Ivory Coast’s one and only military helicopter has just crashed. It was the only survivor when the French air force destroyed the rest in retaliation for the government forces ‘accidentally’ killing 9 French soldiers.

At Abidjan airport, along with the presidential plane that still has a big red plastic tarpaulin taped over the gaping rocket hole in its side, we see the helicopter wrecks regularly as we march out (‘single file only!’) to the UN flights we use to go to the west. If ever there was a memento mori it is this.

barrysbook.blogspot.com .. ebrealitycheck.blogspot.com
barrysesnan.site.voila.fr

Varia and trivia

Listening to BBC interesting half hour about 'leadership' between a motivational speaker, a management trainer and a military man from Sandhurst. Fascinating interplay.  The Sandhurst man sounds the most sensible.

Chairman seems to think leadership includes training people to take over from you.  Sounds self-defeating to me. I did that and that's why I am no longer at Makerere.

==

Americans have discovered 'hearts and minds'!   yet I first heard that expression in the Vietnam era.   Maybe then it meant 'hearts and minds blown all over the place and napalmed'.

The 'Manchurian candidate' becomes more and more relevant to the American election. Brainwashed in Muslim Indonesia or in a Vietnam jail under torture?  Hilary only has 'living with Bill' to offer.

==

Current irritation is inability to change pounds sterling in Abidjan (except at a loss with a Lebanese).  I think this is how the descent in chaos starts - the law clearly says that the banks must accept certain currencies, but they simply say they don't want pounds, so they won't take them.

==

Did you catch Koffi A getting annoyed about everyone else flying in with solutions for Kenya? He has taken a big risk I think, but he seems to have asked the US and others to put sanctions on individuals and that seems to have caught the attention of some of the worst malefactors.

How to get a plane out of the mud

Pull on the propeller or the wheel <<...>> struts, but never anywhere else!

Just in case you ever have this problem.

Barry Sesnan  (with a well-known love of flying).

barrysbook.blogspot.com  ..     ebrealitycheck.blogspot.com
barrysesnan.site.voila.fr

Positive people on ARVs not sexually infectious say experts

JOHANNESBURG, 1 February (IRIN) - Swiss HIV experts have said that HIV-positive individuals who follow their antiretroviral (ARV) treatment consistently and who do not have any sexually transmitted infections (STIs), cannot infect their sexual partners.

Four of Switzerland's leading HIV experts made the controversial statement in this week's Bulletin of Swiss Medicine on behalf of the Swiss Federal Commission for HIV/AIDS after reviewing studies on the rates of transmission among sero-discordant couples, in which one partner is HIV positive and the other is negative.

The experts acknowledged that they could not completely rule out the possibility of transmission while the HIV-positive partner was on ARV treatment, but described the risk as "negligibly small", as long as the viral load (quantity of HI virus in the system) had remained undetectable for at least six months and neither partner had any STIs.

They emphasised that missing even a few days of ARV drugs or contracting an STI could rapidly increase viral load, causing the person to become sexually infectious.

The authors cited a Spanish study of 393 heterosexual sero-discordant couples recruited over a 12-year period, in which not a single case of HIV transmission occurred in couples where the HIV-positive partner was taking ARV therapy. This was compared to an 8.6 percent infection rate among the partners of HIV-positive individuals not on treatment.

Comparing their assertion to statements made during the 1980s that HIV could not be transmitted through kissing, the authors noted that while such statements had not been proven, "after 20 years' experience its accuracy appears highly plausible."

In countries with laws that can be used to criminalise HIV transmission, including Switzerland, the statement recommends that courts take into account whether or not the HIV-positive person is on ARV treatment and has an STI. The statement also has major implications for HIV prevention and HIV-positive people in sero-discordant relationships.

Luckyboy Mkhondwane, an HIV-positive activist in the South African AIDS lobby group, Treatment Action Campaign (TAC), told IRIN/PlusNews that despite being on ARV treatment and having a very low viral load, he would not take the risk of having unprotected sex with his HIV-negative partner. "I don't think I would be able to live with the guilt if I infected someone," he said.

Johanna Ncala, also with the TAC, believed the biggest impact of the statement could be on the reproductive rights of HIV-positive people. "People now are living their lives and they want to have babies," said Ncala, who had a HIV-negative child two years ago, even though she and the father are both HIV-infected.

"But it's scary for people, so we need to find a way how we're going to communicate these things, much as we have a problem how to communicate the male circumcision issue," she said.

Many health experts have expressed concern that recent findings on the HIV protective benefits of male circumcision could lead circumcised men to overestimate the degree to which they are protected and dispense with safer sex practices, a tendency known as the 'disinhibition effect'.

A similar disinhibition effect associated with ARV treatment has already been observed among HIV-positive men who have sex with men in the developed world. While death rates among this group have decreased since ARVs became available in the mid-1990s, the incidence of STIs has increased, suggesting that the men are engaging in riskier sexual behaviours.

"It's a brave statement, and they make a strong case," commented Dr Francois Venter, president of the Southern African HIV Clinicians Society, which represents 12,500 members working in the HIV/AIDS field. "The worry is that hard-fought prevention messaging may be undermined. We'll have to counsel patients very carefully."

In its statement, the Swiss Federal Commission for HIV/AIDS recommended no change in the country's current prevention strategies, except with regard to HIV-positive people in stable relationships.

"People who are not in a stable relationship must protect themselves," the statement read, "as they would not be able to verify whether their partner is positive or on efficient antiretroviral therapy."

ks/he
[ENDS]

At least for boys ...

GLOBAL: Good early nutrition can make you richer

Eating nutritious food at an early age will not only ensure a source of income as an adult but also better pay, according to a study published in the current issue of The Lancet, a leading British medical journal.

The study, conducted in four villages in Guatemala, found that boys who received atole, a gruel made of skimmed milk powder, sugar and vegetable protein, in the first two years of life earned on average 46 percent higher wages as adults, while boys who received atole in their first three years earned 37 percent higher wages on average. Those who first received the supplement after age three did not gain any economic benefits as adults.

Full report: http://www.irinnews.org/Report.aspx?ReportId=76527

My book is still on sale, but d <<...>> <<...>> difficult to find in an ordinary bookshop it seems.

For Teacher’s friend, there is a totally new version coming out. Please contact me for it.

 

Recently I was asked by someone over the internet what size primary school desks should be. I was rather bemused by this, as the obvious question is What size are the children who are going to sit on them?


When I started work in Southern Sudan in 1982, we were running a secondary school in a school built to be a primary school. Not only that but almost all the students were older than average and adult. And they were mainly Dinkas or Nuers who are taller on average and have longer legs in ratio to their bodies than most of the rest of us. You and a Dinka may be same size sitting, but you stand up he or she will tower over you. Sudanese bicyles are standardised at 28" rather than 26".

Imagine our problem then when we found that not only was it a primary school, but all the furniture was for primary children. 2 m tall on a chair meant for a 6 year old! The human body does fold in strange ways.

The reluctance to solve a problem on the spot by simply measuring has often surprised me. From steps in a staircase which all have different pitches (common in Sudan) to toilets that were put at angles or sizes that resemble no existing human species. In Uganda once I asked for a toilet in the refugee camp to be built up from the 'squatter' to something I could sit on. The person who did it made it taper upwards to a point, like an inverted funnel.

Going wider afield, you have shower rooms with no hooks to hand your clothes on and (noted before) hotel bedroom lights that require you to get out of bed to put them off.

Occasionally common sense deserts the best of us, as several attempts to trace out a big roundabout in a resource centre showed. No one seemed to remember that you just need a long string fixed at the centre and then walk around it.

But that is part of the total disconnect between school maths and the real world which I have often written about before.

Seen on Reliefweb, immediately following an advertisement for a job in researching people trafficking:

Procurement Specialist, South Africa

International Centre for Migration Policy Development

I wonder which meaning of procurement they actually mean …

Presidents and planes

Recently during the Commonwealth summit it was noted that many of the ‘smaller’ heads of states (Caribbean islands etc) actually came on commercial flights.

Earlier this year I was on a Kenya Airways flight to Bujumbura when we were held up by the red carpet treatment given o the president of Burundi who was to travel in our first class.  Longer delays occurred at the other end as the plane had to first take him to the official area where the bands and soldiers and ministers were lined up.

I was not the only one on the plane to be worried about this situation.  In the table of security hazards having a Burundian president on board ones plane must rank very high.  At least one has already been assassinated by shooting down his plane (in 1994).

Barry Sesnan

What I wrote once ...

I am civil society

‘Civil society’ as a phrase has an honourable ancestry in politics. One phase of the evolution of countries post-independence and of the evolution-in-parallel of NGOS and UN bodies has been the gradual emergence of the idea of ‘Civil Society’ as opposed to uncivil society? To military society? To ecclesiastical society? …. Well, that is another question.

This is just to celebrate the enterprising man who not only declared in a coordination meeting that he represented ALL of civil society, but that his NGO was called Civil Society.  Like the Church of God which appears in its name to have monopolised all religious possibilities at least for monotheists, Mr Civil Society presented himself as the unique interlocutor. His only reward though, was to be ignored by everyone.

Barry Sesnan

barrysbook.blogspot.com  ..     ebrealitycheck.blogspot.com

UNICEF desks and chairs

AUNICEF has sent delightful individual desks and chairs for our primary catch up project.

This is very nice, but the problem is in the word ‘individual’. Nice as they are for the children, they are a nightmare for the school management as they are so easy to lose after being borrowed for wedding funerals and the other innumerable ceremonies that take place in villages.   This decision taken unilaterally by UNICEF presumably related to some child-friendly policy is typical of how donors may sometimes completely control the agenda even when the reality we have to live is different.

It could be that they are trying to force schools to provide a seat for every child, but a double bench can provide room for three in a crush whereas a chair cannot.

Barry Sesnan

barrysbook.blogspot.com  ..     ebrealitycheck.blogspot.com
barrysesnan.site.voila.fr

Voluntarism

Spurred by a UNHCR remark some years ago that: Payment can destroy the sense of responsibility that refugees feel for their welfare.  I wrote the following

I actually have a fairly jaded attitude to voluntarism in Africa just now, not about work-camps, joint seminars etc. but trying to get labour for free as we often do in refugee camps. It is complex and coloured by various experiences, including in some work I am doing in Congo just now, where the international NGO pays almost nothing for teachers getting training in the afternoons on the grounds that ‘that is the government’s job’.  Since the government doesn’t even get round to paying them a salary, displacing themselves to be trained (with no guarantee of promotion at the end of it – also the government’s job) involves the teachers in significant costs (not able to farm, fish etc on those days).  

Why, firstly, asking mostly poor Africans to volunteer when they have no job, no ‘cushion’, no alternative is dubious I feel.  In refugee camps teachers and young people are asked to volunteer to get the schools going, and that is fine …. For a year. Then they also have the right to earn some money for their work.  Secondly, there is a world of difference between the first world volunteer and the third world volunteer. 

In another aspect of the same thing, when I was doing HIV/AIDS prevention work in Congo in UNICEF one of our partner NGOs (In this case the partnership was like that I have with my small dog who hangs around the table wagging his tale waiting for me to throw him something) rightly identified the bicycle taxi boys as good carriers of the prevention message to youth (like hairdressers and rap singers, for example) and told them to come for five afternoons’ training.

They refused on the grounds that

a) they were being given nothing to compensate for the income they would lose and

b) the NGO was full of fat people who were obviously getting ‘something’ from UNICEF which they were not passing on. 

They were right of course.

(I told them to make themselves into a suitable partner we could deal with directly! Thus indirectly encouraging that proliferation of NGOs that is so difficult to handle).

Barry Sesnan

barrysbook.blogspot.com  ..     ebrealitycheck.blogspot.com
barrysesnan.site.voila.fr

“5^th November, already 2 days past my 60^th birthday.  My current employers add 5 days to my annual leave immediately, and I think I am now entitled to a free bus pass in London. 

Last night a small dinner I gave in the flat  for friends and colleagues turned into a little birthday party as a cake was suddenly presented with, discreetly, one candle and several little union jacks! 

After the staff had also burst out singing Happy Birthday at lunch on Friday I felt really quite moved.

Where I was in 1977 (Mubi, Nigeria ), 1987 Khartoum,  1997 UK

Barry Sesnan

barrysbook.blogspot.com  ..     ebrealitycheck.blogspot.com
barrysesnan.site.voila.fr

Recent flight from Abidjan to Entebbe via Douala and Nairobi. Economy class.  Passengers usually nervous on this one because of the dreadful May crash at Douala.   The cargo door flailed to close at Douala (Take off was to be 2300 local). We were told this, but then had to sit for about three hours until we were informed that it would probably be necessary for engineers to come from Nairobi, and then we would not be able to take off until 1600 local because of pilots' rest requirements.  

By 3 am we were in hotels, despite the efforts of the ground staff who only communicated when prompted and then initially only in English though most of the passengers were French speaking (Abidjan, Douala, get it?). In my case we all squeezed (about 20 of us) into a minibus for 14 (the authentic Nairobi matatu experience) because no one trusted that it would come back again.

We had all left the airport without passing through immigration so we were woken up at 4 am (assuming you had got to bed) to hand over our passports.  (When we got back tot he airport KQ had left them in one of their offices and expressed surprise that we had not known this (by telepathy?) before reaching the lounge!   The fact we reached the lounge without our passports was alarming from the security point of view also.

The engineers arrived early on a diverted KQ plane and the plane was apparently fixed early.  But we didn't go till 1600.    And then the departure was delayed because $100 vouchers were being given out one by one in the lounge and being filled in by hand by one person.   (There had been ten hours at least to fill out the vouchers).

Why could spare pilots not have come with the engineers? 

Then we arrived into Nairobi at 2230  (half an hour early or 18 hours late depending on your point of view) with ZERO information given on the plane before landing. The passengers nevertheless applauded on landing.

Then in transit only one hostess in attendance at the connections desk to deal with at least 100 passengers. Since at least 80% of the passengers were going beyond Nairobi and had missed their connections, why was there no information ready, announced, about what we were supposed to do? 

Simply preparing the new boarding cards before we arrived would not have been beyond possibility (and Ethiopian would certainly have done that). Even the broadest announcement on the plane that 'Dubai passengers will be leaving at 3 a.m, Guangzhou on Wednesday etc' would have reassured people that someone cared.

I accidentally discovered that the last Entebbe flight(timetabled for 22h)  had not left (engine trouble); I am not sure anyone else discovered it.  So, I was in Entebbe at 2 am only 27 hours after take off.  

I am familiar with KQ, speak English French and Swahili and could even partially understand the pilot who sparingly gave out (accurate but insufficient) information in a voice so gruff and clipped that most native speakers would not understand it. Though there was French speaking steward on board no effort was made to translate. 

Most other people had no idea what was going on. 

The good side? 

1) Well, in the morning the ground staff in Douala were a bit more informative and the hotel had a clear letter telling us what would happen (and sensibly they asked the hotel to get us to the airport).  The hotel was of good quality (but virtually impossible to get water at that time, and then I had to pay for it). 

2) The man on the gate in Nairobi got me onto the Entebbe flight(once I discovered it had not left) without fuss, and was really trying to help.

3) My bag which understandably didn't make the Entebbe flight was well handled and I was called up to collect it (on Sunday they don't deliver). No problem for me as I live near the airport, a real problem if I didn't). 

And before all that the office staff in Abidjan were good and very helpful (they usually are).

Does anyone from KQ read this site?  Don't they realise how much easier everything would be if they were more communicative at all stages? Their staff need training in sensitivity - when we realised our passports were elsewhere we were told 'not to worry', but of course you worry.  if you are experienced you worry even more!  

When do I qualify?

http://www.theelders.org/elders/

I wonder if Mary Robinson is that happy to have become an elder!

Barry Sesnan

barrysbook.blogspot.com  ..     ebrealitycheck.blogspot.com
barrysesnan.site.voila.fr

RE:

You are Oga, 

Here they 'dress' you in local garb when you take part in a function. We were launching our new Passerelle class project to get children back into school in the middle of the former war zone.    The tribe is 'Wê'   related to the Kru of Liberia and found in the west of Cote d'Ivoire. 

Barry Sesnan

barrysbook.blogspot.com  ..     ebrealitycheck.blogspot.com

barrysesnan.site.voila.fr

><< BARRYWechief.jpg >>

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FREE pop-up blocking with the new MSN Toolbar MSN Toolbar Get it now!

The ABC of countries
Many of you know I categorise countries into

• A (lived there, set up a house - Uganda twice, Congo,
• Nigeria, Ghana, Sudan twice, Somalia, Kenya, now Ivory Coast)
• B (long or frequent stays),
• C (many visits),
• D (one main visit),
• E (Just a night), e.g. Morocco
• F (just a stop over), e.g. Cyprus
• G (seen from across a river or a border Publish Postor from a boat - not a plane) e.g Gambia, Angola, Eritrea.

Does your project show such «Clear sense of purpose?

Are your project's indicators of achievement so measurable?

Have you organised your logistics so well?

Are you as gender sensitive as these project staff?

Do all your key players look in the same direction?

Do you care for your environment as these people do?

Does your project give a meaningful role to other species irrespective of their colour, creed or possible sexual orientation?

If your projects do not measure up to these standards contact:

--
Posted By Barry to Barry's book on 9/27/2007 06:44:00 AM

Here they ‘dress’ you in local garb when you take part in a function. We were launching our new Passerelle class project to get children back into school in the middle of the former war zone. The tribe is ‘Wê’ related to the Kru of Liberia and found in the west of Cote d’Ivoire.

Barry Sesnan

barrysbook.blogspot.com .. ebrealitycheck.blogspot.com
barrysesnan.site.voila.fr