Times and Travels: Annual Letters 1992 - 2020

By Coby Sikkens

This book consists of 28 annual letters written in the years 1992 – 2020. It started as an apology for not writing Christmas cards and grew out to annual accounts of the authors life which were shared with family and friends. They are written with vivacity and humour and a far cry from the usual round robins which irritate us so much at Christmas time. There is a letter for every year, but the date of their appearance varies from anywhere between December and May and one even covers two years in one go. The book begins with back ache and ends with Covid and hoping for better times.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris UK
• Release date: Dec 7, 2022
• ISBN: 9781664117174

Coby Sikkens

Jacoba ‘Coby’ Wilhelmina Sikkens, b. 1947, is of Dutch nationality and studied at Groningen University before joining the Department of Tropical Hygiene of the Royal Tropical Institute, Amsterdam, in 1969. Two years there as Editorial Secretary were followed by four as Head of the secretariat of the Medical Research Centre in Nairobi. Joining the World Health Organization in 1975 she held increasingly responsible positions over some thirty-one years. Her work included frequent travels to WHO's Regional Offices and other destinations. From 1995 to 1999 she worked in Indonesia. She completed her career in 2006 as External Relations Officer in WHO Headquarters in Geneva. After retirement her love of travel persisted and she was found in Zanzibar, India or elsewhere while keeping a home base in France. She now divides her time between France and Spain and continues to travel extensively whenever possible.

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Ornex, 20 December 1992

As you know, I am not in the habit of writing circular letters at Christmas, as I generally prefer to write to each of you individually about the latest news. However, this year the events of the last few weeks have completely overtaken any possibility I might have had to get Christmas cards and Christmas shopping done on time (i.e., before Christmas 1992).

On 16 November, when one is normally just about to start all these activities, my back decided to give up on me and I had, I think, the lumbago to beat all lumbagos. Now that all is well again, I shall tell you the story, which is quite funny, if you think about it.

Part I

It was my habit to leave the keys of the house on the inside in the locks, both of the door to the garage as well as of the front door, to prevent, I thought, burglars from creeping in at night. It also prevents anybody else from coming in if keys are positioned that way. I should have thought about that. Anyway, on this famous Monday morning, I had gone down, opened the shutters, and given my ironing to Mme Roth, who comes quite early to collect it. I then went back upstairs to have my usual bath, and as I bent over to put the plug in, my back just got stuck and gave me the most frightful pains you can imagine. All I managed to do was get back to the bed and let myself fall on it. I was in absolute agony. I just lay there for some time, until it dawned on me that somehow or other, I could not stay like that forever and die of pain and cramps in my back. Fortunately, I have a telephone by the bed which I can reach from a lying position. All the sensible telephone numbers, however, were in the nice directory which I keep in my little study next door to the bedroom. No chance of getting any of those, as I could not move. For that reason, I dialled the only number I know by heart. It will surprise no one that that is the number of WHO. I spoke to one of my colleagues and managed to convey the message that I was in agony and that somebody had to do something. She looked up the number of my doctor in Versoix in the telephone directory and put me through to one of our medical officers, because I wanted to ask if there was any way I could possibly make myself move enough to open a door for someone when they came. John Clements, whom I spoke to, told me very firmly to stay where I was and said he would take action and come to my rescue and ring me back. Was there anyone who had a key to anything? Yes, I said, there is a key to the house in my desk drawer, but it is no good, because the keys are in the lock on the inside. My neighbour (for those of you who know, from the blue house) had a key to the garage, because one of her boys often mows the lawn for me in the summer and I had once given him a key to be able to do that while I was not there. However, to get from the garage into the house, one had to open the connecting door, and as said before, the key was in the lock on the inside. Clem rang the neighbour anyway, I think, and he rang me back to say he would come together with Nicholas Cohen, another of our medical officers.

In the meantime, I rang the doctor and told his assistant I could not move, I was in agony, and could he come. She said, very sorry, he is on a sabbatical, but his replacement will come as soon as she can, but not before twelve. I had no strength to argue and had no idea what time it was anyway.

Then Clem and Nicholas arrived. They found the ladder in the garage and climbed up on the balcony so that they could at least see me and talk to me. All of a sudden Nicholas was there, which was a great comfort, because it had seemed hours to me, and the pain was excruciating. Someone (to this day I have not yet found out who) had the brilliant idea to ring the pompiers (fire brigade) to help to get into the house. The pompiers must have arrived very quickly because I remember Nicholas giving me a running commentary from the balcony as to what they were doing below. All the time, almost with every breath I took, I had the most awful cramps in my back and prayed for some sort of relief. Death seemed a gentle idea at the time. All of a sudden, I heard a terrific noise, as if they were breaking the house down. Later I heard that Clem had been walking around the house with two of the three pompiers to see which window could be broken easiest without doing too much damage, while the third pompier, with an enormous crash, broke out the connecting door between the garage and the house, complete with frame and all. All of a sudden, there were Clem and Nicholas and three enormous pompiers and Mme Bardout (the neighbour) all in my bedroom. Nicholas was on the phone to hospital to get me a place. Clem got the keys out of the lock. He brought them upstairs. They also phoned the doctor again and told her to come immediately. One of the pompiers was sent to the corner of the main road to wait for her and show her the way. How long all this took I don’t know.

All I remember is that she came and gave me an injection of some sort, which was supposed to kill enough pain so that they could move me. The pompiers had brought an inflatable harness which they called couette. They wanted to lift me on it and then pump air in it so that I was totally mummified (arms crosswise over the breast) and could not move. All in aid of me not having too much pain when I was lowered down my most uncomfortable stairs. I really don’t know how they did it, but I was lifted onto the thing by six people, it was blown up with me in it, and they got me downstairs into the fire brigade van. All the time I was still alive. Fortunately, I did not see what they had done to the house. We departed and arrived in the Hôpital de la Tour at the emergencies. From then on, the story becomes uninteresting for about a week. A doctor flexed my toes and heels, etc. I was put on a drip containing anti-inflammatories and painkillers and twenty mg of valium a day as well as physiotherapy after the first three days. Full hospital treatment for a week. My other neighbours (Monsieur and Madame Vivien) had seen me depart, and as I know them slightly better and they had come to see me immediately, they were in charge of the house and cleaned away the very worst of the debris before I came home the next Monday afternoon. (For that to happen Maureen had had to go and collect me some clothes, since I had nothing but a nightie.) You realize that a week of valuable Christmas preparation time had been spent in hospital! However, I was greatly relieved and happy to be home again.

Part II

That Monday evening Maureen and I ate from the freezer (snijbonen stamppot, for those of you who can read Dutch) and I went to my own bed, about nine o’clock, I think.

The next day I had to go out to the pharmacy to get all these drugs that were prescribed to get me into even better condition. I felt a little shaky, but OK. I was terribly shocked to see the state of my door, although Monsieur Vivien had put it back into place again. The holes in the walls were terrific. Maureen and I had put loads of newspapers into them to try to stop the worst draft. The whole door frame had come out. The pompiers had mumbled something about my insurance, but when I rang them, they explained it had not been an infraction, nor a cambriolage, since the pompiers had asked and been given permission from the police to break the door down. So, I was not insured for this. I rang someone else I know who has a lot of acquaintance with the building trade and asked him for help. He offered to come and have a look the next day at four o’clock. Some relief. In the afternoon Mme Vivien came and had a cup of tea with me. While she was with me, my back started to hurt again in spite of three or four different kinds of pills I had taken. She ran upstairs and found me some more painkillers. I revived a little bit and felt better. After work Wyn came and brought me supper. We had a rather nice evening, and she left about nine. I decided not to leave the key in the lock and hung it by the side where the coat hangers are. But just before I wanted to go upstairs, I was not quite sure that I had switched off the outside light when she had gone and opened the door to see and switched it off and … left the key in the lock!

Part III

It was Wednesday morning, 25 November, in the meantime. I woke up after a very good night’s sleep and needed to go to the toilet. I tried to get out of bed … and couldn’t. My back locked itself in the most painful spasms you can think of. I still needed to go and let myself fall out of bed and got to the bathroom on my knees. I am not sure how I got back to bed, but all I knew was that the pain seemed much worse than the first-time round. It was not true! It couldn’t be true! I was better, and I was out of hospital! I remember grabbing a few painkillers from the bedside table and just swallowing them as they were. I must have lain there for quite a while before my brain started functioning again. Of course, the one saviour was still there: the phone. I called the office as before. I got a consultant on the phone and asked for James (my colleague). She told me everybody was in a staff meeting. I asked her to get him out; it was urgent. Please could she get him and get him to call me back. He did call quite soon. I must have said something about needing to get back to the hospital. I am not sure exactly how the conversation went, but James and I work together and in general understand each other. Few words sufficed for him to get on his motorbike and come to Ornex quickly. (Later I was told that he had jumped around the office and shouted, she has done it again!) He also managed to ring Mme Vivien who this time had a key to the house but … the keys were in the lock. However, she also had a key to the garage and as the connecting door had not yet been repaired from last time James had little difficulty in getting in and opening the front door for the ambulance people and Mme Vivien who all arrived at the same time. Where the ambulance came from, I have only found out this week when the bill arrived. I don’t know who called it, but it came. It was more upper class to go in a real ambulance than in the fire-brigade van, but I was not really aware of all this at the time. The ambulance people seemed to be handier in getting me downstairs than the fire-brigade. They had brought a little chair type thing and somehow or other between them and me I got into it, and they carried me downstairs (still the same narrow stairs) where a real stretcher was waiting for me and I was put on it and wheeled into the ambulance. Off to the Hôpital de la Tour again. James followed on the motorbike. Before leaving I must have mumbled something about the door, because I remember James telling Mme Vivien that someone was coming for the door at four o’clock. As it turned out she took care of it beautifully. This time the hospital seemed to be knowing better that I was arriving because I was brought straight into a room and put into a bed, when I promptly became sick all over it and myself. James called a nurse who did some cleaning up. He was then asked to do something administratively to get me re-inscribed into the hospital computer. I must have dropped off to sleep because when I woke, ages later, I was on a drip again and he had tiptoed out, back to the 1993 budget which it would have been my job to prepare. When the train of doctors arrived this time, they seemed to treat it all a little more seriously. They found a rheumatologist who had a look at me and then a look at the X-rays from the first- time round and then put his hand somewhere on my lower left back and said: là? My reaction immediately convinced him he was right. They put a different sort of bag on the drip and the physiotherapie got ultrason added to it and nice hot mud plaques under my back which they call fango. I was there for 10 days this time and came home in the evening of 4 December. L’histoire se repète: Maureen had to go again to get me some clothes to go home in. This time we stopped off at the pharmacie and bought a whole load of new drugs for me to take during the next week or so. The doctor in the hospital had decided I could go back to work part-time on the Wednesday which I did. I was sort of half-baked for quite a while. Still go to physiotherapy twice a week until the beginning of the new year and then I hope that all this will be behind me with no recurrences.

I hope you all understand that Father Christmas has been slightly delayed this year. He is, however, thinking of you all and wishes you an absolutely wonderful 1993.

Coby

1993

Ornex, December 1993

Before starting this epistle, I re-read last years’ horror story about my back and am so very happy I have nothing as exciting as that to tell this year. Lots of good things have happened and some not so good, but they mainly concern WHO and I guess that’s their problem, whoever they are (Board Members, Assembly delegates, DG? who knows!). The DG was re-elected. I am sure you have all heard and read in newspapers and television of the terrific mess that accompanied it and I shall not go into the quite gory details here. After all they still pay me, and I want them to continue to do so.

The first memorable event after re-election was my trip to Brazzaville. I went to assist the Immunization Programme in the Regional Office with their administration. They do not have anyone themselves who properly looks after it all the time and the medical officers have to do this work on the side, so from time to time it needs some specific attention. A lot of my colleagues do not like the Brazzaville office, but I feel quite happy there. The people are so warm and friendly, and I always feel so welcome there. The problem is that the office is quite far from the town, and not having a car makes getting around very difficult. This time I stayed in the Meridien Hotel which I find much more pleasant than the PLM (M’bamou palace), where the ladies of the night dominate the scene, and I feel quite out of place. The Meridien has a lovely swimming pool and a poolside snackbar, where I refreshed myself after coming home from the office at about 15.30. (We start work at 7 a.m., which is a nightmare.) (Literally!) After an hour or so I went upstairs to work on the 1994/95 budget book, which was great fun. The Dell laptop which I had brought was a little gem and I sometimes was so busy playing with figures that I forgot to go to dinner. I usually went around nine. The food was fine as long as you avoided the obvious no no’s like beef which is just not there unless it dates from a last century French cow and tastes as such. The chef had a wonderful hand with omelettes ‘grand mere’ which were delicious. After two weeks in Brazza I had a weeks’ leave and took the Air Afrique City Hopper from Brazzaville to Abidjan via Libreville, Douala, and Lome. It took all day! My friend Margaret is a wonderful hostess and gave me a very good time. Abidjan has a golf club with a swimming pool as big as a lake. Grand Bassam is the nearest seaside resort where we went twice. There we lived on lobster and wine. It was the good life multiplied. A visit to the Basilica in Yamoussoukro is an obligatory pilgrimage. The Pope opened it some years ago and now it stands there, larger than St Peter in Rome. Fabulous and totally out of place. The building is fantastic, the windows are wonderful works of art: Africa is reflected in the pineapples and palm trees that surround the Saints on display. The colours are breath-taking. It is vast and hot, because the air-conditioning is not on for the odd tourist that occasionally comes to have a look. Outside in Yamoussoukro are some very wide tarmac boulevards leading up to the building on which a herd of goats and its shepherd look lost. Cars are rare and almost all non-local. The Hotel President is equally grand and totally empty. Out of the three hundred rooms I think about five were occupied. All guests congregated in the restaurant on the top floor. The other restaurants were closed for obvious reasons. The meal was nice. The next morning our voices echoed in the coffee shop where we had breakfast before going back to Abidjan.

Back in Geneva things moved quietly forward through the Assembly in May and into June which gave the first shake up at work about the reorganization. Do not worry, WHO is never very fast, it is still going on in full force and as far as the Expanded Programme on Immunization is concerned the results will not be known before the end of January, if then. We will have a new boss, but the person which was the most likely candidate thought better of it and refused. Of course, things are not so simple, and politics play a large part as unfortunately is usual these days in WHO.

In June I travelled to the United States, Washington D.C. to see with our Regional Office about the setup of the Global Advisory Group Meeting which was to be held in October. Apart from meeting the PAHO colleagues which was nice, it was totally tiring and uninteresting apart from the one day I managed to take off to explore Georgetown and Pentagon City shopping centre and the evening that I saw Shear Madness in the Kennedy Centre. The Kennedy Centre is situated on the Potomac and has seven or so theatres, ranging from a very large Opera Hall to a small top floor experimental type theatre. A real bigger and better American endeavour, but very, very nice.

The cousins came to stay during the one week of summer Geneva and surroundings may boast of for 1993. Bart and the children were really lucky with the weather, and it allowed us various nice trips into the Jura and elsewhere.

The important project around the house this year was the Garden. Monsieur Jaquemin started the work during September, and I hope I may tell you that it is finished by next Christmas, because right now it looks worse than ever. It seemed such a wonderful project and I had been looking forward to having it done, but I had once again miscalculated the malice/incompetence/lack of organization/etc. etc. of the average French (workers and bosses alike) and the whole thing has for the moment turned into a nightmare, about which nothing can be done until next spring. The garden shed has been delivered and placed the wrong way round. The earth has been ameliorated by hundreds of sacks of goodies, which have caused the level of the surface to rise way above the terrace. You have never seen anything like it! Let alone the driveway, which has now been finished but had to be done twice over, because they had made the entrance so narrow that my car got stuck. Needless to say, that when the work started, I had a firm assurance that it would all be finished by the end of October, but it wasn’t. Let us hope the snow will cover whatever is there now for most of the winter! I don’t like snow, but it has its uses.

My aunt (father’s sister) came and stayed for about ten days in September. We did the cultural scene and saw the Monet and Degas exhibitions and went to Champex just above Martigny which is a very nice little place with an alpine garden. We managed to enjoy ourselves in spite of the record rainfall on Jeune Genevois (a public holiday) and slightly less record rainfall most of the other time.

The highlight of the year was my holiday which I took after the meeting in PAHO in October. I left Washington for Eureka on 16 October. It was a foggy day, and the flights were cancelled. I managed to get as far as San Francisco and got to Eureka (Humboldt County in Northern California) the next morning. Brenda and Bill (my friends from Kenya days) and Warren and Britta (their children) were all there to meet me. It was so good to see them. Last time I was there, Warren had been six months, now he is almost sixteen. It was a little sad to see that the economy in the area had declined due to the fact that the wood logging has stopped. I tried to find some nice redwood objects to take home with me but that was no longer easy; however, thanks to Bill’s perseverance I succeeded. When I left them, I flew to Las Vegas; Circus and Disneyland for grown-ups all in one. An amazing place. From there I had a two-day trip to the Grand Canyon. Awesome is the word. The indigenous locals called it upside down mountain and that is about right. The hole in the ground is a mile deep. I would have loved to take one of those mule rides down to the bottom, but unfortunately time was too short for that. In some places you could see the Colorado river like a muddy track down in the bottom but mostly it was hidden. A fantastic trip, but it was very cold there. From Las Vegas I flew to Memphis, Tennessee, where Marj (another of my friends from Kenya) met me off the plane and took me to Jonesboro, Arkansas, where she now lives and teaches in the State University. Marj and her friend and neighbour Scott, looked after me very well. One of the nicest meals I ate was the southern BBQed ribs with a sauce that was so good that I bought a bottle in the restaurant and brought it home with me. Marj and Scott went to give a presentation at a conference for ethnomusicologists in Oxford, Mississippi, which is how I came to visit the Real Deep South. To my amazement there were confederate flags flying everywhere. The civil war is not over, don’t make a mistake: Yankee go home! Scarlett O’Hara country indeed. Oxford was really very pretty. New Orleans type balconies etc. The University that held the meeting Ole Miss, had organized a concert of southern music, country and blues and whatever else they do. I enjoyed that very much. The weather turned very cold when we were there and there were even some snowflakes when we drove back to Memphis where I found the aeroplane that transported me to Atlanta and then New York and then there was this wonder of air travel to take me home: a Swissair plane. Unfortunately, my luggage had got stuck somewhere before I hit Swissair and arrived two days later.

When I got back to the office there were five grant proposals to be prepared and all the rest that had been waiting for me to come back to. I am still busy with that.

And now it will be Christmas again and the New Year will come. I shall go to Holland this year and spend the time there. I wish you all a really wonderful Christmas and a very happy 1994!

You have my full permission to skip the bits in this letter that bore you!

Coby

1994

Ornex, 26 December 1994

Yes, you are reading right, it is 26 December today, the day after Christmas! I have never been this late before and I do apologize. I hope Christmas has passed peacefully and merry for every one of you. Although I have not done anything about it, I have been thinking of you all, waiting for inspiration to arrive, to write this letter. It is not so easy this time because in my mind 1994 stands out as a rather sad and dull year, although many things happened. I say sad, because far too many of my friends and colleagues have been hit by serious illness or death in themselves or their close families and every time a new bout of bad news occurred, I was brought back to the thought of how fragile life is and how quickly one’s fate can change from relatively healthy and happy to total devastation and misery. Dull, also a little bit, because somehow, the events of 1994 have trouble sticking in my mind and I find it difficult to recall the sequence of things. But I shall have a go anyway.

I remember having a wonderful time last Christmas and over the New Year being on Home Leave and dividing my time between all the cousins. It was really nice to be looked after by them each in turn and it feels good to belong. It was nice to raid the Dutch shops and find all those familiar things that you don’t need but are nice anyway.

Back at work it was malaise, but all of a sudden, the New Director was appointed. The threats of changing the immunization programme and merging it with other parts of WHO slowly became reality. It was a miserable mess. The ex-Director had taken off to Indonesia and is now the WHO representative there. (Can’t help feeling he was the lucky one!) Dr J.W. Lee (Korean nationality) arrived from Manila and we were all wondering what would happen next. The Programme changed title and became the global Programme for Vaccines and Immunization and instead of being just a Programme it now has three Units with Chiefs and a Director’s office into which I was moved. To this day I have not found out exactly what my job is and what it is not, but it is by no means so interesting or exciting as it was before. I am quite miserable, which comes partly from not feeling very appreciated, which is something I need, to function well. But busy it remains, and I am not very good at doing things half, so we carry on, hoping that the situation will improve in the future, at least in the microworld of immunization, because for the rest of WHO there is little hope in the next few years. We have just lost the AIDS programme which becomes a separate United Nations Programme, which will be subject to a Governing Body consisting of many of the UN Agencies. There is a transition team busy working out how it is going to be structured. I am writing all this in one paragraph, but the months of haggling and negotiating that went into it are simply indescribable.

Sometime in March I received a letter from my friend Celia in Bangkok saying among other things, that her husband who works with UNICEF was on a long mission in Sudan and that she and Emma, their daughter, were having to cope on their own for a while. Somehow the thought of Bangkok, which I liked very much the first time I was there, appealed to me, especially the heat and the pool and the company of a good friend; so, I sent a fax and asked if she would have me for some days. I went for ten days at Easter and revived myself. We spent our days going back and forth to the tailor and visiting all the nice restaurants in Sukhumvit. We also had a lovely trip to the floating market which is a few hours outside Bangkok. We had tea in the Shangri La and lunch in the Oriental hotel. It was just right to revive me for the rest of the year. Traffic jams were as bad as ever, but they are a way of life there.

In the meantime, Krista, my cousin Janna’s daughter, had managed to obtain a place as an intern in the WHO Tuberculosis Programme. She came to Geneva for three months and although she lived in town in one of the foyers for students, I saw quite a lot of her, which was very nice. We even managed to go up to the mountains together with my friend Sue, one weekend before she left. It was a lovely lazy weekend which we all enjoyed. Since Krista was here, Henk and Janna came themselves, on their way to Spain for a few days and parked their caravan in the newly established drive in the garden. They were just in time to see the first fuzz of lawn sprouting out of the seeds, because I had finally got Monsieur Jaquemin to finish the job of making me a proper garden. (He was only about one year late! You will remember the laments in my previous Christmas letter). Later in the year when Loes and Roel (my other cousins) were staying, Loes attacked with enthusiasm the weeds in this new lawn and was extremely effective in removing them. I am very proud of my garden now, which is really very nice. I also found Paul; Paul is English and the boyfriend of one of my colleagues at work, and he does JOBS. Meaning that he comes one afternoon a week and looks after garden, and whatever else needs looking after. He varnished the balcony and the front door and did and does many more things that need doing. He is also expensive but worth every centime.

Somewhere along the line it had been decided that I was to be responsible for the organization of the Consultative Group Meeting for the CVI (Children’s Vaccine Initiative), which was to be held in Amsterdam in November. So, in May I trundled along to Amsterdam where I met Mariana from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in the Hague and together, we visited the RAI Congress Centre and various hotels in Amsterdam to start setting up this meeting for which the Dutch Government had offered to be the host. Actually, it was all a little painful, because the Dutch had very specific thoughts about the CVI and did not really like the initiative as it was organized then, but they were lumbered with this job by somebody’s predecessor, who was now far away. However, conscientious people that we are, we did our duty wonderfully well and WHO has much to be grateful for. In early July, after the donors meeting, Dr Lee discovered that not every donor was ever so happy with WHO’s plans for vaccine programmes and for fear of losing too much money he decided to travel around the European capitals (Europeans were the least enthusiastic for the rather American and Japanese dominated CVI). First stop: the Hague (they were the most obstructive). The Ministry phoned to the Permanent Mission in Geneva and requested that I accompany Dr Lee, (partly because of the earlier mentioned meeting). So, off again to Amsterdam and the Hague where we had a days’ meeting after which I showed Dr Lee the delights of Scheveningen on a hot summers’ day (mistake) and made him eat zoute haring (salted herring) (not a mistake).

At the end of July, I joined the polio team for the coordination meeting for Global Polio Eradication, which was held in Atlanta and organized by CDC. In spite of all the years I have spent in Communicable Diseases Programmes this was my first visit to the hot seat of Control. Atlanta is one of the prettiest American cities I have visited so far. We stayed in the Swissotel where the meeting was held, and it was terribly nice to meet so many people I know on their home ground as well as all the regional medical officers who were attending. It was like being part of a big family and very encouraging. My job was to negotiate more on the side of the actual meeting the streamlining of CDC and other donors’ assistance through WHO for the eradication of polio. I felt it was one of the most useful things I did this year. As the hotel was opposite a rather nice shopping centre, I managed to bring back a lot of new bath towels, which in the States are better and cheaper than in Europe. Had to borrow a suitcase, but never mind.

I arrived back in Geneva on my birthday and fell asleep during the birthday dinner Wyn had organized for me. I made it home and heard later that the party had been a success even without me, which was nice to know.

My old school friend Marja came to visit for the first time together with her two boys and a friend. This was quite an event since I had been cajoling her for about 19 years to come and see me in Geneva, since I am always keen to accept her hospitality when in Holland. This visit will always be remembered as the visit of the brazier. I had, in a Dutch garden magazine seen a picture of a brazier for the garden in which you could burn logs on cool evenings, so that you could sit out longer and did not have to go inside. It looked so lovely and seemed such a good idea that I decided to order this brazier from the Magazine’s shopping department. I sent a cheque for the required amount, which after a few weeks was returned to me, torn up, saying it could not be accepted. I rang up the firm, which was not so easy to do, but finally somebody very grumpy in Aalsmeer (a small Dutch town) told me that I would have to have it delivered somewhere in Holland. I told him that with EEC rules etc. this was ridiculous and cancelled the whole thing. I kept, however, fretting about it, and when Marja announced that she was coming I mentioned this to her. She very kindly went through the same unsuccessful rigmarole of telephone calls and finally found the brazier in the Bijenkorf, one of Holland’s main department stores. Her son was sent out to buy it and bring it home. Poor Maarten was dirty and exhausted from bringing this thing back from the centre of Amsterdam on the tram, only to find that when they were setting out to drive to Geneva, they realized that there was no place for it in the car. Fortunately, the accompanying friends’ husband was joining them later and brought the brazier in his car. What my friends do not suffer for me! The brazier has been used several times and is really very nice and works mesmerizing wonders after dinner in the garden.

In the meantime, ever since early May I had been coughing and sniffing much more than ever, and it had all become so bad that I went to see a doctor that deals with noses and throats. He decided that I had something they call polyposes, but that I had been having this already for a very long time and the scan showed that my sinuses and forehead and respiratory tracts were blocked by whatever the polyps did. The general advice was to have the whole business cleaned up by an operation. Since I was pretty desperate, I gave in and the date was set for August 9. So, when August 8 came, I went into the hospital and the next morning had my nose and sinuses operated on. I stayed in the hospital for a week, feeling pretty grotty after this three-hour operation under full anaesthetic. The curative process was not helped by the fact that I was still coughing worse than ever, so I was also sent off to see a lungspecialist. In the end everything turned out fine, but it took five whole miserable long weeks, before I was fit to go back to work again. But the weather was nice, and the garden was lovely, so I did most of my daytime sleeping there.

Back at work it was full speed ahead for the Amsterdam meeting in November and although we survived it, the least said about it the better. It was awful. A whole new crowd of largely unpleasant people, who all want a slice of the new programme and are lusting after power in the vaccine world. The slogan is from bench to bush but I cannot help thinking that bush comes a very poor second after bench under the influence of the manufacturers and researchers patting each other’s backs.

After this meeting, which had done no good to my blood pressure and caused very swollen feet every evening, it was holiday time.

Maureen and I went off on the most delightful trip. First to Hongkong, where she had not been before and where I was very happy to go back to, and later to Bali. In Hongkong we did all the things one does; Victoria Peak, having clothes made at the tailor (a nice new winter coat for me!), Aberdeen and Stanley Market, Tea in the Peninsula Hotel and eat, eat and eat again. A visit to Macau, a boat trip to Cheung Chau and betting on the horses at Happy Valley racecourse. Hongkong had become definitely more dilapidated than it was in 89 when I had been there earlier and most of the expatriates plan on leaving next year or so. The Hongkong Chinese, which in general are a surly lot, do not seem too worried about the Chinese take over in 1997.

Bali is a lovely place. We stayed in one of the very nice beach hotels on Nusa Dua beach and apart from one trip inland to the woodcarving places and the silver workshops, and one half day to Denpasar, we were quite content to ferry ourselves from the swimming pool to the sea and back again with the occasional stop at the bar. It was just what was needed after this rather uncertain year.

We came back on 5 December, and I needed some time to get adjusted back into normal life and the 1995 Budget for the Vaccination Programmes. Hence the lateness of all this.

Work is still a mess, but 1995, the year of the Pig, will sort it all out, I am sure. The year of the Pig is my year and I have high hopes of it for myself and for all of you. A very happy new year!

Coby

1995

Jakarta, 15 December 1995

Here I am, Friday, December 15, sitting on my front veranda typing away at this Christmas letter. I took the day off, principally to do this and to catch up on my Bahasa Indonesia lessons, which are taxing the old brain. Most of you know that I am here, and how I got here, but nevertheless I shall go back a bit and relate it all.

I just saw that I predicted last year that the year of the Pig would sort me out and in its own piggy way it has! In the beginning of 1995, the problems at work became worse and worse and work became less satisfactory almost every hour of every day. Dr Lee had ideas about managing the programme which somehow or other left less and less space for me and although nothing was said it was clear I had to do something. So, when my old boss (the one that got away to Indonesia) told me that there was going to be a vacancy in his office in June for an administrative officer, and was I interested in applying, I thought about this for a long time. When finally, the vacancy notice came in February, I had worked out for myself that leaving France and the house was less bad than being unhappy in work, so I applied. These things, in proper WHO fashion, take a very long time to be decided, so when the request came for me to go to Brazzaville to assist the EPI Programme there with updating the administrative and financial systems and briefing a potential new admin officer, I was very happy to go for some weeks. It made me a little sad, because I knew that it would probably be the last time for a while, and that I would miss much all the regular contacts with the people from the regional office, because ever since I lived in Nairobi in the long distant past, je suis toujours Africaine au coeur. Actually, that is the main problem in moving away from HQ that one loses global contacts and limits oneself to a smaller area. Anyway, when I came back from AFRO we were still hanging on without any decision and my blood pressure could not sustain it. It shot up even more than normal and I was home for three weeks on sick leave, brooding over my sins. Then the request came for me to go to Jakarta and Delhi to be looked over by staff and Government and Regional Office alike and for them to make up their minds if they really wanted me for the job. The WR (WHO representative in the country) made me very welcome and when I came back after having spent a day in India also, I felt that I might possibly have landed the job. Now I had to decide what to do with the house. At first, I did not even think of selling it. It was so much part of me that I could not bear the thought. So, I started contacting agents to see if it could be rented out. Then I started hearing horror stories about how in France 5% of all locataires do not pay rent and that there is a law which says that between October and March you cannot evict anybody for not paying rent and then the idea that you rent it for one year and have to start looking for new locataires from far away. On top of it all the agents I saw needed to have their fee. I saw myself losing out more than gaining and I could simply not afford to keep on the house and paying rent in Indonesia for another one. So, after a lot of thinking and listening to people who know the housing trade I decided to sell. It was very hard, as anyone who knew the place can understand, but once the decision was taken, I felt as though a burden had been taken away from me. After that I could enjoy the summer and even found time for a week in Holland with the family before the packing up began in earnest.

My cousins, Janna and Henk rang me from Spain where they were on holiday around the end of May and said they wanted to come and see me on their way home. They probably realized much better than I did at that time what was at stake. I just continued with the garden and improving bits and pieces here and there as though I was not going anywhere at all! Anyway, they came, and we had a very rainy time, but then, no one controls the weather. When it was certain I was leaving, I asked my aunt to come to France for a week, because even if I managed to go to Holland, it would be a rushed visit and we would hardly have time to talk at all. So, she came, and we had a lovely week. All the time everything I did was interrupted by monsieur Cottin, the housing agent who came daily to show people around the house and the garden. The main difficulty in selling seemed to be the threatening electricity line at the back about which no one was quite sure if it would ever work and if so when. There were some Russians who almost bought it and then backed out even after the appointment with the notary had been made, but finally in the last week before I left it was sold, or at least the compromis de vente was signed.

I spent a week in Zoetermeer and Deventer at the end of July. It had been years since I had a birthday with any family member around, so this was a real treat, especially since I was taken out to dinner twice!

Then at end of August the packers came, and I moved in with June and Fred for the last week. If it had not been for all my friends, I would have had a hard time the last few weeks in Geneva, but as it was all passed happily in a flurry of farewell parties and a lovely present from my office colleagues and then there was the big iron bird which carried me off to Jakarta in the company of five suitcases.

I almost feel as though I have to start Chapter II here, because this year has been divided so clearly in two parts.

On my arrival I was accommodated in the hotel Arcadia, conveniently at walking distance from the office and after the first jet lag was over, I was all prepared to settle in and start the new job. However, the settling in went with hiccups, because the 2nd week after my arrival there was the PIN (Pekan Immunisasi Nasional; National Immunization week) and I was despatched in the company of a UNICEF staff member as International Observer to Kupang in West Timor. I felt useless and highly likely was, but I was told that the presence of my white face was all that was needed to make the people happy on that particular occasion. Anyway, I was interviewed by the local press and made it into the newspaper. The 2nd hiccup was the two weeks I had to spend in Delhi to be briefed in the Regional Office. This Regional Office never makes for very happy visits, I don’t think, but it was good to meet whoever was there and to be able to sift chaff from wheat through first-hand experience. The Regional Director, who is Indonesian informed me that he wished the country team in Indonesia to be strong and all that jazz and after two weeks I was sent on my merry way again. Fortunately, there were Jon Andrus and Alice where I stayed, so at least evenings and weekends were very nice and spent in good company. I managed a half day trip through Delhi: Red Fort, the big mosque and one or two other things; bought some souvenirs in the Government Cottage Industry shop and let myself be taken for a ride (both literally and figuratively) in a bajaj.

In the two weeks I had actually spent in Jakarta I had managed to see about 25 houses and one of them appealed to me, so I negotiated with the owner on my return from Delhi and I moved in in about a week later. So, there I am now in Kebayoran Baru, one of Jakarta’s residential areas where local notables and expats have their footholds. It is a lovely street full of local life. Each little warung that passes has its own sound and by the sound one ought to be able to tell what they sell. I have only managed the Bah-mee man and the ice cream man and while I was sitting here the vegetable vendor came by. Also, someone that sells picture frames, and no doubt, when I am at work many more local commerce passes by my house which I don’t see. With the house, I acquired Tari, my Indonesian Gladys, for those of you who remember the Nairobi days. Tari has a husband called Dawi and a little girl (Dwirindi) who will celebrate her 7th birthday tomorrow. They all live in three small rooms behind my kitchen, but such is life. Tari cleans and washes and gardens and sometimes cooks. She just produced a beautiful gado gado, but occasionally I am less taken with the bony chicken and sinewy meat dishes she comes up with. Dawi is a jaga (watchman) half time