Nordic escapades, part 1 – November 2022

It’s Saturday. And I am finished. In Finland. You would be too, if you had spent a week of intense, highly stimulating conversations with various academics and researchers.

 The flight from South Africa was 3 hours longer than we had planned, there having been a serious medical incident in-flight which meant that we had to turn back to Johannesburg for the patient to be evacuated and to refuel. We barely caught our connection to Helsinki at that chaotic carousel called Charles De Gaulle in Paris. The staff are surly and unhelpful so when we land in Helsinki, we are relieved. The airport is clean, modern and the people are polite and helpful. As we discover all through our time, the Finns are a gentle and kind people, warm and receptive. Perhaps that’s why they didn’t have the naked and brutal ambition to colonize anyone?

We land in Kuopio in the early evening and it is already dark. We have lost our luggage but that doesn’t dampen my spirits. I am here on a study tour with my boss, being hosted by the School of Pharmacy at the University of Eastern Finland in Kuopio – to learn about their teaching and learning (of which I enjoy though I now do less of it) and their research (of which I now spend most of my time doing). Jarkko (double K as I call him) and Roseanna (Sisi to me) are at hand to welcome us at the hotel. They are patient and empathetic and helpful. They are good friends. I first met them in Pretoria in 2016. Double K and I talk golf most of the time, and with Roseanna we have a mutual love of Kenya and indigenous foods (which is the area of our collaborations over the years through GlobalFoodNet, SANBio

and UI-Southvation).

We are at the Lapland Hotel, a 5 hour drive will take us to Santa’s real grotto. This is just about the time when he is finishing up all the toys needing to be sent to Amazon to deliver to all the kids in the world (how things have changed – Rudolf and his crowd have been downsized and put out to pasture and some culled for the pot). And they are tasty, akin to eland and springbok as we discovered at the Lapland Hotel.

The food in this part of the world is surprisingly eclectic and homely.  And tasty. Over the 5 days we ate different dishes ranging from reindeer stews and roasts to white fish, pickled fish, vendace (a bit bigger than kapenta / nile perch) and Viking steak and pork and lots and lots of berries; berries as sauce, as juice, as jams. So, I jettison intermittent fasting to enjoy the food of Suomi (The Finnish name for Finland).

The meetings are excellent. We have a tight schedule, and every day is a revelation. We meet with colleagues in Clinical Nutritional, Public Health Nutrition (there is a difference), Pharmacology and Toxicology (yes, toxicology is and should be an integral part of pharmacy and pharmaceutical science) and with the Dean we discuss diabetes and diabetes management and industrial pharmacy. We talk about joint projects, global virtual lectures, student and staff exchange, we tour labs and meet students, we give guest lectures and plan future engagements. And we go out to lunch and dinners and talk like old friends reunited – though we are meeting with most people for the first time. We even get VIP passes for their national game – ice hockey and we are there shouting and egging the team. The home fans who are play drums and sing. Wish my vuvuzela was by my side!

The Finnish score high on most global indices – human development, SDGs, education, happiness. I understand now. To be happy you have to be gentle and kind, and maybe speak a bit of Finnish. Kiitos!

Herbal tea - building the African herbal tea industry

Slush

Slush. The snow and rain are not quite as mushy or persistent as one would expect. This geek festival was named after that mixture which makes it extra cold and miserable in the Nordics this time of the year. Thank God, this year, there is a sprinkling of rain on the opening morning and as I make my way out to the train station on day 2, there is a half-hearted snow fall which I quickly brush off my hat and face.
Inside the slush hall, it is deliberately dark with neon lights and signs blinking everywhere - Meeting Place, WC (toilets), Evergreen stage, Microsoft, Danske Bank, Google start-up...an innumerable number of names and brands - the familiar and the not so familiar. Apple is conspicuous by its absence (or maybe I just missed it).
Here in these halls much dealmaking will be done; and one is reminded of smoky gambling halls. Every conversation is a pitch, for one never knows when the person you are talking to is your next investor, or an angel, or advisor. Everyone here can share a nugget that might ignite your business.
People from 132 countries we are told, 20,000 of us are gathered here to talk and hear about the current and next wave of innovations, about unicorns, and interestingly,also, about stewardship of the earth.
The Finnish are nice people, kind people, and surprisingly very Americanized - they play a lot of soul and R n B -the event starts with a duo of two black rappers; they have very American bravado in speech...no Dutch or German accents here. Everyone here we encountered is generally young and speaks English. Perhaps the proximity to Russia is what pushed them into the hands of the Americans (Finland is a young country and owes its independence to the Bolsheviks in 1917). This American link is alive at Slush; many of the innovators have spent time in Silicon Valley, and paid their dues to the gods of technology and innovation in California's ethereal streets.
But, if they were Americans, they would be nicer Americans. They retain the Nordic traits of care for the earth and human solidarity (by way of example, Finland scores first in the achievement of United Nations Sustainable Development Goals). During Slush 2018, the UN launched it's first technology station in Europe in Helsinki (UN Technology Innovation Lab), and various sessions alluded to the SDGs.
I heard about Slush for the first time, only last year. So I am privileged to have attended it; to have met interesting people and links that might come to future fruition. And here, then is the lesson for Africa, that, as Africans, there is a better use of our time than wall-to-wall religious events. While we are at fasting or at night prayers asking for miracles, some are getting together to innovate and solve problems here on earth. No miracles there.

Fragile state

In Finland. We visited Finnpartnership, one of the agencies which work in developing countries creating business networks. Finland has no colonial past, you see, so they are generally welcomed in places the British and French are reviled.
Here we were a cohort of young Southern Africans - black and white. One of the first slides they showed us was of the countries of the world. We zoomed in on Africa, naturally. Low income countries, most of us with only South Africa orange coloured as being Low Middle Income. Zimbabwe was a different country from any of her neighbours...similar only to South Sudan and Somalia...and the key to their pale green colour "fragile states". That label really shook me.
What is a fragile state? It cannot be the country of my beginning. But it turns out that there is a matrix which grade countries into this category. The matrix includes Security Apparatus, Factionalized Elites, Uneven Economic Development, Human Flight and Brain Drain, State Legitimacy, among other indicators. Zimbabwe has all of these and more; and it's neighbours, countries which were far behind Zimbabwe a mere 10 years ago, have moved ahead to be islands of stability and economic progress.
Fragile state...the country of my becoming teeters closer and closer to implosion.

thief on the cross

We were hijacked on Sunday night on our way from the airport in Cura. It had been a most successful business and social trip to Zimbabwe.

I suppose were followed from the airport...still trying to process it - and it happened so fast. The driver was keying in the code to open the gate and then next there is a guy in balaclava shouting at him and threatening him; then my door opens and one man with a bandana pulled over his face casually takes my laptop bag from between my feet. And then they ask for our money and phones. In a flash, property expropriation without compensation is complete!

 Everyone is fine (my colleague and the shuttle driver) - they were not violent and we gave up our money, valuables without resisting - these things will be replaced 10 fold. I am just very angry with myself (I am usually more careful), with the driver (he should have been checking behind him more), but that's how it is.

It got me thinking about the thief on the cross whom Jesus forgives. And about these guys who held us up; smirks behind their covered faces, cursing us and threatening to "just shoot" - the driver had a gun pointed at him; the one who came to my door was probably not armed. They just felt entitled to our money - hey, give us all of it - and to our property. My phone and laptop are probably not worth much; I was meaning to replace them anyway, and the bag they took was heavy with Mazoe rather than anything of value to them (but we could have been killed for that). Then there are the intangible things one loses - a diary with contacts and thoughts and research ideas; the half-finished documents and exam scripts; and then that inner peace, the ability to feel joyful. Everyone else seems to be going on about their lives...and you just feel, uncertain, unsure.

And so, how do you forgive that thief on the cross? Should he be forgiven?

Rome...Quid nos scire possumus

October 2017

In Rome. It is a much cleaner place than Napoli, though cigarettes butts are strewn everywhere. But at least one sees some people cleaning the streets, or maybe it's just their small informal contribution in their little area, their doorstep as it were. So it's clearner, but still, like every European city I have been to, it is squeezed. I see two people in running gear attempting to run through those narrow streets competing with cars, buses and tourists and wonder how far they will be able to go.

Here the ancient co-exists with the not so ancient and the new. They have a way of preserving and marking their history - the Roman ruins here - the Colosseum being the most impressive of that era ; then there is something from the Renaissance (though historian record that it left a better dent in Florence), the Holy Roman Empire (when Rome and a large chunk of Europe were benighted by the tyranny of popes using God's name for their own ends, dishing out titles to friends, cousins and illegitimate sons - church corrruption did not start with modern day pastorpreneurs), then to pre-war Italy. Like the minister plenipotentiary at the South African consulate told me, life in Rome is like walking in a living a museum everyday. 

And the oft-cited example of how this country is founded on small and family-owned businesses is as apparent in Rome and it is with the pizzerias and little shoe shops of Naples neighbourhoods. There are few corporates here - there are the banks, of course, then the innovator companies like Parmalat, but no-one seems to have attempted to successfully integrate or amalgate (I surmise) the pizzerias, or it seems, even the pharmacies whose neon green crosses you see frequently (no sense of overtrading and cannibalization as I have warned of in Zimbabwe or Kenya). In the quieter streets, less touristic, I walk past several motor cycle workshops - small and owner-operated, it seems. There is a place selling designer shoes - and in the back there is a workshop with an old man bent over, breathing life into the next pair of heels! 

This explains why the Italian economy is resilient - in the likely event of a global economic shock or downturn slowing demand is what might affect these business and the country; but not mass unemployment as a result of retrenchments or downsizing because quarterly performance is not to the liking of some faceless shareholders. Somehow it seems a smarter model (certainly in the face of ChIndia's bargain basement pricing). But, of course, it comes with the millstone of family traditions...which can be ended by a fickle prodigal. But if taken up by the next generation,  entrepreneurial instincts and experiences are naturally inherited...no need for MBA-type coaching here.

The lesson? 

Invest in policies which support small business, family owned is even better. But for most African governments this is more talk than action. Of course, most of them are beholden to and captured by big business.

Land of the self-flushing toilet

In Japan. The greatest gift that Japan has given to the world, according to my host, is the toilet with instructions. When I first peeped into the loo, I could not understand why there would be a notice with instructions on "How to use this toilet", and there on the side of the seat like a helicopter cockpit were blinking lights!
Until I sat on the seat. It was warm (surely a good sign). And then it almost idles ready to start the business of ablutions. Once you are finished, it flushes itself. Or in the event that you want your under-carriage to the cleaned, it has three setting of jet flow. So I tried it, just to be adventurous, and the water was warm and one felt really clean afterwards.
So of all the Japanese inventions and innovations from National and Panasonic TV, gameboy to Pokemon, the self-flushing toilet (not so well-known in my world) comes tops. It shows you in a sense just how far Maslow's hierarchy of needs this society has gone to have thought about re-inventing this particular wheel.
It got me thinking about inventions and who has given what to the world. There is a racial view of the inventing nations, and the non-inventing nations which is skewed. And I found myself saddened that the only invention that my country is known for (even here in Japan) is of hyper-inflation (more a case study for political, history and economics scholars than an invention, really); and perhaps lately, inventing 8 ways of firing your deputy (more like Paul Simon trying to leave his lover). But really, we have not invented anything despite being so-called "educated". Zimbabwe is just a society which calcified as bones in a gerontocracy. We need younger leaders (which by the way is the reason I am with Alliance for People's Agenda and a worldly wise Nkosana Moyo)
Japan on the other hand has a long list of useful and not so useful inventions, and more lately of being complacent and thus ceding advantage to the South Koreans and the copy-cat Chinese. Today Samsung is now the dominant figure in house-hold appliances, technology,  mobile phones and is deeping itself into pharmaceuticals.
That is a part of my visit; to see how the Japanese can claim ground in the frontier markets of Africa. While the self-flushing toilet would never make it in Africa (needs reliable electricity supply and piped water, both of which are little known), Japan has a lot of offer the world in cosmetics, pharmaceuticals and a rich tradition of food innovation. It is also one of the largest consumer markets in the world. If only we had something we could sell to them.