Filed under: africa, development, england, events, london, news, poverty, science, society
Karimba Primary School, by AP6.
Last week I was in London to report on the Royal Society of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene’s centenary conference, called, ‘Meeting the Millennium Development Goals’.
Professor Estambale from the University of Nairobi talked about whether preventing malaria in schoolchildren helped them learn better (you can read my story on it here).
He talked about the design of the study and his results. In explaining his figures for why not all the children recruited to receive treatment were tested afterwards, he said matter-of-factly, “three of them died”, and continued to explain why other children were not in the final figures.
I had one of those stop-life moments. Three of them died! Here was a man in London explaining his scientific results, just like so many other scientists, but he had to factor in that some of his study participants died. And this was in the group that received treatment! There were more in the placebo group. The deaths weren’t anything to do with his study – it’s just that in Africa, children die, for all sorts of reasons.
Of course we all know that children in Africa die all the time, but it was one of those moments that brought it home to me. I imagine all of the people I know working in science in developed countries who design studies, worrying about so many different factors, trying to recruit enough volunteers – imagine if some of them just died? Halfway through your study, they die for completely unrelated reasons, which you then factor into your results.
I guess it was also shocking because I associate African children dying as flyblown toddlers suffering from malnutrition, not school-age children, ready to sit tests at the end of the term so they can move on in life. I’ve never been a starving toddler (good work mum), but I have been a primary school kid cruising along through childhood, like the kids in the study.
It’s unimaginable that school kids could ever just die matter-of-factly in Western Europe. Needless to say, we have to stop it happening in other parts of the world.
In case the picture I’m painting of London is too rosy, let me set things straight. London is a vibrant and remarkable city, wonderful for weekend visits. However, there are some things about London that are awful.
One of those is the overcrowded transport system.
When I first moved to Cambridge I was considering a couple of jobs in London. After some peak hour travel I decided I would take a slightly less exciting job in Cambridge, because the commute into the heart of London is brutal.
If you get the 7:15 train you’re lucky to get a seat – this is despite paying around 40 Australian dollars a day for your ticket. People have to earn roughly £4,000 more – that’s more than 10 grand Australian – to justify working in the capital, with a season pass.
Then you still have to justify the minimum two hour daily commute.
We met up with Dave and had a few pints of cider and beer standing outside a pub in Soho, as the English do in summer.
The Saturday after our theatre experience turned out to be a beautiful day in London. It appears England has gone tropical, and after a monsoonal summer we’re now enjoying a sunny autumn.
Rather than hide ourselves indoors we decided to spend our day outside. First we went to the Victoria and Albert Museum and relaxed in the garden there. There were fantastic, awesomely comfy seats designed to be like water lilies, designed by Brazilians. We lounged about on those, watching the juggler entertaining families and kids paddling around the fountain/pool.
It was great to see another part of England. Great Yarmouth is one of the most deprived areas in the UK, despite (or perhaps caused by) having a vast beach and heavily developed foreshore, with gaming machines and fried food outlets galore. I thought Glenelg’s old Magic Mountain was hideous – that had nothing on the moulded foam monstrosities at Yarmouth.
Entrance to a club was included with our tournament pass, so we went clubbing on Saturday night – the place was huge despite the town’s small population – no doubt a relic from the time when Great Yarmouth was one of the UK’s posh beach destinations, before the advent of Ryanair made holidaying further afield accessible for the English masses.
Yarmouth has problems with crime, so when we left the club there were police everywhere, keeping an eye on the groups of youths waiting to get into places on the warm summer night. It was a contrast to Cambridge, where the biggest problems are bikes getting stolen and people trying to scale old buildings in ball gowns.
Despite Yarmouth’s problems, wandering away from the glittery promenade towards our camping ground there’s a spectacular, vacant beach flanked by sand dunes.
Though the beach is empty the ocean is not – about a dozen wind turbines spin in the sea. My main concern about wind farms is the noise, but offshore the swishing is muted by the lapping of the water on the sand. It was quite beautiful.
Shortly after my last post about the beach in Salobreña, my French friend Delphine pointed out that I was generalising when I said that all European beaches are either grey or the sand is nonexistent.
“As you already noticed, Europe is very diverse. Go in the Landes (south west of France), Colioure (east French mediterranean coast), Erquy in Bretagne, or Algarve in Portugal and none of them look like each other,” she said.
She is, of course, completely right – and I had proof a week later when I went to the Great Yarmouth Beach Classic 2007. At Great Yarmouth the beach is long and wide with a good proportion of yellow hued sand. Unfortunately there are still a lot more rocks that I’m used to – certainly for a volleyball tournament – which meant my shins got shredded when diving for the ball.
I’ve been playing for Rhinos Volleyball Club in Cambridge over the last year. In summer, indoor volleyball teams tend to disperse into small groups who travel around doing beach volleyball tournaments – that’s what we did.
Our team won the mixed 4-aside tournament, which was nice – though the competition was underwhelming by Australian standards. Still, I have a plaque to show for my efforts. Though our competition was unspectacular, it was great to be able to watch one of the UK’s three Grand Slam beach events (the final is in Brighton this coming weekend).
