I think Durban is one of the nicest cities in the world. I have lived there for nearly 30 years. Ailsa and I bought our first house there and it is the place the children were born. The university has been, for me, a good work environment. At the beginning of my career I was well mentored and then given space and support to start my own unit. HEARD is going well with an amazingly good research output, high staff morale, adequate funding and a throughput of talented young researchers. All this is in our annual report, which will be on the website very soon.

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Easter is always a time of reflection: spring in England and autumn in Durban. I have reason to take stock. I arrived back in Durban on the 2_nd of April. On the 3rd, I went to the funeral of Cosmas Desmond, an anti-apartheid activist, member of the Durban community, and father to one of HEARD’s first and highly appreciated members of staff – Chris Desmond. There is a touching obituary in the UK Telegraph at http://tgr.ph/IfXyZP. The service was held in the chapel at Nazareth House, a home for the elderly, just up the road from my flat. The service was Catholic and very formal. I hope, at some point, there will be a more intimate celebration of this remarkable man’s life.

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This past weekend I was in Swaziland. I went for two reasons: first to spend some time - Waterford Kamhlaba at my school, second to look at the current AIDS epidemic situation. On Saturday we celebrated the United World College (UWC) day. This was organised by students and consisted of entertainment in the wonderful amphitheater, then a food fair in the Newton-Thompson Multi-purpose Hall and on the field. Representatives of each country presented themselves and their countries, wearing their national costumes. Following the parade of nations there were a number of music and dance items. For food fair the groups of students cooked and sold food from their national cuisines. The South Africans did boerewors rolls and meat! I sampled the Chinese, Scandinavian and Indian stalls. The Chinese kids showed, in practice, what it means to be responsive to market forces – at the beginning of the fair a plate of food cost E20, by the end they were walking around selling it for E5 to any takers. The Scandinavian stall was mostly sweet food. The Indian meal was excellent!

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