God, AIDS, Africa & HOPE

Reflections / Gedanken

28.08.2010 A brief visit…

.. to the National conference of people living with HIV in Bielefeld. I have the honour to be part of a podium discussion about pictures, used in media about people living with the virus. Interesting two hours.. What kind of pictures are dominant? How do people perceive those pictures? How different are the pictures in South Africa and in Germany? How much of the pictures, real or virtual (e.g. by writing about HIV) from Europe filters through to Africa? The positive gay couple in the “big brother container”, the Nadja court proceedings, the dying African people, the big eyes of suffering kids, the report about bare backing on TV.. so many different ways to portray people living with the virus…
New AIDS and old AIDS, meaning: chronic disease (and all is normal) against death sentence (before HAART treatment) – what is the reality of people living with the virus and how to translate it via media into the public domain?

So many questions – and certainly a diversity of answers – important questions and important answers. An important discussion…

Filed under: HIV and AIDS, Reflection, Society and living environment, , , , , , , ,

04.11.2009 Farewell thoughts

Sitting at Frankfurt airport I can feel the how tired I am and how much I am looking forward to sleep while flying back to Cape Town. I will be happy to be back home again.

For 16 days I toured through Germany with a detour to Rome, I have had meetings, planing workshop, planing meeting, one2one meetings, telephone meetings, talks – I saw round about a 1000 people in those days – statistics can be interesting. Plans are made until 2013 – I feel the manager syndrome arriving on my doorsteps, but I guess many people are telling me that since years. The Ecumenical church day, the world aids conference, the Bundespositivenkonferenz, the world awareness campaign part two, the exhibition at the Charite Museum, a film project, quite some invitations, amongst them to speak also about economy and ethics as well as how to achieve a value system for one’s own life, motivational talks – the visit of bishops to bring the idea of the pastoral care for positive clergy via bishops conferences to Rome – I am this evening indeed sure that there will be no dull moment in my life for the next years to come. And I thought it will take time to find enough work in my new working environment

HOPE Cape Town will be re-structured a bit – new offices, partly changed job descriptions – the Catholic Aids Networks registration as a NPO and PBO and I guess also there is some restructuring necessary – I still have to write a contribution to a book published by the University of Trier – writing down for me all the “still have to do” list is frightening and challenging at the same time. But I am in a good spirit that all can be done, seeing all the marvellous colleagues giving a hand and taking a lead with me.

Next week we will have our management and planing meeting from HOPE Cape Town and then I will report back in detail and we will plan for the new year ahead. Despite my tiredness I can feel the dynamics of networking – the possibilities lying ahead and I once again don’t understand the stand of many NGO’s which are so protective of their work and see most others as competition rather than a completion to their own work. This year I have seen some naughty incidents were other NGO’s were not afraid to try to lure away sponsors on our very own events. There are still so many feathers to earn in South Africa – and there are also so many willing sponsors if you have a good programme – there is no need to fight each other for anything.

 

Filed under: General, HOPE Cape Town Association & Trust, Networking, Reflection, , , , , , , , , , , , ,

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