The flying club

A senior charity boss recently told me that during his career he has flown to the US over 50 times, and whilst travelling was novel at the start of his career, it is now a tedious chore. He chided what he referred to as ‘the flying club’, an international gravy train of hypocritical and self-important charity folk jaunting from conference to conference, decrying the horrors of impending climate chaos while chalking up more airmiles than Richard Branson.

As part of a new generation of carbon cautious do-gooders engulfed in today’s flying club, I had to agree with him that the broader value of such events is questionable for everyone but the airlines. And in my short stint as a conference regular the novelty has largely worn off already. 28 hours in a city like Bratislava can quickly prove that it’s not all glamorous. (Especially when a passport gets lots on arrival, costing not only the hours finding the police station, getting the police report, registering at the embassy, getting passport photos, applying for a temporary passport, waiting for three hours, and then going to collect it, but also costing £75 for a piece of paper that’s only good for one journey.)

New technologies are coming in to reduce the need for flying by enabling ‘face to face’ communication without the lost time or money, or additional carbon emissions. The most impressive of these is the emergent, Star Trek-esque telepresence.

But on the whole these technologies are still expensive, and skype is too unreliable, to really compete with face to face interaction. And the world’s biggest donor for civil society, the European Commission, remain a firm believer that travel is the answer to every problem, this being one of the few project expenses to receive no budget ceiling in funding proposals, encouraging applicants to pad out this section to grow the other, restricted areas of their costs. (As an aside, if that sounds confusing and boring, feel for the poor guy that had to write this; a devilishly handsome and unsung hero if ever there was one.)

Of course the civil society flying club is a minnow compared to its colossal corporate and public sector cousins. Both of these titanic gravy trains are now on their way to moralise about to descent on Copenhagen to decry the horrors of impending climate chaos while chalking up more airmiles than… Neil Armstrong?

Kyiv: the intercultural finale

My latest trip to Kyiv (the true spelling of what Russians call ‘Kiev’) was for a big international workshop for young leaders, the grand finale to the British Council programme I’d been through the past six months.

The workshop was fascinating: 85 young people from 16 different countries – mostly central and east European, as well as the UK, three Nordic countries, Turkey and Israel – gathered for three days of intercultural exchange and self discovery. The event aimed to help us build our intercultural networks, and co-develop projects that would ‘change the world’. It sounded lofty and vague, and often was, but I forced myself to go with the cheesy flow and got a lot from it. One lesson was that the British cynicism that led to my initial disdain for the slightly patronising event format was a burden, not a badge of ironic honour.

The event had an interesting relationship with national stereotypes. Of course most are based on truth and this was proven repeatedly throughout the three days. There were forthright and self-depreciating Nordics, quiet and reserved Belorussians, friendly but slightly wary Turks, baulchy Israelis, and numerous oddball central and east Europeans: one Slovenian wrote in his personal profile, published in a directory of participants that everyone received at the start, that he is "a strange person you don’t want to meet, cause I bite while moonwalking… and am easily changeable with a shaman as I play a jew’s harph”…

But the nature of the selection process meant that most people shared a lot beneath the thin veneer of their cultures, and almost everyone was fun, smart, engaging and pro-active.

The stereotypes were also a common source of fun, and I found great favour in playing up to them. In one presentation I played a BBC news reporter, donning my plummiest accent and stiffest upper lip. Everyone loved it, and afterwards I was unsure whether I’d reinforced a negative stereotype or poked fun at, and holes through, an international misconception about how reserved the Brits really are.

Day 1 ended with an intercultural fair, where each country had a stand. The Turks offered henna tattoos and belly-dancing, the Israelis offered cleansing Dead Sea mud. True to form our lacklustre British table contained an umbrella and lots of tea. But the most common (and popular) offerings were the huge shots of 50% drinks from across eastern Europe. Needless to say everyone got sloshed pretty quickly. That set the tone for the rest of the event, which involved early starts, jam-packed days, and boozy late nights. I was exhausted by the end.

My most interesting conversations were with the large Israeli contingent. Never having spoken at length to young Israelis before, I was fascinated by their opinions, values and mannerisms. The groups was disproportionately liberal yet they still often came across as rude, not least in walking out of sessions they found pointless, or shutting people off mid-sentence if they were bored by a conversation.

I spoke most with Golda, a strident and extremely sharp woman of colossal ambition. She explained that for an Israeli, walking away from dull dialogue isn’t rude, but honest and efficient. While I remained trapped in cul-de-sac conversations with nothing but my subtly negative body language to rescue me, she’d already spoken to four people. She afterwards said it’s nice that the British are so polite, to which I replied I had no choice; it’s my culture. For the first time I saw those famous and respected British manners as a cage.

Israel lives in a constant state of tension and conflict with its neighbours, so it’s not surprising that its people are so assertive, (i.e. blunt and impatient). One outcome is that they are very energetic, possibly living for the day because things are so unpredictable. Another reason why Israelis are seen as rude is possibly because, in geopolitical terms, their country is the small, spoilt rich kid on the block, enjoying the patronage of the sole hyperpower and not used to having to compromise. Now the hyperpower’s might is waning while it’s groundbreaking President is parenting Israel with a firmer hand, and they don’t know how to react.

One reason why I got on so well with the Israelis is not because they are so different from us, but so similar. We are both American satellites, at least culturally, and I was surprised at the depth of our affinity. Interesting that in a European event without a single American present, the Land of the Free can still exert such influence.

Kenya - of buses and streetboys

Following idyllic Uganda would always be a tricky task, and Kenya's reputation for aggression and hassle preceded it. But I wasn’t ready for how quickly the country’s notoriety would justify itself; my first conversation was an argument with the conductor of the bus leaving from the border. I didn’t mind paying the inflated ‘mzungu’ price as much as I minded him lying about both the inflation and the price itself. I paid and he became friendly enough, though never happier then when our minibus passed a vicious street fight in one of the towns en route.

Buses in that part of Africa are very different to those I’m used to back home. They come in two distinct varieties: minibuses and coaches. Both intra-city ‘Public buses’ and inter-city ‘shuttles’ are minibuses zipping along without any regard for speed or safety. They’re always privately run, decorated, and named:

They are often savagely overcrowded, to the point of overflowing, and are known as a picpocket’s heaven. They’re also dirt cheap, have excellent music blaring, and are the quickest way to get around.

And mine with the aggressive conductor quickly got me to Kisumu, Kenya’s third largest city and largest city in the Luo area. Badly affected by the post-election violence that swept Kenya in early 2008, the project that I was there to visit was almost cancelled that year as a result. In 2009 there were few visible signs of the problems. Much more visible were the hoards of street children that the city is famous for. Or to be more precise, street boys. I learnt that street girls are far less common because (i) they are more likely to be welcomed back than their brothers, as boys are ‘more trouble than girls’, (ii) they are more likely to be trusted by strangers and employed as domestic help, and (iii) they are more likely to be taken in because they are at greater risk on the streets than their male peers. As a result nearly all the street children in Kisumu are boys.

And there are many boys. Ubiquitous clusters of shoeless, solvent-sniffing street boys staggering the streets, glue bottles permanently clamped between their rotting teeth. To the nervous traveller, as I was on my first visit to the city in 2007, they can be intimidating, a ragged mob of desperate feral youth with nothing to lose. (I was told in Nairobi that the street boys there are genuinely dangerous, and manage to occasionally avoid the street lynchings for which the area is notorious by covering themselves in human waste, which is then thrown at anyone that ventures within splattering range.)

But rather than be intimidated – or fear flying excrement – I went with the project’s leader to visit some of the shelters seeking to address Kisumu’s street child epidemic, and was greeted with timid curiosity distinctive of those that deserve better, but know they could be much worse off. These boys have found at least some respite from the streets, but for each of them there are dozens for whom there is no space.

After two days of frantically visiting as many street refuges and schools as possible to get a picture of the project, I left our superhero project coordinator and her motley crew to continue their work, while I continued on my journey, this time by coach.

In contract to the minibuses, the coaches of East Africa are the big hulking bruiser variety of bus: much slower, safer (on account of their size rather than having any seatbelts); but better for the long haul (shuttles rarely go further than 8 hours from base, while the coaches cross the region in stints of up to 72 hours at a time). They are also spacious enough to host occasional characteristic happenings, such as the suave and often evangelically fervent ‘Drs’ who stand centre aisle and bellow their polished public health speeches about how their anti-worming creams (complete with photos of writhing worms) will cure everyone’s parasite problems. I’ve never seen one swamped with business but it would only take a couple of sales to cover the fare.

The coaches also attract an innovative form of enterprise characteristic to the region, the shop in a box:

Extremely convenient for passengers but doubtless dreary and poorly rewarded work. A fitting symbol for the tireless decency and resourcefulness that exemplifies the vast majority of Africans I’ve met.

Uganda - nature and nightlife

Imagine exploring jungle caves steeped in tribal folklore, while monkeys crash through branches and lizards scuttle over rocks. Then after ten minutes walk to be atop a ridge, surrounded by perfect crater lakes and overlooked by imposing mountain ranges. These stunning environs welcomed me as I ended my 36 hour plane and bus marathon to the first stop on my recent three-week East African tour: Fort Portal in western Uganda.

However walking back to camp that evening, flashing fireflies marking our path like tiny beacons, I reflected on the real highlight of the day, which surpassed even the natural wonders we'd seen: the astounding warmth and kindness of the people that we'd met along the way.

Our friend and guide that day, Michael, is a native of Buhaara village, a few miles outside FP. He is an immensely bright and proactive community organiser, and founder of a small-scale NGO that supports his community with necessities such as materials and uniforms for children to attend school. As well as proudly showing us the environmental spectacles his home had to offer, he also took us on a tour of the village, introducing us to his neighbours and hosting an enormous lunch for us in his family home. Though the village itself is the visual embodiment of rural African poverty - small huts of thatched roofs and walls of wooden frames packed with mud; skinny chickens being chased by barefoot toddlers in torn clothes - the spirit of people we met was incredibly moving. It's hard to explain why, but our group all left Buhaara with a glowing sense of having seen and felt something beautiful in that community.

The idyllic atmosphere of the village was unique in its intensity, but the enormous physical beauty we saw there is common to the region. Uganda is an extremely exotic and verdant land. The staple food, grown and eaten everywhere, is banana. Also abundant, both farmed and wild, are pineapples, mangoes and papayas. The wildlife is also distinctive: Uganda is home to the Ankole Cow, famed for their enormous horns, and the Marabou Stork, whose huge hulking frames can be seen lurching across rural swamps and urban rubbish heaps alike. It feels very different to London.

If the country is beautiful, its politics certainly isn't. By most counts Uganda's President Musoveni, who's run the country for 23 years, is an autocrat. He wins elections by improbable margins and stifles dissent at every opportunity. However looking at what Musoveni took over in 1986 - a country brutalised by the Obote-Amin-Obote dictator sandwich, which ensured that the first 22 years of independence consisted largely of misery - he has done a good job. His record is far from perfect: human rights are often ignored, corruption is horrendously bad (Uganda recently came third last in Transparency International's corruption index) and half the population live under the poverty line of $1.25 a day. However on the whole Uganda is remarkably safe, stable, and boasts a growing economy.

Much of the economy still relies on international NGOs, one of which employs my friend and host, Nigel (author of this splendid blog). I stayed with him at his official residence in Kampala's 'posh slum' of Kansanga. It's posh because the houses feature luxuries such as electricity, flushing toilets, and more than four square metres per inhabitant. It's a slum because it's built without the faintest hint of town planning; houses built wherever possible, infrastructure an ad hoc free for all.

It was a great base to explore Kampala's much heralded nightlife, the many virtues of which were extolled to me to the point where I thought my expectations had no chance of being met. But amazingly they were. I only had two nights to revel there, but they both ended at dawn and took in an array of fantastic venues. The clubs took one of two forms: either glorious open air venues, or large, labyrinthine warrens with black walls and black carpets with flourescent splashes, all doused in ultra violet light. Everywhere the music perfectly balanced exciting and powerful beats with funky rhythms that enraptured a positive, energetic and euphorically dancing crowd. Or maybe that was just me. Either way, I can definitely recommend a night out in Kampala.

Though the capital has the biggest clubs, there are also great nightspots elsewhere in the country. I was lucky to be invited clubbing in FP by some local guys I met. I found those same black carpets with flourescent splashes, and those same excellent tunes. But what I remember most from my night out there was how my hosts described the towns two clubs in overtly elitist terms. One was a 'low class' club, where entry cost just 1000 Ugandan Shillings (about 30p), and was full of matatu (motorcycle taxi) drivers and cheap prostitutes. The other was a 'high class' club, costing 5,000 USh (£1.50), which the lowly matatu drivers could never afford. Therefore it was better. Though my friends felt otherwise, I found the high class club painfully dull, while the low class club people actually seemed to be having fun.

This growing class consciousness perturbed me a little. Coming from the UK, a bastion of classism, I was hoping to escape all that nonsense in rural Africa. But the next day I met some people that renewed my faith in the purity of the human spirit. A very kind young academic, having patiently explained to me his work on ageing in Uganda, agreed to let me practice riding his motorcycle. Having stalled and spluttered my way around the field a few times, I noticed a big pink box at its edge.

Going to explore, we discovered it was a dilapidated squash court, recently painted by a mobile phone network as a branding exercise. Inside we found a gang of teenagers milling around, idly kicking an under-inflated basketball. As their elders we received implicit respect, and when we asked what they were up to they sheepishly explained that they were making music. With a little prompting we learnt that they were Freakman and the Akamba Crew, who eventually agreed to give us a performance. Freakman launched into his rap: "I love to play with my basketball; every day I'm with my basketball; momma wants to give me my basketball; why don't you come and play basketball?"

I was stunned. These guys were smart, friendly, and content to compose odes to their favourite items of sporting equipment in their spare time. I can't imagine many youngsters in the UK doing this. I was definitely far too cool.

It may sound trite, but despite the enormous challenges facing Africa, and the huge moral compromises that leaders like Musoveni represent (and many feel are necessary), the innocence and optimism of guys like Freakman and the Akambda Crew, and the kindness of the people of Buhaara village, have the potential to change everything. And not just for Africa.

Headless chicken in Kiev

My last few trips had seen me fall for the effortless charms of Lisbon, vibrancy of Berlin, and progressiveness of Sweden's Gotlands island, and I was looking forward to going somewhere that would make me happy to come home. Kiev seemed perfect. I imagined a bleak city of depressed people and endless grey tower blocks, sure to make me love my home city again.

At first sights my stereotype held true: the post-Soviet bureaucracy was immense (having waited an hour at immigration and collected my luggage, I then had to pass it through a scanner before being released); the traffic barbaric (speed limits routinely ignored and often doubled, and under-taking was as popular as over-taking); and the tower blocks enormous, everywhere, and extremely ugly.

But as I strolled the quiet streets I saw beyond the depressing facade and began to notice the quiet contentment of those around me. Ukraine is a vast and very proud country, and Kiev is in many ways a beautiful and impressive city. The centre of town is surrounded by parks and an enormous river, the Dniestr, runs through the city, dotted with green islands. And it's dotted with a number of magnificent Orthodox churches.

The scale of Kiev and the intense nationalism, combined with the lack of English speakers and use of the Cyrillic alphabet, made it an awesome and daunting host.

I was only there for three nights, in order to plan a new project with our Ukrainian and Moldovan partners - which consumed my first day, lasting 12 hours - and to meet with potential stakeholders (a schedule of six meetings on my second day). This required quite a bit of travelling around Kiev, and I can safely say it is the hardest city to navigate I have ever visited.

The main challenge is that it's almost impossible to know where you are, either on the metro or on foot, because all signs are only in Cyrillic. In addition the distances between places are deceptively great, and almost nobody that I asked could speak any English. I am normally punctual, but in Kiev I arrived for every meeting late, dishevelled and exhausted.

Though I must admit part of the delay was due to me marvelling at the stunning Metro stations, the most stunning of which is Teatrina, famed for it's intricate mosaics...

... and imposing Lenin bust

Luckily I did meet one Ukrainian who spoke English. Like a disconcertingly high proportion of Ukrainian women, Olga was beautiful, though she was unusual because she speaks not only English, but perfect Spanish, which she was teaching to local businessmen. She described the widespread political apathy she and much of the country felt, following the broken promises of 2004's much heralded Orange Revolution. Everyone I spoke to repeated that nothing had changed: politics was still corrupt and in the thrall of business interests.

Whilst surprised at the political disaffection - like many naive westerners I too had believed the hype promoted by our media in 2004 - I was also pleasantly surprised by how friendly people were. Ukrainians are known for smiling rarely, and this my experience, but on the whole the people I asked for help (which I was forced to do often) went to great lengths to assist me, despite us not being able to speak a single word of a common language. I was much relieved when, arriving at my final meeting of my final day, I was greeted with a colleague's birthday banquet and a never ending glass of Ukrainian vodka. Many toasts were made, and my hosts were extremely kind. I have never drunk so much in an office before.

So in a strange way I also fell in love with Kiev. I started to feel an affinity with the people of Kiev, and their proud culture. I also revelled in the fact I got so lost, as not only was it challenging and exciting, but it also made me realise and rely on the kindness of strangers, which is often the most life-affirming lesson of travel.

Ukraine will host the European football championships in 2012, and I suspect that the metro stations will finally be translated into Latin script. It will be a great shame.

Gotlands - Vikings leading the way

In the middle of the Baltic Sea lies a large island, which this week especially may be one of the most progressive places on earth. Connected to the mainland by a creaking propellered cigar tube, Gotlands belongs to Sweden, and is famed for being the warmest part of the country, as well as hosting an annual political festival, Almedalens.

Combining all the political party conferences, Almedalens is a week long bastion of open political debate and discussion on topics as wide ranging as climate change, inner-city poverty and the future of Kosovo. Political leaders stroll the cobbled streets of Gotland's medieval capital, Visby, in chinos and polo necks, ever ready to respond to greetings and polite questions from their citizens. Security is barely to be seen.

I was there with colleagues to launch an informal network of civil society leaders covering 'northern Europe': the countries around the Baltic sea, plus Belarus, Russia and Iceland. We were hosted by the Governor of the island in her beautiful residence, a homage to tasteful artwork, modest opulance and pastel colours.

Following the meetings our hostess held a gathering of Swedish civil society leaders in her spacious garden. Of the many charming people there, the most interesting was a guy in a baseball cap wearing a sandwich board declaring his ability to rap in five languages (Swedish, English, Persian, Spanish and Portuguese), on receipt of a donation. We discussed hip hop and social activism, before he gave me a display of his impressive lyrical talents (in English).

Sweden is of course famous for its enlightened social model and beautiful blond people. But it's also quite pious. I spoke with many young and attractive volunteers of a large tee-totallers' association, referred to as a 'temperance organisation'. They have 48,000 members, each of whom have taken the vow not to drink alcohol. I was stunned to hear of the movement's popularity, though upon reflection realised that this highlighted my origins in a binge-drinking culture. Alcohol is responsible for the majority of violence in rich countries, and yet in the UK there are no recognised popular movements against it, whilst there are for similar common scourges such as fatty foods or CO2. I toyed with the idea of not drinking for a while myself, but before I'd made up my mind someone had bought me a beer.

My second revelation came in the unlikely form of Max Hamburgare, Sweden's answer to McDonalds. It was clean and tastefully decorated; its smiling staff suffered none of the chronic acne typical of their British counterparts; bean salads and fruit were given equal prominence to chips on the menu; and most impressively of all, each choice of burger clearly showed how much CO2 it was responsible for. I went for a 'green burger', which weighed in at a modest 0.2 grams; Carlo tucked into the standard beef burger, costing a whopping 1.6 grams of the evil stuff. Probably equal to one hundredth of a second of my flight home.

Berlin - best of all?

Having declared my love for Lisbon just a few weeks ago, I have been unfaithful already. I was in Berlin earlier this week, and it now challenges fantastic Lisbon for my affections.

It was only a 36 hour trip, but while I was there I had the unmistakable feeling that Germans are indeed a master race. Everywhere I looked the people seemed to be healthier, more beautiful, more intelligent, more relaxed, and more efficient. A homeless man tried to sell a magazine in the metro, and not only was he impeccably polite, but his canine sidekick was so well trained as to trot up and down the carriages offering the magazine to passengers from within a plastic folder in its mouth.

After the organised chaos of London, Berlin felt incredibly civilised. The streets are wide, and the cycle lanes enormous; the roads are never busy and traffic cruises along at an amiable pace. While London blindly aims to become the new Manhatten, Berlin's blend of beautiful old and tasteful new architecture is generally low-rise, and there is an abundance of green space, especially right in the centre of town next to the parliament. For a metropolis of two million it feels as sedate and welcoming as a small town, whilst also being one of the most vibrant cities in the world.

I was there to run a couple of meetings, and not wanting to waste a charities money stayed in suitably squalid accommodation, managing to find one of the city's few ugly buildings to call home for a night. The sewage pipes in our enormous hostel shook violently every time a neighbour put them to use, and the blinds fell apart when opened. It was next door to the North Korean embassy, and aside from the towering fence around one of them, the two buildings looked identical. As I went with a colleague to get food we saw the North Korean diplomats' young children playing in the embassy compound, stretching their arms through the impenetrable fence in what looked like a tragic bid to escape.

The meetings we held went alright, though we soon realised that the Germans are a touch audience. Long the industrial powerhouse of Europe, with enormous trade surplus, they are not used to relying on outsiders. (While the war and especially the Wall are still recent memories, the Marshall Plan seems well and truly forgotten.) So our offer to strengthening their civil society through pan-European collaboration was met with a cool 'so what'. But there were some glimmers of hope and we'll keep plugging away.

Some visitors to Berlin may think that the Wall remains an unhealthy obsession for Berliners. Every map of the city has it marked in a fat red line, and an initiative to mark the footprint of the wall is almost complete. I was reminded of the video's on sale in beautiful Dubrovnik, showing the city's pounding by 'Yugoslav' artillery.

But it could also be seen as a brave attempt to acknowledge the past. The scars of the city's division are still apparent: much of the no man's land separating the two sides remains wasteland, while the starkly contrasting housing on both sides is clearly evident.

This contrast has given rise to an interesting social phenomenon, where the poorer eastern part of the city has attracted a predictable mix of bohemians and artists, making it the coolest part of the city, though now increasingly populated by 'yuppies pretending to be poor'. Apparently they're making the place boring: Starbucks et al are moving in and the interesting galleries and parties are harder to find.

This case was put to me as an example of the importance of social capital by a German intellectual I met in Lisbon two weeks prior. He explained governments narrow-mindedly turf out squatters because they think more money can be made from property in other ways, ignoring the social capital that squatters may bring to an area. The former New York Mayor Ed Koch tapped into this when he said that he only needed the artists in Brooklyn until they could no longer afford to live there.

But despite the encroaching gentrification and the sprouting of a dull and generic western city-scape in areas such as Potzdamer Platz, Berlin remains intensely vibrant, independent and, dare I say it, 'edgy'. However I'm reliably informed that, while it's indisputably a great place, it's nowhere near as dynamic as Hamburg, Munich, or Freiburg. I have a host of potential mistresses awaiting.