Tag Archives: Canada

New Decade! New Life?

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The 1st January 2020 marks the start of a new decade as well as a New Year. I am aware that some purists (or pedants) think that the decade does not actually officially start until 1st January 2021, I am not part of that group. This is it! A new decade!

The next year will be interesting, I need to adapt my lifestyle. The first order of business will be getting used to living full time in Norwich. At the moment I have absolutely no travel planned for the next calendar year. As I am on sabbatical I don’t have to think about teaching but I am ‘on the books’ to the end of 2021. What should I do? This will become clearer in the next few months.

I returned to the UK on the 23rd December, just ahead of Christmas. My last few weeks in Waterloo were crammed with wrapping up the term and students and seeing and saying goodbye to friends. I also had to pack up the apartment for rental. Fortunately, I had help. The estate agent who is handling it for me, Dave McIntyre, is hopeful it can be let furnished. This means crockery, cutlery, furniture, linen and books were left out, but could be packed away if necessary. Dave is the chap who sold me the place originally and who will take care of the sale in due course. He is not just an estate agent but a decent and trustworthy person.

I did not write about this in my last post (not enough room), but at the end of November I went, with my friend Dana, to the event Dining with the Dead! This was held at the Kitchener Museum which had a themed exhibition on the afterlife. The way it was advertised was as a

“one of a kind dining experience! To coincide with the Exhibition at THEMUSEUM, we’re hosting Psychic Medium Kerrilynn Shellhorn (who) will utilize her strong connection to the other side to bring messages from lost loved ones while you dine on a delicious 3 course dinner.”

The food was excellent and the service great. The séance was, well, medium. There were about 35 diners. Only a few were given messages from the departed. I was not convinced but will chalk it up as an interesting experience.

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December 2019

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It is many years since I included a ‘round robin’ in with Christmas cards and this, lazily, also constitutes my blog post for December. There is a good reason this year. I have significant news and don’t want to leave people out, or have to write it in all the cards I send.

You may recall in January 2014 I joined the Balsillie School in Waterloo, Ontario as a full time member of faculty. It is complicated appointment. My salary is paid by Wilfrid Laurier University, but I work at the Balsillie School of International Affairs. Here I was, according to my letter of appointment, employed to teach two courses per year, and carry out the other responsibilities of a senior academic, including researching, writing and publishing.

About two years ago the University unilaterally, and with very little consultation, decided to change the conditions of service. They were, of course, made less favourable for academics. Of particular concern was the doubling of our teaching commitment. I came here because I had not, in 30 years as an academic, taught (two years of teaching one course at the University of Natal on Southern African Development in 1984 and 1985 had receded to a distant memory). I wanted to see what it would be like to work with and teach MA and PhD students. The idea of supervising a thesis from start to finish was intriguing, and I am happy to report that I did manage to do that with one student.

This new demand regarding teaching made staying in Waterloo problematic in the long term. I neither had courses prepared, nor much guidance on what to do. In addition to more teaching being mandatory my academic cohort was assured, when we signed up in 2012 and 2013, there would be research money available to us, without too many hoops to leap through. This promise evaporated like the dew in the Kalahari in January, although it was not entirely the fault of the university but rather the shocking behaviour of one of the other ‘partners’. In addition to this moving the goalposts, a part of the university bureaucracy was irrational to me. I have every intention of writing about this in due course.

The original move to Canada took rather longer than anticipated. Finding the right person to take over HEARD in Durban was a lengthy process. I was absolutely delighted when an academic friend, Professor Nana Poku, accepted the position. HEARD is still operating, and is stronger than ever with Nana at the helm. One of my mantras is, “the only way to leave a legacy is to leave”. I am glad I did, and six years later the organisation is flourishing. The AIDS epidemic has not gone away although the pressing problems are somewhat different from those of the 1990s and 2000s.

It was a wrench leaving Durban which had been (mostly) home for 30 years, and where the children were born. When we sold the family home I bought a small flat. Fortunately for me, Tim Quinlan, who was my Research Director at HEARD, continues his affiliation at the University. He occupies the flat for most of the year and covers the bulk of the recurrent costs of maintaining my pied-à-terre. This works. We try to not be there at the same time. Friendship is one thing, sharing a bathroom another entirely.

I spent some time in Durban in March and April of 2019. I needed a small surgical procedure – an umbilical hernia repair. I was one of the fortunate few employed at the University of Natal, whose terms and conditions included post-retirement medical care as part of the package. This is for the rest of my life, as long as I am in South Africa. As a result I decided to have the operation done in Durban. The surgeon, Craig Campbell, gave me a choice of stitching or a mesh. I decided the embroidery would be less invasive. This was a mistake; unfortunately the repair did not work. I have to wait a year to have it redone. I am not sure where I will do this, the waiting lists in Canada and the UK are very long, as is always the case with national health services and elective procedures.

In addition to having the operation I saw many friends during my time in Durban. Among these were the Brauninger family. They lived on the same road, Manor Drive, about 100 meters from us. Hannah, their eldest daughter, is six months older than Rowan. Tania, the second is about 18 months older than Douglas. Jurgen was a professor in the music department at the University, and they came to Durban two years after we did. The family are very dear friends. I spent time with them, having a final meal together at the really delightful Glenwood Bakery and pizza restaurant.

Less than a month after I left, the news came that Jurgen had been diagnosed with advanced cancer. This progressed very rapidly and he died on 6th May 2019. I would like to pay tribute to a loving family man, remarkable musician, and a dear friend. He had many enthusiasms: formula one racing, horses, European and World Cup football and, of course, music. I find myself thinking of him often and missing his presence in Durban. It is completely devastating for his family as Christmas approaches.

Coming back to the purpose of this blog/round robin letter! I am due sabbatical from the University. The earliest I could get a full year was for the 2020 calendar year. I will be leaving in a couple of weeks, after the end of term, and get to Norwich just before Christmas 2019. I have to stay long enough to complete my marking and submit the grades. I also need to prepare the apartment for renting.

The University is keen to have its older, more expensive academics take early retirement. Since there is no mandatory retirement age it seems to me leaving any time before death is ‘early’. As a result Laurier offered all academics with more than a number of years’ service a package. I have been included in this. It means that January to December 2020 is my sabbatical and January to December 2021 is a period of ‘continuance of service’, but I am not teaching. In January 2022 I will be collecting my pension and will be retired! The next two years will give me a chance to work out what retirement this will look like. I have affiliations at two universities in the UK and remain a Professor Emeritus at the University of KwaZulu-Natal, giving institutional homes which could be important for seeking research funds.

So the question is: what is the plan? I am not at all sure. I need to work on my sabbatical project, which is to finally get to grips with the book on Eswatini (the country formerly known as Swaziland). I first wrote a prospectus for a publisher back in 2008, but it kept being put on the back boiler. The first title was “A Political Economy of Swaziland”. The new working title is “An Accidental Country: The Politics and Economics of Eswatini”. I am looking forward to getting my teeth into this. I also want to write about my life – but fully recognise that this would be primarily for me, it would be a reflective project. Once I am in Norwich I will sign up to some writing courses through the Writer’s Centre. I also, desperately need to get fit again, I have barely done any exercise since the hernia operation.

It would be really great if Ailsa and I could do some traveling. The goal would be to do this by road and rail. It would be important not to fly and be more environmentally conscious. High on my list of places to go is Ireland, we have only been to Dublin. This would be achievable by either road or rail (including a ferry trip). Greece is rather further, but is also reachable by train.

I must end this meandering by mentioning the ghastly political situation in the UK. It has been a most horrifying and divisive period. I actually paid my membership to the Liberal Democrats. We may hold the balance of power, but sadly won’t be able to form a government. So let me end this by sending you best wishes for Christmas and the New Year wherever you are. We hope to see you at some point and somewhere in 2020. This is being posted on the 4th of December as my final class (ever?) was on the 3rd of December and I wanted to also report that fact!

The Misty Murky Mornings

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I had not been in Waterloo for long when I was at a meeting on a very foggy day. I looked out of the window and declaimed:

“Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness,
Close bosom-friend of the maturing sun;
Conspiring with him how to load and bless
With fruit the vines that round the thatch-eves run”

This is from John Keats’ poem To Autumn, published in 1820. Everyone looked at me blankly. Doesn’t everyone know the romantic poets? Evidently not! My mind is a bin of snatches of poems and quotes. I can’t always quote them entirely accurately, but I do generally have something appropriate.

There is so much going on around the world that it is hard to know where to start. Britain remains on the edge of a cliff as the Brexit process continues to falter and stutter. So far Theresa May lost three crucial votes and was replaced by Boris Johnson. At the weekend, on 19th September, in an exceptional Saturday sitting, he lost the first vote seeking approval for his ‘deal’. I am not sure that anyone knows what is going to happen. I hoped that by the time I posted my monthly blog, things might be clearer. This does not seem to be the case, and the only credible way forward is to take the decision back to the country, either in a general election or a second referendum.

My sources of information are BBC World News and the occasional dip into the Canadian Broadcasting Service. Canada had an election for the Federal Government on the 21st September. The main parties were the Liberals, led by Justin Trudeau, the governing party going into the election; the Conservatives, led by Andrew Sheer, an oleaginous individual; the New Democrat Party (NDP), whose leader is a Sikh complete with turban (which he could not wear as a public servant in secular Quebec); and the Greens, lead by a faintly desperate looking woman. There is also Bloc Québécois (BQ) which advocates for Quebec nationalism and sovereignty. They are not a force outside Quebec. Interestingly, like the DUP in the British Parliament, they had 10 seats before the vote, but 34 after the polls closed. Finally there is the small The People’s Party of Canada, a splinter group similar to The Brexit Party in the UK.

I watched the results come in. The process was amazing as the CBC had excellent hi-tech coverage down to individual polling stations. This meant they were able to call results before all the constituency polls had been counted – although they did warn that these were preliminary tallies. The final outcome was 157 seats for the Liberals, 121 for the Conservatives, 32 for the Bloc, 24 for the NDP, three for the Greens and one Independent. Ironically the Conservatives got the most votes at 34.4%; Liberals’ at 33.1%; The New Democrats took 15.9% of the vote, followed by the Bloc at 7.7%, the Greens at 6.5% and the People’s Party at 1.6%. Of course there are more tiny parties, but none should be taken very seriously. It is clear that there will be a minority or coalition government. No bad thing in my opinion. Equally the green vote did not translate into seats!

Around the world from Lebanon to Chile, Barcelona to Hong Kong, people are taking to the streets to protest against governments. Unfortunately these events frequently turn violent, but it should be noted that, at the time of writing, there have been few deaths. This is very striking and suggests restraint on the part of everyone, authorities and protestors alike. The reasons for the increase in protests range from climate change (which is having an insidious but serious impact) to unemployment to global anomie. This is, to my mind, the key concept. As originally developed by Émile Durkheim it is

“a social condition in which there is a disintegration or disappearance of the norms and values that were previously common to the society”

We have to respond to this upheaval, and not with repression.

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Heat and Humidity

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The Canadian summer has been hot and humid. I have never enjoyed humidity and so wonder why I managed to do summers in South Africa and Canada. The UN held a Climate Summit in September and there is increasing recognition of the environmental crisis we are facing. Earlier, in mid-September, the running news bar on the BBC was that the bird population has fallen precipitously in North America. In Waterloo there was a climate strike day on the 27th and people marched from the Universities to the town square. There were thousands of participants and I was proud to be among them.

Another running news bar on the BBC has been that ‘flight shaming’ means the growth in airline travel is expected to fall. Looking back more than 40 years I was so excited to take my first flight. I got a ride from Mbabane to Johannesburg, and boarded a flight to Heathrow to go to University. At 19, this was the first time I had been on a plane. I have a record of all the flights I took on a computer file, it is a bit scary.

Today when I board a plane I feel somewhat guilty. It is my intention to drastically reduce the amount of air travel and increase the amount of train travel. From Norwich to London is two hours by rail, and from there it is easy to get to Brussels or Paris. Plans for 2020 including going to Ireland (Norwich, London, Fishguard and the ferry to Dublin), and, perhaps, Amsterdam (Norwich, Harwich and ferry to Rotterdam). The possibilities are numerous.

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Frying in Norfolk

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Anyone who denies climate change, and more specifically, global warming, is seriously wrong. At the end of August we had record temperatures in Norwich. Fortunately it cooled down in the evenings so sleeping has not been too difficult. However, this summer the rowan tree in the front garden died from a mixture of disease and heat stress. Ailsa has been using the water from the rain butts to keep some of her favourite plants alive, but it is an uphill battle. It presents a dismal picture and I really wonder what the next 10 to 20 years will hold. I am increasingly aware of my contribution to this crisis, particularly through flying, but I do not consider myself to be a flamboyant consumer of other things.

Having said that, I have to begin this blog by reflecting on my travelling over the past month. My final class in Waterloo was on 30th July. I had to complete the marking and submit the marks by 8th August. I was able to do this, and almost all of the students should have been pleased with the outcome. The temperatures and humidity gradually rose in Waterloo, and I was glad to be heading for Norwich. I did not realise how hot Norwich was going to be.

I travelled over on Sunday 11th August, flying via Amsterdam. Toronto to Amsterdam is not all that long, just 7½ hours. This is not long enough to take a sleeping pill, so I sat and watched the film ‘Red Joan’. This was about a British woman who became a Soviet spy in the 1940s and 50s. Oddly I was reading a book called ‘And Is There Honey Still For Tea?’, by Peter Murphy, set in the same time period and covering the same topics. It is hard to believe how much skullduggery there was going on then. I guess it is still happening, with electronic surveillance playing an ever-increasing role.

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Sunshine and students

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There are three semesters at the Balsillie School, and across Canada. The Autumn term starts in September and ends just before Christmas; the Winter term is from January to April; and we are completing the Spring term which lasts from May to July. The terms are longer than in the UK and Europe at 12 weeks.

I taught two courses in the Spring and will teach two in the Autumn. Next calendar year (January 2020 to December 2020), I am on sabbatical and am very much looking forward to this. This is the first time I have been in Waterloo for the Spring term, and while it might have begun as spring it ended as summer – which is the one term we do not have. My word it was hot and humid for weeks at a time. Fortunately there were occasional thunderstorms that roiled across the region and brought some relief.

It has been very hot across much of Europe as well. We have a friend who has been in hospital in Norwich for some weeks now. The Norfolk and Norwich Hospital was opened in 2001. It was built on a greenfield site near the University, which means that UEA is able to offer medical degrees which was not the case when I was a student. It replaced a Victorian establishment in the centre of the city.

The new hospital is ‘state of the art’, except that there is no air-conditioning! This is OK for 10 months of the year. When there is a heatwave, as there was in July, it means that everyone from the consultants to the patients really suffers. It is miserable and sadly I don’t think there is any way that AC can be retrofitted into the building. The other major problem is that the hospital is not easy for the public to get to. It is an expensive and inconvenient bus journey, while those who drive have to pay car parking charges.

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Hotting up in June

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This posting is being written over a long weekend in Canada. It will only be posted on the website in early July. The reason is that I am one of the contributing authors to a paper being published in the journal Health Affairs and the article was released on Monday. That means we could put a link up, but not until 4 PM Eastern time on 1st July. Eastern time refers, of course, to the time in New York and Washington, not Moscow. The writing was led by Steven Forsythe, someone I have known for many years, and who did his Ph.D. at the Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine. Apart from him there are another seven named co-authors. The title is Twenty Years Of Antiretroviral Therapy For People Living With HIV: Global Costs, Health Achievements, Economic Benefits. It will go on the reading list for my students.

The other activity I have been extensively engaged in over the past couple of weeks is editing The African Journal of AIDS Research. I am the Editor-in-Chief. This means that I read every article that gets through the review process to approve it for publication. We are now getting about 260 articles submitted every year, we only publish 40 (and these I read), and so there is quite a lot of work involved. On the other hand it is does give me a forum to express views in editorials, should I wish, and keeps me up to date on current writing. Hopefully the last issue of 2019 will comprise papers presented at the International AIDS Economics Network meeting just ahead of the International AIDS Conference in 2018. To some extent this will be a ‘development’ issue as some of the authors have not published before. Steven is one of the two guest editors for the issue.

I am teaching two courses this term and am increasingly aware of the importance of equity in health. It is quite clear that, in the near future, a number of countries will not be able to afford to have their citizens on antiretroviral therapy. Donors are paying for it and may step back. This will raise a series of moral questions and it will be deeply interesting and concerning to see how they are addressed. My belief is that donor agencies will agree to continue funding people who are on treatment, but they probably won’t initiate new patients.

The big news from Waterloo is that the light rail service is finally in operation. This means that there are spanking new two-car trains running from a mall to the north of Waterloo to one to the south of Kitchener. I find it quite telling that the endpoints are shopping emporia. The train has been free of charge for the first 10 days of operation, giving the local citizens the opportunity to try it. In general I believe large infrastructure projects are critical for long term development, although it may not seem so at the time.

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Pollen and polling

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In my blog, posted at the end of March, I described the surgery I underwent in Durban. I also talked about going out a couple of times, with friends, to a really delightful little bakery/pizza restaurant in the neighbourhood. It does not even have a liquor licence; and this does tend to mean the evening is cheaper as one takes one’s own wine. Among those friends was Jurgen Brauninger and his family. I wrote in that blog:

‘On a personal level it is interesting to see my cohort, friends and colleagues ageing into their 60s, for the most part with grace and dignity. It is however a shock to us all – but, as I said to one friend, ‘it is better than the alternative’.’

Within two weeks of these dinners we learned, out of the blue, that Jurgen was not well. He was suffering from pancreatic and liver cancer, and was having difficulty in eating. After various consultations he was scheduled for urgent surgery to ease pressure on his duodenum. While this was not a cure, it was expected to improve the quality of his life. The surgery was carried out on 26 April (by the same surgeon who did my hernia); Jurgen did not recover and died on 6 May.

I want to pay tribute to a dear friend and colleague, a talented musician, but above all a devoted family man. I know Tania, Hannah and Brigitte will be torn apart by grief. Sitting in Canada I have felt very distant, but no less sad. I wish I had deep and meaningful forethoughts about this but I don’t, I just know I will miss him enormously. Andrew Marvell’s lines “But at my back I always hear, Time’s wingéd chariot hurrying near”, were not written about death; they do seem very apt though.

The Brauningers lived a few houses up the road from us in Manor Gardens. Their children were similar ages to Rowan and Douglas. We celebrated many milestones together; Brigitte did the most amazing Easter lunches for the university crowd and others. The families went away together for a number of short holidays in the province. Everyone enjoying each other’s company, even braaing under umbrellas during a heavy rainstorm. Their home was an original ‘wood and iron’ house, this is one of the first Durban houses and relatively few are left standing. Jurgen, I and Ullie, one of his friends, purchased the house next door when it came on the market, in order to preserve it and the jungle of a garden for a little bit longer. Jurgen and Brigitte had just moved a few kilometers to a more modern house and were planning their retirement when this devastating event occurred. This has been a deeply sad time.

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Autumn and Spring Showers

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The month of April began in the Cape and ended in Canada via Norwich. In the first week we ran the scientific writing course in Stellenbosch in the Cape. There were 19 participants from across Africa. Tim Quinlan did most of the teaching and the event was excellent. We are beginning to see results in submitted and published manuscripts from earlier years. I hope the project will be renewed, but if it is not then we have achieved a great deal. As my travel was from the southern to the northern hemisphere, I experienced autumn one day and spring the next. In England the daffodils have bloomed and are past their best. In Canada, or at least in this part, they have yet to blossom and it is still decidedly chilly.

Of course visiting Cape Town is also a chance to see family. My brother and sister-in-law were away but I caught up with my aunt, various cousins and a niece for Sunday lunch. I felt that I had not talked properly to niece Sarah, and she was good enough to join me for lunch on the Monday before I flew back to the UK. We walked across from the City Lodge to a new restaurant right next door. It was good to have a decent conversation and catch up with family news. Because the flight from Cape Town is so late (after 11 pm), I only watched one film: The Great Buster, a biopic of filmmaker and comedian Buster Keaton. He was one of the few stars who transitioned successfully from silent films to sound. It was not demanding so was good to watch in the small hours.

I had a relatively short spell in England. My sister came up from London for Easter and her birthday. We went to a show at the Norwich Playhouse, where Rowan works. It was an amateur production of A Sound of Music. It was outstanding. There were a few wrong notes, but not many at all. The set was imaginative and the acting most impressive. I think amateur productions can be excellent because people really throw their hearts into the show.

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Dark November brings the fog (Flanders and Swann ‘A Song of the Weather’)

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November was bifurcated for me: the first half in Waterloo and the second in Norwich. I was fortunate in that I left Canada before it became consistently and miserably cold. Unfortunately, while Norwich is warmer, it has been grey, dank and damp. In both locations, when the sun shines in winter it can be quite magical. An interesting fact: there is almost exactly an hour more sunshine in Waterloo than there is Norwich. The sun rises at about the same ‘local’ time; at present 07:15ish, but sets an hour later in Waterloo. We still have three weeks to go to the solstice! The travel to the UK was partly paid for by AIDSpan the Nairobi based NGO that produces the Global Fund Observer. I am on the board and we met in London. It was a great meeting since all is well with the organisation.

The UK is preoccupied by Brexit. During the time I have been here there has been constant, but not very helpful, discussion. Theresa May has managed to negotiate an exit agreement, which was agreed on the 25th November. She still has to get this through Parliament. Once (if) that happens, then the real negotiations start. We briefly thought the issue of Gibraltar would derail the process, but that crisis was averted. Currently fishing rights are being flagged as deal-breaking. The United Kingdom has an exceptionally long coast line and hence extensive territorial waters. Brexit is exceptionally depressing; we are giving away the future.

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