Tuesday, August 5, 2008

AIDS 2008 Day 2: The Good, Bad and Ugly

The Good:

  • Today I met Svend Robinson. For that average person that is no big deal, but I think he is a pretty cool guy. And I got through the entire conversation without any embarrassing comments, and tripping. For those of you keeping score I am two for two.
  • The global village is good, really good. People from NGOs and other organization are all together creating a completely comfortable, open and safe environment. People wear whatever they want; women rights workers are interacting with youth members who have meetings with people from Latin America etc.

The Bad:

  • The walk between the global village and the rest of the conference in the Centro Bannamex is 15 minutes. It’s usually fine until you are running late for the shuttle buses.

The Ugly:

  • Listening to a white, female anthropologist, tell a Kenyan researcher of the impact of medical circumcision on traditional circumcision, how circumcision should be celebrated in his community. He listened politely and I nearly went insane.
  • There are so many white researchers presenting papers on African issues on behalf of a group. Why am I not seeing more of the local ‘African’ or ‘Asian’ researchers?

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