Munnar to Melbourne: A Facilitator's view of the Sixth International Congress on AIDS in the Asia Pacific
The large disc of the city lights shimmered through the glass pane, tilting slowly in the pleasant coolness of the spring night as the Boeing 757 banked into land at the Melbourne International Airport. "Welcome to Melbourne, Australia, It is October 4th 11:00 P.M. local time and the outside temperature is ."
announces the pilot. There were more than thirty of us on that flight from Kuala Lumpur to attend the Sixth International Congress on AIDS in the Asia Pacific (6th ICAAP). A couple of hours later we are through Immigration, Customs and the Thomas Cook Currency Exchange Desks. A mini-bus takes us in twenty minutes to the Bak Pak Hotel on Franklin Street. The Hotel Bak Pak operates a free shuttle bus service from the airport to the Hotel on a regular basis. There is a long queue at the reception desk, but I am happy that this is the last one in twenty-four hours before I can drop off to sleep on a bed, that is resting solidly on terra firma!
We check in and after a wash we are out in the street where the air has still a wintry nip. It's 3:00 A.M., but we can fill ourselves up on an assortment of bread, cakes, doughnuts and milkshakes from the nearby Seven-Eleven store, on the corner of Franklin and Elizabeth Street. Hotel Bak Pak is equipped with fairly good kitchen facilities and is located next to Melbourne's main Victoria market. But being the typical Indian we are still shy of using these like the younger and fairer regular backpackers, who are the usual patrons. Accommodation paid for by the ICAAP is provided on a shared basis. Rooms are dormitory-style with four to twelve people to a room. Roommates were chosen for us based on gender/arrival time/country. At Room 317, the only empty bed is the top one near the large glassed window, and I turn in.
The morning sun streaming through the window wakes me up and I get used to a new routine of opening doors including those of toilets and bathrooms with electronic cards! It's a quick rush but we make it before the breakfast counter closes and serve ourselves to a cheap English Breakfast where jars of peanut butter and fermented yeast are the only things new to me.
Back in the room fortified by the large cups of tea I am willing to look at who my roommates are. Mr. Ashok Pillai is the Head of the Indian Positive Network (INP plus) and is well known as an Activist. So is Mr. Rama Pandian who is President of the Tamil Nadu Positive Network (TNP plus). Dr. M.
Suresh Kumar is a Psychiatrist at the Institute of Mental Health in Chennai.
Mr. A. Sivan is the Programme Associate for Communication in the AIDS Prevention and Control (APAC) Project of the Voluntary Health Services at Adyar, Chennai and he had been a close friend since I first met him in Kuala Lumpur two yeas ago during the 5th ICAAP. Dr. Kutikuppala Surya Rao an Ex-Member of the National AIDS Committee has his own Sri Surya Clinic in Visakhapatnam. Suhotro Biswas and Debashish Das are the Project Coordinator and Counsellor respectively at the Calcutta Samaritans. Mr. Vijay Raman works for the Sevanalayam Trust at Theni in Tamil Nadu, while Mr.
Oyyavandhan Palniappan works for Nalam Dana in Chennai.
Once I tell my name, most of them exclaim that they have seen my e-mails if not me! "Oh! So, You are that guy who keeps sending those web pages.
Interaction and all. I thought you were operating from Delhi. How come you
can do such stuff from Munnar?" Another says that I should be singing and
not sending e-mails! I reply that my recipients are lucky that I confine myself to only e-mails!
The Congress is at the Melbourne Convention Centre (MCC) and Mr. Rama Pandian and Sivan take me there. We change Trams at the corner of Bourke Street and Elizabeth Street. The MCC is a well-planned structure on Clarendon Street adjacent to the Holiday Inn on the North bank of the Yarra River. There is not much crowd at the Registration desk where each of us are given a large badge, a conference bag pamphlets and a heavy abstract book.
Clarendon Street continues over the Yarra by a bridge from where one gets a good view of the skyscrapers forming the city skyline towards the east. The hull and masts of an old large sailing ship at the dock area in the Polly Woodside Maritime Museum, catches the attention of the roving eye downstream and towards the west. Across the river on the Southern bank is the Royal Exhibition Centre, where the stalls of the Exhibitors have been laid out.
Telling Sivan that I would meet him back in the room I make my way from the Registration past the Poster Exhibition Hall and then down one level to Corryong 5 where I would have to conduct the Interactive Web Page Development Workshop on the morrow. Anne Mitchell, who is in charge of the Skill Building Sessions and a lone volunteer are at the desk. Anne Mitchell is the Manager of the Community Liaison and Education Unit at the Australian Research Centre In Sex, Health and Society at La Trobe University. She is the Chair of the Committee, which put together the Skills Building program.
Deputy Chair is Dr Susan Paxton from the Key Centre for Women's Health at the University of Melbourne. Other members are Kim Benton and Marion Brown from the International Unit of the MacFarlane Burnet Centre and Judith Jones From the Institute of Primary Care at La Trobe University, while Guy Hussey was a worker for the conference. I go over the hardware, software requirements and hall arrangements. I find that I am not able to connect my Laptop because I do not have an universal adaptor for the current source.
Back again via the Registration desk and through a door into the adjacent World Trade Center Building where I get the electrical adaptor at a pharmacy. At Corryong 5 the Laptop is connected but there is some mismatch
in the cables so that I cannot connect to the LCD Projector provided. The
Volunteer and me decide to copy the relevant files from my Laptop to the one provided by the Conference Organizers. I also find that Microsoft Front Page had not been installed in any of the fifteen Computers provided in the room. I alert Anne Mitchell and her group of volunteers, who assure me that it will be done the next day.
A glance at my watch and it is half past twelve. So, I rush down being a Friday to ask for directions to the nearest mosque. Ms. Elizabeth a volunteer who always like to help pours over a telephone directory, lists out the mosques, consults a map and gives me the Tram Numbers to get to Albany Mosque. It's five to one as I thank her and leave the MCC. In the tram the first person I ask happens to be an Egyptian more fluent in Arabic than English. I manage to tell him that I want to go to a mosque. I understood that he is going to one nearby and that Albany was too far away to get there in time for the congregational prayers. Two stops later he herds me out of the tram with a small group of Muslims. Thirty feet from that tram stop is the Victoria Islamic Centre, where for the first time ever I hear a Friday speech from the pulpit to the Congregation made in English.
Seated on the soft-carpeted floor and listening, I find is a loosing battle to keep my eyes open! Somehow, I just about manage.
Late Lunch at the Café in MCC is a Veggie Roll with a pot of Tea. I check my e-mails at one of the PCs in Corryong 5. Skill Building Sessions are on in some of the other Corryong Rooms There is a free tea/coffee corner well stocked with cookies. The Registration for the Skill Building Sessions would start the next day. It is around 4:00 P.M. and one has to be at the Royal Exhibition Buildings in the spacious Carlton Gardens situated at the Northeastern end of the city centre. I rush back to Hotel Bak Pak, and meet Susie Anna and her husband Murray. Susie had migrated from Munnar to Melbourne only six months ago. They save me the trouble of waiting for trams as they drop me off at Carlton Gardens right on the dot in their Toyota Car.
John Landy, Governor of Victoria, declares the Sixth ICAAP open just after sunset on the evening of The 5th October, to the accompaniment of traditional aboriginal music. Above the centre stage in the Royal Exhibition Building is a giant circular video screen, where we watch the big images play on, from our seats way back. Not having slept the night before, the speeches lull me with their soporific effects and even Shabna Azmi's old dramatic tricks in her keynote address fail to raise my drooping lids.
However, similar Keynote Addresses by Suzana Murni, Roy Chan and Peter Piot has me all ears. I am surprised how well my mind reacts to sycophancy and truth. The interspersed songs and ballet like "Dreaming for you" by Frank Yamma and "Alive after All" performed by the troupe that call themselves, "Crying in Public Places" were worth holding back the forty-winks. After Cocktails we walk down the roads to Franklin Street and turn into Bak Pak for the night.
Saturday the 6th October is D-Day for me. I am at the Melbourne Convention Centre early. Registration would start by 11 PM. Registration though began late was full and Anne Mitchell in charge of Skill Building Sessions had to allot an extra day to accommodate all the eager participants.
I conduct the Skill Building session on Interactive Web Page Development on HIV/AIDS for those who have registered for the day. The Objectives of the Workshop were to impart skills on how to develop interactive web pages to webmasters and NGOs maintaining or planning to maintain HIV/AIDS web sites.
Trainees with basic knowledge of handling MS Office and Internet Explorer had been selected. Many Trainees, who had mailed me days ago, that they would attend are present like Lisa Garbus, who is the Policy and International Editor of the HIV InSite of the University of California San Francisco. Marie Bopp has a web site on HIV/AIDS and being from French Polynesia is interested in translating all the Interactive Web Pages from the ISHIMA site into French. As the pages produced by me have no Copyrights, I assure her that she could do it without requesting any permission!
The web page development skills were taught by a demonstration of a few sample Interactive HIV/AIDS pages, which I had made during the year. The participants were trained in the Basics of Web page development, Concepts of Interactivity, Interest creation, Conceptualization of HIV/AIDS themes, Transforming themes and concepts to pages, Basics of HTML and Javascript and its use for Interaction, as wells in Requesting and receiving reader's feedback through Interactivity. The duration of each Workshop was 6 hours with a one-hour break for Lunch. By 5:00 PM, I call it a day and return to the Bak Pak Hotel. I change into casuals and wait to make Telephone calls, to Munnar in India, where it must be afternoon being four and a half hour behind, as well as to friends in Melbourne. Later in the dormitory room, I am touched to see that my room-mates are still awake, waiting for me to return so that they could continue the conversation late into the night.
The next day being a Sunday, I devote it to visiting the combined ICAAP and ASHM Exhibition at the Royal Exhibition Centre, the same venue, where Lunch and teas were served for all the Conference delegates during the days of the Congress. This is a focal and meeting point for the NGOs from all the countries in Asia who have their stalls containing not just commercial, community, development, government and medical exhibits, but also video and live performances. A central stage is devoted to song, theatre and drama presentations and it is gratifying to note that there is a performance at any time throughout the days of the Congress. During Lunch, I am buoyant at seeing the "Crying in Public Places", do their song once again and they oblige for snaps with me. Suzana is being presented with a quilt from the ABC Quilts Exhibitors and I cannot stop myself from getting photographed with such an illustrious person who has relentlessly worked for PWHAs.
Exhibitors seem to be in a philanthropic mood and I return that day weighed down by a bag full of books, brochures, booklets, a couple of video-cassettes, CDs and other similar IEC materials.
Monday the 8th October is a near repeat for me of Saturday being a day with full attendance at my Skill building session on Interactive Web Pages and HIV/AIDS. Monday is more interesting as the participants seem more eager ask a lot of questions, have me on my toes all the time and are a jolly good lot by themselves, picking up the nuances of Web page development slowly but surely. They are frank with their feedbacks even in writing. One Chinese Lady at the end of the session walks up to me and presents me with a small memorabilia. Many of those who attended that day have become my friends.
They leave with desires to start their own HIV/AIDS web sites having their own interactive creations.
The Congress goes on the whole week. HIV positives, gays, lesbians, bisexuals, transgenders, grass-root workers, project managers, religious leaders, politicians, health care workers, etc., have workshops, demonstrations, panel discussions, and all put their minds together, to hunt for the elusive solution to the HIV/AIDS pandemic. There is hardly any time for me to attend a few of the interesting sessions such as 'Gender and AIDS', 'Community Forums', and the 'Plenary Sessions'. I meet many other important people. The days fly fast. It's soon the closing ceremony and before long I am back on the plane with the pilot's voice welcoming me abroad.
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