Tag Archives: Durban

New Beginnings

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The past month has been hectic but rather fun. I left Durban, as promised, on  19 December 2013. That was sad. The last days involved clearing out my office, deciding what needed to be shipped to Canada, stored in the flat, put in the suitcase, or given away. I know that to some extent, I keep my life in boxes. The University of KwaZulu-Natal box is now closed, and, hopefully, the important residual parts are in transit. There is a lot to reflect on, of course. How could there not be after 30 years?

I am extremely lucky to have had the opportunities I did, to connect with people, to build an organisation and support my team’s contribution to knowledge and science which, hopefully, makes a positive difference. I am proud of my own substantial publishing record.

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The Final Post of the Year and ‘last post’ from Durban

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This is the last posting to be written in my incarnation of Director of HEARD. It is a time of change, and the passing of Nelson Rolihlahla Mandela has really shaken the country and me. It is taking time for this to sink in, but I will try to write about it.

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Governance and Gales

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At the end of October I was involved in a series of Board meetings. The first was my final one as Executive Director of HEARD. This was held in our offices on 18 October. It was a bit unusual for us to hold it in Durban as we usually met in Johannesburg. This involved the least travelling for the Board members.

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Lakes and leaves

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Most of the postings on my website get started or finished on aircraft. This is no exception. It was started on the flight from Amsterdam to Johannesburg. Unfortunately I was sitting in economy (well to be honest, premium economy, right at the front, with enough room to do yoga poses should I want to). The reason it was a problem is that there is no power at these seats which meant I had a limited amount of computer time.

I left Durban towards the end of August and went to Norwich to be home for Rowan’s birthday. My proud boast, until last year, was that I had never been away on a child’s birthday, although the footnote is that sometimes I left or arrived on the day. I hope I am back on track now.

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Falling Leaves: November 2012

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Autumn has arrived in Norwich (and in Canada). I head for Durban soon with the dual goal of topping up on sunshine and getting a great deal of work done. There is a lot happening and, at the moment, life is exciting so read on for more details. The big occasion taking me back to Durban is the HEARD World AIDS Day function. On 14 November, in conjunction with the Africa Centre, CAPRISA the University of KwaZulu-Natal Press, we are holding an event at the KwaZulu-Natal Society of Arts Gallery www.kznsagallery.co.za . The theme is taken from UNAIDS, Getting to Zero: Zero New HIV Infections, Discrimination, and AIDS-Related Deaths. We have advertised it as an event ‘Showcasing KZN research on HIV and AIDS’.

HEARD’s highlight will be the South African premier of our documentary Manguzi: Raising Children in Rural South Africa. This film is set in an area close to the Mozambique border where we did a project. I have seen it a number of times, checking it from an accuracy and political point of view. It will be great to be just in the audience. The team who did the work deserve high praise for overcoming many logistical challenges, collecting some fascinating data, and now are writing it up.

This will be the occasion where I formally tell my research colleagues and friends in Durban that I will be leaving HEARD in 2013. (I feel I need to put in a footnote here that says: subject to the paperwork being completed). This should not come as a big surprise to most people as the news has been out for a while. It is however a chance for me to combine some of my favourite things: the Gallery; the research and academic communities; and many friends. The idea of doing such an event germinated at a book launch at Ike’s Books and Collectable – also a Durban institution – a few months ago. Authors who have books launched there put their signatures on the wall. My name is up alongside the likes of JM Coetzee and many others. The walls are probably worth more than the stock.

At the end of October Ailsa and I travelled to Canada for a week – hence the leaves in the title of the posting, and yes they were amazing. We flew to Toronto and were taken down to Waterloo in Ontario. We spent four nights there and then a further two nights in Toronto. The reason for the visit is that I have been offered, and have accepted, the International Governance and Innovation Chair in Global Health Policy by Wilfrid Laurier University (WLU). This will be housed in the Balsillie School of International Affairs, a partnership between WLU, the University of Waterloo (UW) and the Centre for International Governance Innovation (CIGI), a public policy think tank. I have put in the links to these organisations and they are all worth looking at. The CIGI campus is amazing, part is a brand new, state of the art building while the old Seagram’s distillery has been converted and incorporated as office space.

The School represents a large global initiative in social sciences with over 60 faculty members who teach in three programmes: the PhD in Global Governance, the Master’s in Global Governance and the Master’s in International Public Policy. There are three new staff members: Simon Dalby, CIGI Chair of Political Economy and Climate Change; James Orbinski, CIGI Chair in Global Health; and in due course, myself. We had a ‘Blue Skies’ thinking session which was a great fun – the staff have very interesting ideas and a range of experience. One of the exciting opportunities for me will be working in an interdisciplinary manner. I am also very much looking forward to teaching and interacting with students at various levels.

Quite a lot of the visit was spent exploring the area. The streets are wide and driving on the right hand side is challenging. What I found particularly difficult was the traffic lights being suspended over the streets instead of on poles at the side. I nearly ran a red light. On the other hand, the hire car was automatic and seemed very powerful. We went out to an amazing farmer’s market at St Jacobs north of Waterloo. The area was settled by German Mennonites and there were a number of stall holders dressed in traditional attire. Indeed Waterloo was originally called Berlin. The name was changed at the beginning of the First World War. I am not clear where the decision to call the town Waterloo came from but I am sure I will learn in the next few years (or I could go on Wikipedia now of course).

On the Thursday we began seeing news of Hurricane Sandy moving out of the Caribbean and towards the east coast of the United States. There was a real sense of foreboding and many warnings. We were scheduled to leave Toronto airport at 18.30 on Monday and feared that there might be a disruption of travel. Indeed there was, most flights to and from New York airports and other American east coast destinations were cancelled. The storm hit Toronto at about midnight on Monday so we were able to get away, although I note with hindsight there was comparatively little disruption in that part of Ontario.

What an interesting visit. I spent a couple of days with the colleagues I will be joining. We also had a discussion with the immigration lawyer who is handling the paperwork. He gave us a great deal of material, everything from taking a dog to getting a social insurance number, which is abbreviated as the SIN. Being asked ‘Have you got your SIN?’ left me quite flabbergasted. It all looks feasible. The plan is to begin with a fractional appointment once the paperwork is done and move to full time by the middle of 2013. I started at the University of Natal (UN) as a Research Fellow on 1 September 1983 so I will be just a few months shy of having spent 30 years at UN and now University of KwaZulu-Natal (UKZN). There is a great deal of planning going on to make sure the transition works for HEARD. All staff, Board, donors and Senior Management at UKZN are aware of my plans.

Because I travel a great deal, and almost always on KLM, I have the highest grade of frequent flyer card they give. I also have it for life (my life not theirs). This means when they work their way down the list for people to be upgraded when there is overbooking in economy class I am usually close to the top. On the plane from Toronto to Amsterdam, as we handed over our boarding cards mine beeped on the machine. I was told I had an upgrade. Ailsa was also given one: she was in the front row of the premium economy class, not quite the same, but she graciously allowed me to go in the business section. We had sat next to each other on their way to Toronto in the ‘real economy’ class at the back of the plane. The return flight is only six hours and so was not too bad; however one arrives in Amsterdam at the equivalent of 2am North American time, and gets into Norwich at the equivalent of 5am. I am not sure how I will cope with all the transatlantic flights in my new position.

My son Douglas gave us time to unpack and spend a night in Norwich before heading up to Yorkshire to visit his girlfriend. He was in charge whilst we were gone and took good care of the animals, fed himself and his sister who was here a part of the time, and generally behaved in a responsible manner. On Fridays he delivers a free local paper to about 150 households in the neighbourhood. If he is away someone else has to do this, Ailsa and I shared the task. I think I am one of the most academically qualified people delivering newspapers. I find it deeply interesting, a window into another world.

I also recognise I am pedantic and quite hard to live with. I had a good example of this characteristic the other evening. Because Rowan has moved out there is more space in the house but we have vast quantities of books. These belong to all members of the family however I think the majority are hers. The other evening I set out to count how many books we have. I went from room to room and book case to book case. The answer I came up with was 1724. This is by itself quite staggering. The next morning I met Rowan for lunch. As we were walking from the bookshop she works in to the restaurant, I told her what I had done and asked her to guess how many I had counted. Quick as a flash she said, ‘About 1700’. I wonder how she did it. However on Sunday I discovered two more bags and half a book case that had been excluded from the count. At this moment I think we have about 1850 books although that excludes the ones in my office.

Films
Rock of Ages: This is a recent (2012) American musical comedy adapted from a 2006 rock musical. The stars include country singer Julianne Hough and Diego Boneta, also in it are Russell Brand, Paul Giamatti, Catherine Zeta-Jones, Alec Baldwin and Tom Cruise. It can best be described as light and fluffy. The story is of a girl going to Hollywood to seek fame and fortune as a singer. She meets a boy, loses the boy, and re-finds him as well as having a chance to perform. I enjoyed seeing Russell Brand in this film; he did a really good job.

Seeking a Friend for the End of the World: The un-promising premise for this film is that an asteroid is hurtling, inexorably, towards the earth. Humankind will be wiped out. The film opens with the news coming over a car radio that attempts to deflect it have failed. At this point the wife gets out and walks away leaving her husband of some years. He then links up with his neighbour and romance blossoms, all with a clear timeframe. It is a good, touching and thought provoking film. How would I react to the news of the end of the world? I had seen the reviews for this and wanted to watch it simply to see how the story was developed. I might even have gone to a cinema but as it was on the aeroplane I watched it there and enjoyed it. What was striking was the conclusion that most people would be phlegmatic and just get on with it.

Dark Shadows: This is a 2012 American horror comedy film. It is a Tim Burton film starring Johnny Depp. The story is of a 200-year-old vampire who has been imprisoned in a coffin. When he is released, after murdering all the workmen who unearth him, he makes his way back to his mansion, inhabited by his rather odd descendants. It is fun fantasy and horror film – but aeroplane only!

Snow White and the Huntsmen: This is definitely a ‘watch on the aeroplane’ film. It is a new version of the Brothers Grimm German fairy tale Snow White. I watched it for the actors, in particular Charlize Theron and British actor Bob Hoskins for whom it was his last role before retiring. The special effects were quite outstanding. It was a British and American production.

Books:
Michael Lewis, Boomerang: Travels in the New Third World, WW Norton New York 2011. The first book I read by Michael Lewis was also his first book, Liar’s Poker. This told the story of the culture in the investment houses and hedge funds before the crash in the 1990s. In Boomerang he visits a number of locations to try understand why the world faces such a financial crisis today. Each chapter is a fascinating insight into mismanagement. The first, ‘Wall Street on the tundra’ looks at Iceland. The second ‘and they invented maths’ is about Greece. He then looks at Ireland in the chapter ‘Ireland’s original sin’, passes through Germany ‘the secret lives of the Germans’ before ending in the United States, this final chapter is called ‘too fat to fly’. My main insights is the idea that we have ‘lizard brains’ which are set to acquire as much as we can of scarce things, especially food, safety and sex. This is ultimately the main lesson – the need to find ways to self-regulate rather than sacrificing long-term planning for short-term rewards. While the book is a very good read, it tells only half of the story, people do plan and regulate. The best example I have is the new airport built in Durban ahead of the World Cup in 2010. This is designed to last the city until 2070. How do we combine that sort of planning with the type of society we need? I think a spiritual life is necessary.

Shulasmith Firestone, The Dialectic of Sex: the Case for the Feminist Revolution, The Woman’s Press London 1979. This is not, I will be the first to admit, my usual reading. The reason for getting it is that I marked a feminist PhD thesis that left me feeling the need for more information and insight. This classic book has provided me with some perception into where the student was coming from. I really love the fact that The Woman’s Press has as its logo an iron. This sense of humour and forgive the pun, irony, is so refreshing and reminds me of the exciting times in the 1970s. It is a classic book and while not hugely readable is certainly worth glancing at.

Birds and Country Songs October 2012

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It is spring in southern Africa. The swallows are back, sweeping around the buildings at the university and across the freeways. That last comment may seem a little strange but bridges across these roads provide good nesting sites for swallows. I well remember, over 30 years ago, driving across the Highveld on my way to Swaziland. Two swallows flew suicidally in front of the car. The sadness I felt on seeing, in the rear view mirror, their bodies tossing and turning behind me is something that still resonates. I really felt terrible. It may of course be Darwinian! The surviving swallows and their offspring do not take these risks and there were none darting across the road this trip.

I feel very fortunate as I recently had reason to drive up to Swaziland and then on to Johannesburg. The occasion was the visit of Kim Duncan and Marina Galanti of the Rush Foundation. Their goal is to fund disruptive ideas around HIV prevention. I first met them at a meeting in Washington in September 2011, and then worked with them on a symposium in London held in June of this year. They have many good ideas – see www.rushfoundation.org.  I suggested they visit HEARD and I would take them up to Swaziland and introduce them to the folk at The National Emergency Response Council on HIV and AIDS (NERCHA).

Kim and Marina arrived in Durban on Tuesday 2 October and spent the day at HEARD. In the evening we hosted a dinner with some of Durban’s key people in the HIV world. On Wednesday, I picked them up and we set off for Mbabane. The roads were clear, partially because of the Road Freight Association truck drivers’ strike which meant there were few heavy vehicles on the road.

It was a sunny and bright day and as a consequence we had a most enjoyable drive, although it did take rather longer than I had hoped. We stopped for coffee at Mtunzini, lunch in Mkuze at the Ghost Mountain Inn, and got to the Mountain Inn just before dark. We then had just a few minutes to change before going to Malkerns to Marandela’s Resturant  for dinner with colleagues from NERCHA. This is also the location of House on Fire, where every year there is a major festival.

On Thursday morning I dropped Kim and Marina off at the NERCHA offices and drove to Johannesburg to catch the flight back to Durban. It took me four hours to get from Mbabane to the airport and eight from Durban to Mbabane so it probably made more sense to go that route. As always it is a chance to reconnect with some very beautiful parts of both countries. The drive through Swaziland from the border to Mbabane is always a pleasure. The contrast between the flat Lowveld with the Lebombo Mountains on the right hand side; the rolling Middleveld; and then the jagged hills of the Highveld makes the journey interesting and scenic.

It was great to have interesting company for the first stage of the journey. On the second day I played CDs and for the first time really listened to a country music song called Letter to Heaven. What a desperately miserable song. The brief synopsis is: little girl asks her grandfather to write a letter to her dead mother; included in the letter are the lines: ‘Tell mommy I miss her since she went away
I coming to see her real soon I hope’; the girl goes out to the post box; gets knocked down and killed while crossing the road; the postman sees this happen and remarks on the puissance of her words; and the letter gets delivered! Oh dear it is terrible – almost as bad as the one about the two orphaned children who freeze to death on the porch of the church. It shows I do not listen properly to the lyrics.

I was delighted by the greenness of the countryside all the way from Durban to Johannesburg, an indication there have been good spring rains across the region. The area from Lavumisa to Big Bend in Swaziland seems to fall in a rain shadow area, but this year it is looking good. We passed one field where the farmer had harnessed his donkeys and was plowing the rich black earth. This is also the part of the journey where the Lilac Breasted Rollers perch on the telephone wires. They are stunning birds. Back in Durban the Pied Manikins, very attractive but tiny little birds, are furiously nest building outside my office window.

Spring is a great time of year. It does have two downsides as far as I am concerned. The first is mosquitoes. They are back. Folklore has it is they do not fly very high and in theory my flat on the third floor should be a mosquito-free area. Unfortunately it is not and there are currently four patches of mashed mosquito on the wall of my bedroom. Scarlet blood and black body parts. The second is that the birds begin the dawn chorus a little earlier every day. By 4.30 am they have cleared their throats and are singing. After many years of waking in the very early mornings I now have taken to using ear plugs. This means I can sleep for a little longer. I fear that not even industrial ear plugs would keep the noise of the Hadedas out. Raucous and very loud. They roost in the trees around the flat and if a noisy vehicle, or ambulance with its siren blaring goes past they wake up and announce to the world that their rest has been disturbed. No consideration from those birds.

Is it the problem or the advantage of being an academic that one’s work is never done? There is always something new and interesting to read. At the moment I am on a number of news lists and fortunately they summarize the main articles that they believe would be of interest but there is still far too much to read. And then, of course, one of our main functions in our job descriptions is to add to the corpus of knowledge. I will have marked two PhDs in the last month. One was on gender-based violence and its links to HIV; the second a history of the epidemic and response to it in South Africa from 1980 to 1995. This is a really good way of getting a literature review and current thinking but it is daunting to be presented with a 300+ page document.

South Africa is going through a difficult period, with a great deal of labour unrest. We were appalled by the recent police shooting of 34 miners in Marikane in the North West province. At issue here is more than money; it is about how our society will be structured. If all these pay rises are awarded then we will create a labour aristocracy. Those who are not in employment will be increasingly desperate and dispossessed. There will not be enough jobs to go round. However given the huge amounts of money being earned by some people and the perception that there is wide spread corruption, who can blame those with low salaries from wanting more? The tragedy of the commons is that there are finite resources. The solutions in my view are: tax the rich and don’t flaunt wealth. I wonder why the Reconstruction and Development tax imposed in 1994 was not kept. It was not much and I did not know people who resented paying it. There is an excellent commentary by the Jonathan Jansen looking at what is going on here. Please do read it – far more insightful than I can ever be.

Finally, I have been running at the weekends. The first run was 6.1 kilometers – and yes the way I do it is to run round the neighbourhood, then get in my car and measure the distance. My goal is eight kilometers – five miles. So the last run was longer and I was sure I had cracked it. No! The drive round afterwards showed I had covered just 7.2 kilometers, and at a very slow pace. My excuse for the speed is that I do like running up and down the hills in Glenwood and some are exceptionally steep. Perhaps the key is to simply keep going at this. With less weight (the goal and reason for running in the first place) and stronger legs I will make the target and manage something faster than the current snail’s pace of only nine kilometers per hour.

July: America, Americans and wonderful Durban winter

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July: America, Americans and wonderful Durban winter

I flew from the United Kingdom to Durban on Monday, 11 June. It was the long daylight flight from Amsterdam so as well as working I saw the film  Warhorse. After an overnight stay at the Intercontinental Hotel in Johannesburg and I flew to Durban on Tuesday. I went straight to the office and got a lift home at the end of the day. The next morning was an early start, I went back to Johannesburg, met up with colleagues from the British Department for International Development’s (DFID) office in Pretoria. We drove down to Swaziland where we spend 24 hours in meetings talking about a possible regional HIV and AIDS program. This included a dinner with members of Swazi civil society.

I had less than a week in Durban and then headed for Florence for a UNICEF meeting. On the Wednesday I flew out on the Air France A380, the biggest plane in the world (and it is quite fantastic), to Paris and changed for the flight to Italy. I was rather exhausted when I got in and so slept for part of the day before going out and wandering around the city. The weather was perfect, and it is without doubt one of the most spectacular cities I know. The two day meeting on child well-being was deeply interesting. We finished at about three o’clock on Saturday and I headed for the airport to get back to Paris, Johannesburg and Durban. The EUFA cup game between France and Italy was being broadcast in the lounge. I was the only one who cheered when Italy scored – and they won. I had one night in Durban and then flew to Cape Town to visit the Children’s Institute.

In Cape Town I managed to both deliver a birthday present to my niece in Hout Bay and meet up with my uncle, aunt, cousins and second cousins for dinner. Uncle Fred was one of those people who was an absolute role model for me. He and June live in a retirement home in Pinelands just outside Cape Town. They originally bought two units expecting to be allocated ones adjacent to each other so they could create a decent living space. The elderly lady who owned the one changed her mind about moving. They spent at least a year living in two separate apartments on two floors. When the lady died they were finally able to consolidate. I knew the whole story and happened to be visiting on the day that they got the news of the woman’s death. I am afraid that my reaction was:

“Oh good now you can settle in properly”, which is exactly what they have done.

The University of Cape Town put me up in a nearby guest house. After checking in and having a shower I went back to the reception and took a manager to my room to point out all the things that were wrong with it. These ranged from the steps into the room without a guard railing, actually quite dangerous; through to blankets on the bed – good establishments have duvets which can be washed between every guest, that doesn’t happen with blankets; a faulty shower and a number of other minor issues that were annoying. It was a rather twee establishment and they had a blackboard in the reception area with a quote on it, something like “happiness is a state of mind” and as I walked past it with the manager I pointed out that happiness only has only one ‘p’. Afterwards I thought ‘and so does pedantic’.

I then had less than two weeks in Durban before heading back to the United Kingdom and on to Washington for the international AIDS conference. It was very busy. The buzz in the office, as people prepare for the conference: writing papers, making posters, planning the stand, sending material  and generally getting ready, is exciting and rewarding. HEARD will have a significant contingent and it will be great to see how they do. Probably the best part of my job is seeing people grow and develop.

I was invited to the United States Consulate General’s home, along with several hundred other people to mark the 4th July. He, sensibly, arranged parking at a primary school down the hill and had a shuttle bus taking people to the house. There was a significant police presence as the guests included the provincial premier, various members of his cabinet, the American ambassador, King Zwelithini and other dignitaries. I decided to walk back to my car. Two Metro Police driving past saw me strolling down the hill. They knew where I had been, and asked if I wanted a lift. I have not yet been in the back of a police car and did not feel this was an appropriate time to start so thanked them very much and walked on. I slightly regret this now.

I was planning to return to Norwich on Tuesday. Our university decided to migrate our e-mail system to Microsoft outlook over the weekend. On Monday and Tuesday there were to be teams going around our campus ensuring that the changeover went smoothly. It did not! My PA spent most of Monday at the walk-in center with my laptop trying to get it set up to work on the new system. On Tuesday I went down with her and we kidnapped one of the technical people and brought him back up to the offices to try and sort things out. It took nearly all day. The level of stress was considerable and I correctly made a call that it would be better to delay travel by a day and ensure that I had all the technology that I would need for the next month. It does seem to be working now.

Coming through Amsterdam I had a really pleasant surprise. I used the business class lounge shower, and emerged wearing nice fresh clothes and feeling clean to bump into Father Michael Kelly, a Jesuit priest from Lusaka. He was a really critical part of our AIDS and education work 12 years ago. Apart from being a fantastically nice and thoughtful person he is an individual who I admire and who has mentored me over the years. He is now 83 so these encounters are extremely valuable and need to be savored. We had about 45 minutes to talk before he went off to catch his plane. He is one of the unsung heroes of the fight against AIDS, a most compassionate sensible man.

 The next posting will be after the Washington conference. There will be a great deal of activity on the HEARD website though – www.heard.org.za so you can follow events there.

 Films and books

Warhorse. The story of a horse Joey, requisitioned at the beginning of the First World War from a farm in Devon. The son of the farm, Albert, joins up. Towards the end of the war Joey, after being captured and ‘serving’ the German forces, gets caught up in the wire in no-man’s land. He is released by a German and British soldier in moment of armistice. He is to be put down but is reunited with Albert. The children’s book is by Michael Morpurgo was first published in 1982. The film was directed by Steven Spielberg. It is a moving story and is beautifully made. It is also complex and sometimes there seemed too many subplots for me to entirely follow. The message is war is hell!

A Thousand Words.  This was billed as a comedy drama starring Eddy Murphy. It is a simple tale of an literary agent who is cursed by words. It was badly reviewed, and deservedly so. However on the 23.20 flight from Johannesburg it was watchable and I saw the last 30 minutes over breakfast so did not feel it was wasted time. There are other films on the KLM flights I am looking forward to seeing.

Random Violence by Jassy MacKenzie, Umuzi, Houghton, 2008 238 pages. This is a novel set in and around Johannesburg that has been on my selves for some time. I found it, initially, very difficult to get into. However I persisted and was pleased I did. I hope that she writes more. She has the potential to develop into another good South African crime writer. The end is a bit too much ‘and with one bound he was free’ but in general it was believable, well observed and well plotted. It is set in the period leading up to the World Cup and MacKenzie catches the nation’s mood very well. The heroine is a private detective named Jade de Jong, the daughter of murdered white senior policeman, who returns to SA after 10 years away and gets caught up in a complex plot involving property development and crime.

Relativity

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Relativity

I think Durban is one of the nicest cities in the world. I have lived there for nearly 30 years. Ailsa and I bought our first house there and it is the place the children were born. The university has been, for me, a good work environment. At the beginning of my career I was well mentored and then given space and support to start my own unit. HEARD is going well with an amazingly good research output, high staff morale, adequate funding and a throughput of talented young researchers. All this is in our annual report, which will be on the website very soon.

In the middle of April I was in Nairobi, Kenya for a meeting on Efficiency, Effectiveness and Sustainability which the International AIDS Society organised. I am an elected Governing Council member and the Treasurer up to the International AIDS Conference in Washington in July (see www.iasociety.org.) It was a quick trip, flying up on Wednesday evening and returning to Durban on Saturday – I flew on the late flight from Nairobi to Johannesburg on Friday evening, slept at the City Lodge at OR Tambo airport and caught a flight down to Durban at a sensible time.  I used air miles to upgrade the ticket so it was relatively painless. I had a colleague travelling at the same time as me so we chatted and went to the airport together. He will remain nameless given the story I am about to tell.

A while ago I noticed that my Yellow Fever vaccination was about to expire and so went and was re-immunised. Just as well, my companion had forgotten the card. The check-in staff would not let him on the plane without one, and they were quite adamant about this. He had to go across the airport to the clinic and get the shot, paying above the odds for it. Of course it takes time to become effective but this is generally overlooked. Indeed we were not even asked for the certificates! However the South African authorities can be very fierce about this!

I had two nights in Durban and on Monday the HEARD team flew to Johannesburg for the biannual donor and board meetings held at the aforementioned City Lodge. These went very well, with an excellent turnout for both, only one board member was not able to make it. From there I flew, in economy class, to Cape Town, a long two hour flight on a packed plane. This was for a Council on Health Research for Development meeting on the theme of Beyond Aid… Research and Innovation as key drivers for Health, Equity and Development, all the details are the websites at www.forum2012.org and www.cohred.org. This was most interesting.

There is no doubt Cape Town is stunning. I think it is the most beautiful city in the world. Driving in from the airport at about 6 pm the evening light was an amazing rosy shade. Coming round the side of the mountain on de Waal drive and seeing the centre of the city, the harbour with the huge gantries like a row of storks silhouetted against the south Atlantic, and in the distance, Robben Island, was breathtaking. I feel I have a champagne lifestyle on a soda water salary. I get to travel, stay in great hotels, see new and interesting places and meet all sorts of people.

The conference started on the Tuesday, so unfortunately I missed the first day. I was staying at one of my favourite hotels, The Cullinan, they describe themselves as ‘stylishly grand and perfectly majestic’ and I think this is fair. It is just a few minutes’ walk from the international convention centre. The relative merits of Durban and Cape Town are very different. I must admit to being tempted by Cape Town, as one of my friends said it has “the mountain factor”. This must have been the magnet that has drawn my extended family there. Friday was a public holiday, Freedom Day, marking the end of apartheid and the new democratic government. I spent most of it visiting family.

My brother Derek Whiteside was away on business and so I took Lynn, my sister-in-law and my three nieces Emily, Sarah and Katie out for lunch in Hout Bay – to a restaurant called Dunes. It is a stunning setting looking out over the bay with a band of ultra blue water just beyond the breaking waves. In the last while the euphonious dunes have blown away and now the view is straight on to the beach. We were at the restaurant joined by distant cousin Neil Hodgson and his daughter Lisa. He is a captain with South African Airways. As I am silly about aircraft and flying it is always great to talk to him and I (a minority perhaps) find discussing airline routes and types of planes to be deeply interesting. From there I went to visit my Uncle Fred and Aunt June (also Hodgsons) who live in a retirement home in Pinelands. This is on the way to the airport which makes dropping on them very easy. We were joined by my cousin Linda and her daughter Hayley (who has nearly completed her PhD at the University of Cape Town) and her sister, my cousin Sandra who was visiting from Uitenhage. The most family I have seen in a very long time.

Perhaps this posting is not just about relativity but also about reflection. Fred was very senior in de Beers Diamond Company and I have always looked up to him as a role model. Nearly 20 years ago he had a hip replacement operation that went wrong. As a result now finds it difficult to get around. He has a mobility scooter for inside the flat and a more robust one for going out. I still see him as a role model because of his attitude and stoicism.

They moved into the home two years ago expecting to get a large apartment. That arrangement fell through and they ended up with two apartments on different floors. They lived a schizoid life until the space next to theirs became available. Now they have been able to consolidate and expand at the same time, and actually have a very nice warm set of rooms.

Part of the conference ‘package’ was an evening out at Groot Constania, the original wine estate in South Africa, the vines being planted by the first governor of the Dutch settlement of Cape Simon van der Stel. We were taken there by bus, the scenic winding route round the coast, which left me feeling quite ill! However I soon recovered. The food and wine were fantastic and the entertainment was provided by South African diva Yvonne Chaka Chaka. This is what I mean by a champagne lifestyle. Of course one of the questions is who pays, because at the end of the day someone has to. We were told that it was the World Bank, and yet they were hardly represented which was a great pity. Fortunately, after the copious quantities of alcohol and excellent food, we went back on the short straight route.

I learnt, at the meeting, that health is underfunded, but more worryingly the health people do not understand how to advocate for more funding. They think that the fact that their cause is noble, it’s sufficient and this, sadly, is not the case! We know from our work that ‘crowding-out’ is a real issue. If foreign money is given to health then governments will tend to reallocate domestic resources. This is good, basic and responsible public administration. It is not what donors intend! I shall have to reflect on the meeting and write up some notes, since I was there in an official capacity as a person from the Department for International Development, although I would not presume to speak for the organisation. What was interesting was to meet people from a different circle from the one I normally operate in.

Reviews

Music

There has been a lot of music in Durban recently. I went to the University Jazz Centre to listen to a folky duo from Cape Town Andrew James and the Steady Tiger, I was so impressed that I went to hear them again at St Clements, a cafe on Musgrave Road. Their style is great; both are excellent guitarists with mellow voices. I thought they spent far too much time tuning the instruments though and exchanged emails with them about this. Some of their music is on their website. On the Friday evening The Collective, a new venue in Durban, hosted The South Jersey Pom-Poms, which is lead by a colleague from the University.

Books

The suburb of Manor Gardens, which was beautifully and evocatively written about by Barbara Trapido in her book Frankie and Stankie (Bloomsbury 2003), is where we bought our second house. It was let to chaotic tenants for about four years and they left a month ago. When I first went to look at it my heart absolutely sank. There has been work going on and I went to check on progress on Saturday and then went to lunch at a new cafe in the neighbourhood. Exhibit owned by Eunice van der Vloet is a house with an art gallery, table chairs and a limited menu. It is an encouraging addition to the neighbourhood and I hope it prospers. Sadly the estate agents tell me Manor Gardens is a leafy green quirky suburb, and that is not what people want.

I have finally finished reading Catherine Hakim’s Honey Money: The Power of Erotic Capital, (Allen Lane 2011, 384 pages). I found it a thought provoking book. The two key points were: What is erotic capital and the idea of a male sexual deficit. It makes a number of rather challenging statements, but will certainly be of use in understanding behaviours and responding to AIDS.

Deaths and Departures April 2012

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Easter is always a time of reflection: spring in England and autumn in Durban. I have reason to take stock. I arrived back in Durban on the 2nd of April. On the 3rd, I went to the funeral of Cosmas Desmond, an anti-apartheid activist, member of the Durban community, and father to one of HEARD’s first and highly appreciated members of staff – Chris Desmond. There is a touching obituary in the UK Telegraph at http://tgr.ph/IfXyZP . The service was held in the chapel at Nazareth House, a home for the elderly, just up the road from my flat. The service was Catholic and very formal. I hope, at some point, there will be a more intimate celebration of this remarkable man’s life.

The previous weekend was also contemplative as, five years after she died, we scattered my mother’s ashes. Brother Derek and sister Gill came to Norwich, from Cape Town and London respectively. On a sunny Saturday we drove, with Ailsa, to Weybourne, with a beautiful, tiered pebbled beach on the North Norfolk coast. It is not far from Sheringham where mum live happily for some years, and it seemed ideal for our final goodbye.

The occasion was not without stress because each sibling had to be consulted as fully and tactfully as possible. (And I am not tactful). Therefore, when I phoned the undertakers to ask they had the ashes ready for me to pick up I was dismayed to hear the receptionist say: “Do you want a scattertube?”
I was flummoxed, “A what?”
She explained it was a cardboard tube that allows the ‘scatterer’ to have some control over the process, rather than just dumping the ashes out of the urn/paper bag/or in South Africa a Ziploc plastic bag.
The she pointed me to the web and said, “Just type in scattertubes.”
The economist in me lead to the next question, “what do they cost?”
‘Our’ undertakers do not charge for them but you have to choose the design: ‘seaside sunset’, ‘forest glade’, ‘mountain view’ and so on.

I really did not want to have to make choices but after due thought I picked ; and my mother’s ashes were poured into the North Sea by a brave Gill, who stepped into the water to do this. The next question was what to do with the tube – we filled it with pebbles and seawater and threw it out into the sea where it will degrade overtime. I hope the tide was out when we did that, I never thought of that.

Prior to this Ailsa and I had some rare time away. We left Norwich on the evening of Sunday 11th March after supper, flying directly to Edinburgh using Flybe. We hired a car and spent the night at a Premier Inn near the airport. It was not too hard to find as Premier Inns have purple signage. They are basic but good and cheap hotels. On Monday we got on the motorway and drove north going across the Forth Road Bridge. It was great to see the famous railway bridge with its iconic tracing of girders next to us. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forth_Bridge Looking it up, I discovered that the famed “never-ending task” of painting the Forth Bridge, (“as soon as it is painted, the crew has to start again”) is in fact erroneous. Thank you Wikipedia!

We drove straight north past Perth and then through the upland area past Pitlochry to Inverness along very good roads, with the Cairngorms in the distance (some snow still visible but it was warm in the valley!). Ailsa remembers a small, windy road in the mid sixties, with the drama of the exceptionally steep, Devil’s elbow. We stopped on the way for an excellent cup of coffee at a modern glass and wood comfort stop just off the road in the middle of nowhere, a former tourist office. It was pretty, offered internet connection, good food and information.

Across from our vantage point on the next bridge, at Kessock, Inverness, did not look prepossessing: no more than a sprawling urban site on the coast although Ailsa remembers it as a mecca, which offered rare treats like dried bananas, oranges and Allinsons’ bread. We had no need to go in so don’t know what delights it has to offer now. For Ailsa, it meant the fun of putting the car on to the rather elderly Eilean Dubh ferry which must have gone constantly to and fro between the Moray and Beauley Firths, with the added frissson of making it back before the last sailing on the way home
We followed a small road through the tamed, peaceful countryside of the Black Isle and drove up to Fortrose through the pretty fishing village, Avoch.

We spent the middle of the day there looking at places Ailsa had known as a child. This included the beach on which the family camped an entire summer when they first moved there – it is now a caravan park. They later moved to a croft high up above Rosemarkie on the way to Cromarty. The esteemed Fortrose Academy is now a monstrosity of a building but the older stonework school is still there. It must be catering for students from across the whole of the Black Isle. New, glass fronted homes are being constructed to look over the shining Moray Firth. Retirement anyone?

We had lunch at a cafe named after the ferry which I thought must mean Black Isle in Gaelic. We then drove to Aberdeen going through, Nairn, Elgin and Inverurie. Inverurie, Ailsa found later was the area her paternal grandfather came from. It was a long day in the car, but worth it.

Aberdeen is called the Granite city and indeed it is a grey place, hilly, robust and provident. We found the hotel we were staying at: the Atholl Hotel, a small but friendly place and ate dinner in the bar there. On Tuesday morning Ailsa walked with me as I was giving a presentation at the University of Aberdeen in the Health Economics Research Unit. I met up with my host Mandy Ryan, had coffee, gave the seminar to a packed room, and was then taken for lunch. After this I took a taxi into town to meet Ailsa who had walked into town.

Ailsa had spent the day tracking down churches that her grandfather, Cannon Vane Walker, had been involved in and showed me two. Her grandfather was an Episcopalian minister who served in a number of locations in the north east of Scotland. One neglected little church, St Clement’s on the Quay, was surrounded by warehouses and located beside the docks within spitting distance of huge boats. It is now derelict, but the quaint building is still a haven with spreading trees, and a graveyard full of tragic stories and heroic individuals who depended on the sea for a livelihood. One grave stone particularly caught my eye.
“Erected by Thomas and Barbara Sinclair
in memory of their son James
who died 30th August 1873
aged 32 years
also their eldest son Thomas
who died of a fever
Also William and John who died in infancy And one of a day old”
They buried five children did not name or give the gender of the child who with in a day of the birth!
An inspiring place for Ailsa’s father to grow up; the Manse was hard by the church. Her mother has exercise books of stories of sea adventures and drawings of ships completed by him when a youngster which were found only recently, left at her parent’s family home when they went abroad. Too bad he is dead and never saw them again! They lie, untouched in Ailsa’s stepfather’s home.

Meanwhile, I was suffering badly from foot pain and was quite heroic, tramping onwards to visit the even quainter St Margaret’s church, high on its own hill in the midst of the city with a view far out to sea. I was grateful that one of the things we did was to buy supportive inserts for my shoes which have gradually made a huge difference – highly recommended for severe foot pain: although five minutes of exercise twice a day would be even better, but I find it really hard to make this commitment!

This grand dad seemed to have shifted about with churches in Cuminstown, Cupar in East Fife, and St Andrews. Not to mention St Ninian’s Cathedral, Perth.

Wednesday was a free day and we drove from Aberdeen to Edinburgh. Before we did this however we went to the Gordon Highlanders Museum. They were a famous Scottish regiment and were the first British troops to be deployed to Swaziland in 1963. I well remember as a six or seven year old walking along the road near our house and coming across two of the soldiers strolling past wearing uniform, which included of course kilts. We spoke to them but did not understand a word they said in reply. It made a huge impression on me and I was glad to have had the opportunity to visit the museum. It is also clearly a social hub for people who served in, or were linked with the regiment and there were many who wanted to help us. This I find a little embarrassing and so having been there, was quite happy to leave. We drove through the old town in Aberdeen, feeling that the place would merit a longer visit at some point.

Aberdeen is the third biggest city in Scotland and our limited impression is of a sprawling city. We drove along the coastal road looking for a place to have coffee and going through what must have been fishing villages, Stonehaven and Johnshaven until we got to Montrose where we stopped for lunch with a flurry of teenage school children in what appeared to be a medieval prison. In the summer or snow the drive must be really beautiful, but at the tail end of winter it was just a shadow of what it could be. We went through Dundee to St Andrews and walked around that university town. Again a place where Ailsa’s grandfather spent time. It is primarily a university town with the other major activity being golf. We had tea in a Christian centre attached to lovely Episcopalian a church and explored further but it was getting really chilly and there are only so many churches one can do in a day.

Then it was on through Edinburgh to find a place to stay near Queen Margaret University. Ailsa navigated and we were able to find a Premier Inn right next to the campus, again, purple lights were a stroke of genius. The next morning we went to the University, which is a new, self-contained campus in a green field site. We were met by our hosts and shown their working space. Quite bizarrely they have open plan offices for academics. This is completely contrary to anything I have seen before. I gave a seminar there on ‘the sustainability of the AIDS response’ to an interesting and interested audience.

We drove into Edinburgh to find our hotel which is part of the College of Surgeons building and is now a fantastic modern hotel ‘10 Hill Street’ in case anyone is looking for a good hotel which even had (limited) parking. As it was about five o’clock we walked down to Princes Street and the Royal mile and ambled around the city stopping for a bit of a disappointing pizza place.

On Friday, my commitment was to give a talk at Edinburgh University in the afternoon. This, as in Aberdeen, was on the ‘safe sex/no sex hypothesis’. There was a small audience, but to be honest at 15.00 on a Friday I was surprised there was anyone there at all. We had walked up to Edinburgh Castle on the morning and the overarching impression is of a city geared to tourism. In the evening we had dinner with colleagues from Queen Margaret University, Edinburgh University, and the Department for International Development.

The only Flybe flight to Norwich on a Saturday leaves at 06.55 it meant we have had to be up and out of the hotel by 05.00 to find our way to the airport and drop off the car. We managed to accomplish this task well. The plane took off on time and we were home by nine where we were met by Doug with the dog.

It was a great trip, enjoyed by both of us. Combining a certain amount of work with pleasure was absolutely the right way to go and I really enjoyed it. While I think learning to use a GPS would be a good move, Ailsa managed to navigate through the cities and countryside with considerable skill and patience. Scotland is on my list of places to go back to soon.

Prime Circle: Easter 2011

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This posting could be entitled ‘Pregnancy, Prime Circle, and Team Building’ as these are the three dominant themes of the past couple of weeks. Most of the Easter weekend has been spent working. I have finally emerged from a mass of administration and planning to resume writing my Swaziland book. ‘A Political Economy of Swaziland’ is what I have optimistically titled it. I am over half way through now and do need to get it to the publishers since it is at least 18 months late. But I have really enjoyed working on it. Swaziland is such an interesting and usual little country, and at the moment, there is a degree of political change which is exciting.

I went to Swaziland for a few days at the beginning of April. Apart from doing some additional book research this was to attend the first Waterford Governing Council (GC) meeting of the year. I have been on the GC since 1994 so have some institutional memory! In 2008, for the first time, since I joined, the GC was faced with having to make a decision around pregnancy. One of the female students, from a poor area, had fallen pregnant. We decided, probably wrongly, that the main concern was the baby. I say wrongly because as Governors our prime concern should always be the well-being of the school. We took a decision that the girl should be sent down for a year, but could return at the end of this. She did and is now a scholarship student at an internationally known university. Having set policy, the Headmaster then took the same decision in 2010 when he was faced with a second pregnancy. The same outcome was reported, the student is back at school and doing well.

At this GC we had a variation on the theme. A pregnant female student, but the father acknowledging his paternity, is also at the school. A policy decision had to be taken. What was most interesting for me is that while we can make a broad policy, we cannot cover every eventuality. What if the girl says she was made pregnant by a male student, but he refuses to acknowledge this? Given that he would face sanction this probably makes sense for him. Do we carry out a paternity test? What do we do if the girl says she was raped? It is clear that while there are in many instances there have to be rules, flexibility is necessary. Of course in other cases there should be no leniency, for example the school has a zero tolerance rule when it comes to drugs.

Back in Durban I have been very busy with work but found time to go to two gallery openings, one at theKwaZulu Natal Art Society Gallery. The main exhibitor was a botanical artist which I do not find terribly exciting. The second at Durban ArtSpace is a very unusual gallery in an industrial area of town next to the railway line.This was entitled wo.man and was way over my head. Most interesting though, I did not know a single person there although I did recognize one, he had been at the KZNA opening. Perhaps this is a little sad!

Cultural activities continued when I went to listen to ‘Prime Circle’ a South African band who described themselves as South Africa’s leading rock band http://www.primecircle.co.za This was at the Gateway shopping Center about 35 km from my flat. I find I drive slowly along the motorway, trying to treat the car with love and respect. It is after all nearly 20 years old now, bought new and registered in 1992. However as it has only done 130,000 km I think it is good for a few more years yet.

We have been looking at ways of building the HEARD staff into a more cohesive unit. Much as I hate the term, ‘team building’ is a good idea. So last Thursday we headed off for a team building experience. The decision was taken to go to cooking school for a half day. Fusion is not very far from our campus in Westville see and they have a great restaurant in Durban We were divided into three teams, and set to the task of cooking Thai style chicken breasts stuffed with various herbs and spices. For the vegetarians stuffed mushrooms were the option.

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Each cooking station was allocated a student, described as a ‘cooking fairy’ to assist us. It was quite an experience. The key learning for me was that you need equipment and enthusiasm. The desert was banana pancakes skewers lightly brushed with a reduction of sugar and flavorings, including vanilla, and rolled in grated chocolate. A good time was had by all, and certainly I feel less intimidated by the thought of cooking now. To be fair the bulk of the work was done by one or two people on the team.

I am amused to look at my browser and see that I have two websites open one for Fusion and one a classic article by Sidney Kark on the ‘Social Pathology of Syphilis’ published in 1949. It identifies migration as one of the major drivers of sexually transmitted diseases in southern Africa.

This week I have twice been reminded of how nice it is to be fit and young, although it is possible to be young and not fit. I played squash with Jeremy Grest and his son Adam, who is in his early 20’s. Adam gets round the court without stopping, it was only guile that allowed me to win points and he beat me! On Sunday evening I went for a long run (in time rather than distance). Two of the children from the flats were playing by the gate.

“Are you going for a run”, asked one.
“Yes”, I replied.
“My brother has just gone”, he said. This brother being a lean lad of about 14.
“I’ll try to catch up with him”, I responded as I started my standard slow plod.
“He was running much faster than that”, said the boy disdainfully.

I ran up past St Augustine’s hospital to Ridge Road, and then down the bottom of the Pigeon Valley nature reserve. The monkey troop that live there were raiding across the street and looked at me with disbelief. From there to the Howard college campus, then back along what was Manning, and is now Lena Ahren’s, Road. It was the magical hour when the sun has a particular evening tint, and Durban was stunning. Interesting up the hill, security gets tighter, and the dogs bigger, more numerous and louder.

Films

Men who stare at Goats, we bought a DVD of this film a while ago. It was seriously damaged and so unwatchable, but this only became apparent about 40 minutes into it. I hired the DVD the other night and so have finally seen it. I really enjoyed it. It is just about credible that people could behave in this bizarre way in the interests of … what? It is the story of reporter in Iraq who meets Lyn Cassaday who claims he was part of the New Earth Army who employ paranormal powers. George Clooney stars and there is no love interest!