safety device. There are two links to the main cable and one to the safety cable so it is very safe
The first slide is short, only 40 meters and is quite easy. Doing this one learns how to brake with the large leather glove on your hand. The second slide comprises of two ropes that disappear into the mist for 100 meters, taking you to the waterfall. Jumping off a platform and sliding down for this distance is not something that comes naturally. For the first three slides I went last. On the fourth slide I was told I was to go first (‘last in first out’ in trade union terms). It was hugely embarrassing because I slid down from one platform for 175 meters; arrived at the next platform; and gently bounced back five meters away from it. We had been told what to do if this happened: monkey climb; put your hands on the cable and haul yourself into the platform.
What we had not been told is what to do if, as I was, you were too terrified to even let go of the harness as you gently swung above the gorge. I tried monkey climbing, but I was shaking too much and so had to say to the guide: “please come and rescue me”. One of them shinned down the rope and hauled me back up catching my hand between two harnesses as he did. I sat on the platform shaking, sweating, pallid, and appalled at what I was doing. The other three arrived and looked at me and made helpful comments like:
“Oh shame”; “You are doing very well dad”, and “Not much more to go”.
Fortunately at this point we were given a small chocolate and a drink, the energy was absolutely necessary. There were three slides to go and I have to admit that I went in tandem with one of the guides who took responsibility for controlling the speed as we flew down those aerial rope-ways. What an experience. Rowan and Ben think it was one of the best things they had every done. I think I was insane. I hate heights at the best of times and this was clearly way way out of my comfort zone. They told me that the views were spectacular. I can’t comment, my eyes were closed for parts of the journey. At the end of the tour we were given a free drink and toasted sandwich, (they laughingly call this a delicious Midlands meal in their brochure). I am still processing the event!
From there it was back to Durban for Rowan’s final evening and we took the Brauninger family (who are old friends and had seen a great deal of Rowan and Ben) out for dinner. I had thought it would be possible to get a table for eight people at one of my favorite restaurants. This was completely not the case on a Friday evening. We ended up at a restaurant on Davenport Road.
The evening had the potential to be a complete disaster. Rowan, Ben and I walked down from my flat to the restaurant to get just there after 7.15pm. We informed the manager that we had a booking for 7.30pm. He denied it. Brigitta who had made the booking arrived shortly after, and the manager admitted that they had taken the booking but someone else had commandeered the table. We were put in the lounge area, sitting on leather cowhide seats. These were untanned and hairy which didn’t work for those people wearing shirts or shorts as the back of one’s’ legs were prickled and tickled.
It took nearly 40 minutes before we got a table and in the meantime the waitress came and got one drinks order at a time and brought us one drink at a time. The wine was red and hot an attribute one does not want. The day did not improve, the manager informed us that it was better to be inside under the fans than outside in the breeze, it would be cooler he said, members of the party wanted to smoke and went outside and report that this was definitely not the case. However when they were outside they had overheard the manager speaking about our party, being quite uncomplimentary about us, a complete lack of professionalism.
Eventually, an hour after we got to the re, we given a table, seated and orders taken. By this stage everyone was bad tempered and hungry. The food came and those of us who had order side dishes found we got meager portions. Rowan had a meal which had pesto on it which she detests. She said if she wanted pesto she would have ordered it.
Just as the food started coming from the kitchen, the switch on the distributor board on the pole outside the restaurant tripped, and we were plunged into darkness. Because the kitchen cooks with gas they were able to bring our means but it meant that their extractor fans ceased working and the inside of the restaurant gradually filled up with greasy smoke. Rowan, a vegetarian, went to the rest room and came back feeling quite nauseated. “Dad I walked through a cloud of meat”.
It was the only restaurant on the street affected in this way and was badly handled no apology just blame for the city council. Patrons were expected to simply carry on as though nothing had happened. Although that wasn’t quite the case because the waitress came over and said “Our computers are going to go down, please would you mind paying your bill now?’
We were paying cash so this was irrelevant. She carried on pushing until she had the money in her hand. By this time everyone was extremely irritated. I went to the manager and asked, “How much will you charge me for a tub of ice cream”.
“Why? Won’t you stay here”, he said.
So I told him why we would not in clear terms. All’s well that ends well though, we went to the flat and had ice-cream and several more bottles of wine. On the Saturday Rowan, Ben and I went over for breakfast to Mitchell Park; the weather had changed, it was grey, overcast, cold and a strong wind was blowing from the South. I dropped them at the airport at about 12.30. They flew to Johannesburg and then had to wait for 10 hours in before getting on the plane to Amsterdam and then connecting on the flight to Norwich. I got news, on Sunday that they had arrived back safely after an adventurous and I think very much fun time in South Africa. It was quite strange having company for this amount of time and probably rather good. They got in a decent amount of beach time which I think they very much appreciated.
Of course while all this holiday fun was going on here in South Africa we have had three major events. The first the murder of Eugene Terre´Blanche, a right-wing Afrikaner Weerstandsbeweging leader. He had spent some years in prison in the 1990s and I can’t say his passing was greatly mourned by anyone. The second issue has been Julius Malema who has been severely reprimanded by President Zuma over his inflammatory behaviour. All this against a backdrop of us moving closer and closer to the World Cup. This stadia are complete, South Africa is ready but sadly it seems as though many fewer tourists than expected will be arriving for this event. I fear that Fifa has oversold and under delivered on the World Cup.
Lions In Lusaka And Down In Durban
Mercifully planes usually leave on time, so I am feeling slightly hard done by at the moment. I travelled from Norwich to Amsterdam on Sunday 31st May. The check-in for the flight from Norwich is at 05h10 in the morning, a brutal time to have to be awake and functioning. The plane leaving Amsterdam was about an hour late, a pain because we only got to Joburg at 10pm. Although I was spending the night at the Intercontinental Hotel right next to the terminal,I had to be up again the next morning at 05h00, the Monday flight to Lusaka was at 06h30!
Then coming travelling back to Joburg and Durban two days later we had to leave the hotel at 06h45, so I had my share of early mornings.
All the other flights were on time, and so when I left Durban a few days ago on Sunday I felt quite good. I need to keep my Gold frequent flyer card on South African Airways so decided I would travel with them, instead of the usual KLM flight to Amsterdam followed by the short hop to Norwich. It means taking a trains and tubes from Heathrow to Norwich.
The trip back did not start well. I worked at the University in the morning, up to about 11h30 and then went home to pack. I was booked on the 16h55 flight to Joburg. As I had arranged to meet the Principal of Waterford School for dinner, at 17h00, I knew I had to get an earlier flight – and decided the 15h40 would work. My planned steady, measured packing, with a shower at the end and a reasonably early arrival at the airport to change my ticket was thrown into complete disarray. I know, to deal with failing memory and the fact I travel so much, have a checklist of things I must take. Running through it I realised I had left my flash disk with all the documents I was working on, at the office. Under normal circumstances it is a 35 minute round trip. I did it in 22 minutes. I left the flat in a cab at 14h45. I made it, albeit drenched in sweat!
However things really deteriorated in Joburg. Laurence and I had our meeting, and very useful it was too. He drove from Swaziland just for this, although we also had a meal, which turned out, with hindsight, to be a good decision. I then wandered through to the departures lounge in our magnificent new airport.
For the past three years, or more, O. R. Tambo airport has been undergoing massive renovations and expansion. This is in part to cater for the 2010 soccer cup. It has been amazing, and impressive as the airport has continued to function without too many hitches, albeit a degree of dust, noise and inconvenience. It has been worth it, the new facilities are magnificent. The arrivals halls are huge, clean, airy, and efficient. This has had a knock on effect on the staff. They are friendly, helpful, smiling, and happy, so unlike any airport I have been to in the last few years. Normally the attitude is that you have done something wrong until proven otherwise.
“Why do you’, said with contempt, “want to come into our country. How are you going to exploit us and misuse us?” We seem to have a virtuous circle developing in South Africa, long may it continue. There is still work to be done, in particular there is a temporary international Business Class lounge, which is crowded and has no toilets on site.
The boarding time for the London flight was scheduled for 19h35. I did some shopping and wandered to the gate. A great deal of nothing was happening. After half an hour I went up to the First Class lounge and asked the receptionist if she knew what was going on, explaining at the same time that the business lounge was not particularly pleasant.
“That is OK, sir “, she said understandingly, “We are not busy you can sit here”.
And that is where I was until we boarded at 23h00. The problem was a ‘relay’ controlling power to the business class cabin and it meant there was no in-flight entertainment, nor would the seats recline. It was finally fixed for almost all the seats but not 5D or 5E. I, of course, was in 5D!!
So what were the good things? Well I normally travel on KLM and I was cursing my decision to go on SAA, until looking at the screens, I saw that KLM’s flight had been cancelled. If I had been doing my normal route I would have had a 24 hour delay! I was in business class and that meant that I slept on a fully reclining seat. I was not travelling with babies or rug rats, although there was a small infestation at the front of the cabin. There are such swings and roundabouts in travel and most of it is not anything one can control. One has to grab what pleasure you can, and the fact that my bag was among the first off the plane at both Joburg and Heathrow was a small victory!
The Swedish International Development Agency reference group meeting was held at Chimanuka lodge about 30 minutes drive from Lusaka http://www.chimanuka.com . It is a delightful spot. The owners have excellent rooms and conference facilities. They have farm land in the area, but the lodge is centred in a game farm. On the property there is also a cheese factory. It is possible to have a game drive and a tours of the cheese factory. They also have, in a separate, and one hopes, very secure enclosure.
I have to digress here and tell of an event that happened when I was about four years old. We lived on a cattle farm outside Nairobi in an areas close to game reserves. One of the lions developed a taste for, easy to catch cattle, and so the young British farmers decided that said lion had to be shot. The story goes that they sat in a hide near the carcase of the last kill all night. Just before dawn, at the time the first birds start clearing their throats, they gave up. Walking along the road they were swinging the torch and suddenly, caught in the light, was the lion, eyes and teeth gleaming. Somehow one of the chaps managed to get his rifle up, and with a lucky shot, killed the lion stone dead.
There was much excitement in the community. The staff of the little pre-primary school I was at, decided that it would be fun if we were taken to see the dead lion. Indeed I recall being placed on its back and having my photograph taken. I would like to think I was an unusually sensitive child, but that may not be the case, just my wistful thinking. This outing made a deep impression on me. When I have nightmares involving animals it is always lions that feature prominently.
So back to events in Zambia. After a day of meetings we decided to go for a walk. It was dusk, a beautiful African evening. We walked down toward the lion enclosure – and I could hear them roaring quietly in the distance. We got as far as the dam and watched the dying sun. It was idyllic, thorn trees and clouds reflected in the water, standing listening to the chirp and croak of the frogs and the various noise of the African night. Suddenly the lion roared about 20 metres away on the other side of the fence. I leapt two metres into the air and my pulse was racing. I managed to play cool, and we nonchalantly walked back, with me taking comfort from the knowledge that while I could not outrun a lion, I was pretty confident that I was faster than at least two of our party.
It was really good to be back in Southern Africa and I felt so comfortable, which is probably a bad sign I need a challenge and a change.
Circumcised Statues In Oslo
Over the past ten days my destinations have been Olso, Stockholm, Uppsala and Liverpool. I was invited to take part in an interesting conference in Uppsala on “HIV and AIDS, Political Mobilization and Democracy?” This was organised by Forumsyd a Swedish NGO (forum south in English); SIDA, the Swedish Development Agency and Uppsala University. Given that I had to go to Scandinavia I decided to visit HEARD’s supporters in Oslo and Stockholm.
I flew over to Oslo on Sunday 10th May. Or at least I thought I was flying to Oslo but on getting to Amsterdam I looked at the departure board and saw that there was a plane to Oslo and then mine to Sandefjord Airport. This airport does indeed serve Oslo but is nearly 120 kilometres south! On arrival I had to work out how to get to Oslo – The choices were bus (nearly 2 hours); train but this required taking a shuttle bus to the station; or taxi which would have been impossibly expensive. I asked the driver of the rail shuttle bus which he thought would be my best option and he charmingly and honestly said: “Train of course, it is much nicer”, but then added “but not today we are using buses because there is a problem on the line”. I took the express bus!
I had looked at the weather forecast and it had seemed to be unrelentingly wet and cool, but this was not the case, it was sunny and pleasant the whole time and everywhere! What was striking was the extra daylight. I went to bed at 10 pm it was light; I woke up at 3 am and it was light again! This would take some getting used to if one lived there. In addition the size of the rooms and beds in the cheaper (but still expensive) hotels required a mental adjustment. In all three locations there was only a shower in the room and two had very small single beds.
I had a very useful day and a half in Oslo. Unfortunately my last appointment was in a slightly run down part of the city. Try as we might neither the taxi driver nor I could find the office, so I had to miss that meeting. The driver having taken money for the trip to the location hung around and helped me look then took me back to my hotel so I could head for the airport without charging for the additional time, which was really decent. I felt so guilty about it though.
I was taken out to a really nice restaurant and told by my host that if I did only one thing in Oslo, I had to go to Frogner Park and look at the Vigeland Sculpture. She kindly put on the right tram to get there. It was a really beautiful evening so this was not a hardship. The sculptures are amazing, the website I found ishttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vigeland_Sculpture_Park and it is worth a look. The sculptures consist mainly of large naked men, with fewer women and some children and animals. They were sculpted in clay and caste in bronze or carved from granite. My favourite was the Wheel of Life. It was also clear that his male models were not circumcised! I walked back to the city and hotel, easy because it was all down hill, enjoying the evening.
From there it was off to Stockholm. This time I went from Oslo airport, but it was still a 65 minute trip on the bus from the city centre! The flight was 50 minutes, the plane was packed and the cabin crew still managed to serve drinks, a meal and tea and coffee in this time, while remaining calm, amazing. Arlanda airport is well seved by an efficient train that runs into Stockholm and I then headed to my hotel for my one night in the city..
Over the course of the trip I gave two presentations in Oslo and one each in Uppsala and Stockholm. The conference was interesting, there were new ideas and a number of people I had not met. It was particularly pleasing to have a chance to talk to a PhD candidate who is looking at the role of media in the response to the epidemic in Lesotho and Namibia. It it is clear to me that we, in Southern Africa and at HEARD, are ahead in our thinking, and that kind of affirmation is much appreciated.
Oslo is a beautiful small city. It was good to finally get there as I have never visited it. Stockholm is much busier. I had a city map for both locations and was amused to do a little analysis of the avertisments in the boxes around the central plan. They have about the same number of boxed adverts. On the Oslo map five of the 23 were for shops selling sweaters or other knitted goods, the balance were for resturants and sightseeing. The Swedes by contrast are more into general shopping including jewelery, there was not a single sweater shop.
Uppsala is a bucolic small town a forty minute train ride from Stockholm. We were housed is quite odd little hotel called the Muttern with only 26 rooms. Their website is http://www.hotellmuttern.se The wardrobe was on a swivel stand, one side the mirror the other the opening for clothes and hanging jackets. It smacked of Ikea! The cathedral which was begun in 1287 is an amazing brick building.
The town itself is centred around the University, and so had all the standard features of such towns. These included hordes of students riding bicycles; cheap eating places and lots of pubs; and in the evening students staggering through the streets with open bottles and tins in their hands. They lined up at the pedestrian crossings and then eratically weaved the way across. I have not seen men urinating in public in the northern hemishere (except next to roads, and then with the car door as concealment), well in Uppsala brought that experience as well. The other striking feature was the largen numbers of Goths, who seemed to congregate like crows in the open spaces, sitting in circles and passing joints and booze.
I took a taxi from the hotel to the airport, it was driven by a melancholic Swede in his 40s, who unusually, did not speak English. It is, of course, possible that he choose not to speak though. As I sat in the front I had ample opportunity to study his picture on the licence, and learn his name, Kenneth Lars Lindstrom. I could not decide if he looked shifty or sad, and eventually concluded he was carrying the weight of being Swedish on his shoulders. The driver from the Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine by contrast did not stop talking. He said he really enjoys his job because he gets to meet all these interesting people. Quite how he knows they are interesting was unclear as he does all the talking. He has collected me a few times and I know a lot about him, but he does not remember this.
The visit to Liverpool was to attend a meeting on “Strengthening the research to policy and practice interface: Exploring strategies used by research organisations working on Sexual and Reproductive Health and HIV and AIDS”. We had three HEARD, two by Tim Quinlan and one co-authored by myself and Fiona Henry on Swaziland, Fiona gave the presentation which was excellent. It is clear we are punching above our weight.
And my reading:The Virus, Vitamins and Vegatables: The South African HIV/AIDS Mystery, eds Kerry Cullinan and Anso Thom, Jacana media, Aukland Park, 2009, 211 page.
In their foreword, the editors write: “This book is an attempt to document some of the madness, sheer weirdness and despair of a decade with Mbeki and Tshabalala-Msimang. We are doing so to safeguard the future. We want to present this book as evidence to citizens of this country and the world and say, ‘This is what happened and we need to ensure that it never happens again.'” Worth reading? Absolutely! 9 out of 10 for content; 8 for perception and 7 for writing style, this last because it is an edited collection it is a bit uneven.
Sexuality: A Very Short Introduction, Veronique Mottier, Oxford University Press Oxford, 2008, 160 pages.
This looks at how sexuality is determined, our genes or is it shaped by the social norms and expectations. It claims to provide an accessible, thoughtful and thought-provoking introduction to major debates around sexuality in the modern world, highlighting the social and political aspects of sexuality. It also looks at how governments have tried to regulate sexualities. It finishes by discussing political activism around sexuality. I found it useful however am not convinced of the perspective that she takes at the end. I think there is too much on gay politics. Worth reading? Yes because it is a VSI! 7 out of 10 for content; 7 for perception and 7 for writing style.
Dead aid: why aid is not working and how there is a better way for Africa, Dambisa Moyo, Farrar, Straus and Giroux,, New York, 2009 188 pages
This is a short but powerful book. The author, a Zambian woman, grew up in Lusaka but left to study in the US. She has worked for the World Bank and Goldman Sachs and has a PhD from Oxford. Her credentials are impeccable. Moyo argues the problem with Africa, the reason it is not developing, is the trillions of dollars in aid that has been poured into the continent. Her critique of aid in the first part of this little book is damning in the second part she has policy prescriptions. Worth reading? Yes because if you are interested in Africa and development aid, otherwise probably not! 8 out of 10 for content; 7 for perception and 6 for writing style.
Alan Whiteside 