Tag Archives: South Africa

Desperate In Durban

Posted on by

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.

Being a Distinguished Visiting Fellow And Freezing In Ottawa

Posted on by

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.

Terrified in the Treetops

Posted on by

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

Posted on by

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.