First day on the African soil, a short introduction.

Dear all,

After a seventeen hours journey from Amsterdam-London-Johannesburg (Jo’burg), South Africa here I am! My flight landed this morning at 6.30am at O.R. Tambo Int’l Airport, I am a bit tired but really happy to put my feet on the South African ground, of course the sky is blue and it’s already really warm outside, couldn’t be a better welcome!

Let’s get back in time for a while to give a little background on the reason of my trip. About four weeks ago, I have been contacted by the Moving the World department about an urgent assignment to complete for the North Star Foundation (www.northstarfoundation.org). After a very interesting interview with Luke Disney and Janet Dutton, both co-directors of the foundation, things are arranged for me to go to Namibia on quite a short notice but there’s nothing better than rushing into organizing my trip completed by the excitement of such a mission.

North Star Foundation was set up by TNT together with the United Nations World Food Programme in 2005 and focuses on the establishment of Wellness centers to reduce the impact and spread of HIV/AIDS and other Sexual Transmissible Illnesses (STIs) among the transport industry. Of course, TNT is very much involved in this industry and realized by that time that the HIV rate among truckers was twice as high as the general community in Sub-Saharan Africa due to long journeys away from home and constant contact with sex workers along the way which is unfortunately their solution to combat loneliness during these trips that can last weeks... Therefore, by establishing these wellness centers at major truck stops and border crossings, NSF provides drivers, sex workers and local communities with AIDS and STIs prevention education as well as testing and treatment and last but not least, condoms distribution which the basis of awareness for everybody.

During my assignment, which will last two months as of today, I will mostly be based in Windhoek, capital of Namibia and in Walvis Bay, one of the main commercial harbour of Southern Africa. The Wellness center of Walvis Bay has been established in July 2008 thanks to the funding of the Canadian government and more particularly the Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA). Staff has already been recruited and enthusiasm of local communities was very motivating but a few months later, there is already an important lack of funds and here comes the purpose of my mission here: dialogue with local companies and governments in order to make sure that local stakeholders will maintain the Center active on a long term basis and to make them understand how important it is for them to sustain such action or there will shortly be a very big problem in finding qualified truckers, most of them dying of AIDS which prevents the economy from developing properly as the transport industry is one of the pillars of local economic development.

I arrived this morning in Jo’burg, where I met with Paul Matthews and Ian Lubbe, both very much involved in the activity of North Star in Southern Africa. Paul is the CEO of Ikaheng, a South African company providing Human resources solutions, trainings, recruitment and other HR services within the transport industry. Ian is responsible for IT installation, maintenance and support among Ikaheng. Ikaheng is very much involved in North Star Foundation and currently project manages the setting up of the Wellness Centers in Southern African and more precisely in Malawi, Swaziland, Namibia, Zambia and Zimbabwe. Paul and Ian will be my main contacts during my stay in Jo’burg and in Namibia. They have already been involved in the complete set up of the Walvis Bay center as well as the establishment of a good network of people.

After a quick chat with Paul and Ian, I have now a clearer idea about my schedule in the next three weeks, starting with basic knowledge about the IT system and tomorrow direction Beitbridge in Zimbabwe together with Ian to try to settle some problems incurred over there and for me to get a good vision of the day to day functioning of a Wellness center. We will be back on Thursday in Jo’burg and I will fly to Windhoek on Friday morning, final destination!

My first day is already slowly ending and happiness and motivation are winning over the lack of sleep, a lot of enthusiasm increased by the warmth of the welcome received from Ian and Paul and the hectic times coming which will definitely be more than interesting…