We would have to be ready for our status meeting in the hotel room of our boss at 7.30. She would delegate where we each had to be, what sessions each one of us had to attend, and so forth. We would typically get 2-3 sessions a day, where we had to write up a summary of the session within two hours, and e-mail it to our boss, who would compile all the summaries and articles into our daily newsletter, Mujeres Adelante. The five newsletters from each day of the conference are available online and can be read here http://aln.org.za/article.asp?id=32, and I wrote in almost all of them, except one, I think. So it was a hectic schedule. Moments to eat during the day were pretty much non-existing, and we had to grab food "on the road", so to speak.
The only moment we could sit down and eat was during breakfast, before our 7.30 meeting. But the breakfast opened at 07.00 ( the breakfast buffet was included at the hotel where we stayed, which by the way was here http://www.hotelcapri.at/, for those interested) So the morning break was basically the only break we had. We worked from 7.30 in the morning until 21-22 at night. After completing articles for the newsletter, there were other practical tasks which had to be taken care of, such as updating our endorsement list of organizations. We had posters at different venues at the conference, where people could endorse for our "10 reasons why criminalization of HIV-transmission and exposure harms women". You can read more about that here http://www.aln.org.za/article.asp?id=31. We were five people from the office sent to Vienna, that is Johanna, Gahsiena, Bongiwe, Jayne, and myself.
The only moment we could sit down and eat was during breakfast, before our 7.30 meeting. But the breakfast opened at 07.00 ( the breakfast buffet was included at the hotel where we stayed, which by the way was here http://www.hotelcapri.at/, for those interested) So the morning break was basically the only break we had. We worked from 7.30 in the morning until 21-22 at night. After completing articles for the newsletter, there were other practical tasks which had to be taken care of, such as updating our endorsement list of organizations. We had posters at different venues at the conference, where people could endorse for our "10 reasons why criminalization of HIV-transmission and exposure harms women". You can read more about that here http://www.aln.org.za/article.asp?id=31. We were five people from the office sent to Vienna, that is Johanna, Gahsiena, Bongiwe, Jayne, and myself.
You can read about each day of the conference below. Enjoy! :)
July 16 and 17, 2010
The first people to arrive in Vienna was our boss, Johanna, and Gahsiena. They left on July 13. I arrived second, in July 16th. I would have left a day later, but since AIDS Legal Network (ALN) bought my ticket, it had to be within a certain price range, and the tickets after July 15 were more expensive, and I did not want to cover the ticket myself, so I left on July 15 2010. I had my original ticket leaving Cape Town on August 5, which unfortunately just ws wasted, as I after hard effort not could change the dates on it. Arriving in Vienna was interesting, I had never been there before, and this was my first meet with a European country after having been on the African continent for so long. I was told that a guy would be waiting for me at the airport, and I immediately found him, and we were on our way. Coming from the cold winter in Cape Town to Summer in Europe was quite strange. I already had developed cold symptoms before I left, and I had to wear warm clothes in Vienna, in spite of the heat, if I didn't want it to escalate. It was a strange feeling being away from Cape Town, and not in Denmark, as I wasn't really "home". I missed Cape Town terribly. I had also been stressed before leaving Cape Town with seeing friends, cleaning, etc etc, so I was quite tired. I felt like I was in some sort of bubble in Vienna. When we arrived at the hotel, the taxi driver said I had to pay for the fare. It was Cape Town and the driver at the airport all over again, I was thinking ( see previous post if you don't follow what I mean ;)). I told the hotel I was not supposed to pay, but appearantly the hotel had paid for Johonna and Gahsiena, and the woman said she got problems with her boss when she did so, so she could not pay for me. Luckily I had my visa card, and could pay. Bummer.
So I went to my room in order to get some sleep. I was a little concerned, our boss had specificially said if we lock out bags, we shouldn't forget the key. What did I do? Not only forget the key, I lost it! Leaving Cape Town, I couldn't find it, but I was certain I had put it somewhere, so I just left thinking so. At the hotel room in Vienna I could not find, and started panicking, as I had ALN material in my bag, which I knew my boss would need. I had to think quick. I didn't want my boss to know I lost my key, so I tried to ask if they could cut it open at the front desk. I prayed my boss wouldn't be around when I did. The guy came with me to my room, and said that the lock would be broken if he had to do so. I said it was fine, he took my bag with him, and brought it back about 5 min after with no lock! phew. About 2 hours after my boss asked me to bring the material to her room... talk about luck :) but no lock :P
The first day I met Gahsiena and Johanna at a cafe name Three Quarts, which became our meeting spot. It was a nice little restuarant also, where we often ate in the evening, when there was time for such. We had dinner, and I retired early to go sleep. Bongiwe and Jaybe would arrive the next day. Bongiwe would stay in the same room as me, and Jayne had her own room.
On the next day, I slept way too long, breakfast was only from 0700 until 10.00, but I was so tired. Bongiwe arrive sometime around 12pm, and it was great to see her. I had spent all this time alone in the room :) She told me about her trip, as this was her first trip outside of SA, so it had been a challenge for her. Appearantly she felt a shortage of oxygen on the trip and had to get extra oxygen while lying on the floor of the plane. But her and Jayne made it to Vienna in one piece :) Bongi had this idea that they were flying up coming to Vienna, and would fly down going back to Cape Town, she was funny :)
DAY 1 - July 18, 2010
The first official day of the conference. Here you see Bongiwe eating breakfast, the only real meal we would have during the day, so enjoying it was a must, as you can see she is :) The breakfast was okay, it consisted of bread, eggs, sausage, fruits, vegetables, cheese, different kinds of juice, yoghurt, etc etc. The only unfortunate thing was that the menu was the same everyday.... after a while it became a bit boring, but hey, this was the only real meal we would really get. Johanna had adviced all of us to eat as much as we could for breakfast, since that would have to keep us going for a while.
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| This is the registration area |
After breakfast this day, we had to bring our letter of invitation for the conference to the registration area to get out welcome pack and name badge. I did it with Bongi, but for some reason she got lunch vouchers, which I didn't get. I went and asked the woman who assisted me if that was right, and she said I was not supposed to get any lunch vouchers... hmmm. Anyway we were giving a conference bag with lots of material in it, such as the conference programme, and advertisement stuff from different organizations. There were also a few magazines. The "messe center", which was the name of the conference venue in Vienna, was about a 15 min walk from out hotel. Our badge gave access to using the transport during the conference, but walking there was a great way of keeping the body active. Here you see Bongiwe outside the conference center with her bag and name badge.
The Global Village
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| main area of the Global Village |
The global village is the part of the conference where all different kind of organizations from all over the world have booths and stands where you can visit them and get their folder. There were different zones, such as the Human Rights Zone, the LGBTi zone, the Sex worker zone, the Women's Networking Zone, etc. The latter zone ALN was part of, so we had to assist with setting it up. It was a collaboration of different organizations working in particular with women, one way or the other. There was a main area of the global village with a stage, where all sorts of entertainment took place.
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| The presentations of different leaders of organizations |
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| Amandine in the red shirt |
The opening of the Women's Networking Zone (WNZ) was interesting, the different leaders of the various organizations presented the programme and what would take place in the zone. There were several interesting presentations and debates, many of them I would like to attend. The pictures reveal many also showed interest in the zone. Within our zone, one section was for women, and the other was for young women. The one in charge of the young women's area asked if I wanted to be part of it, and maybe present something. I was surprised that she asked me so, but infortunately I never got time to actually get something together. Another organization, Salamander Trust, had a woman named Amandine working for them. Her and I together set up big parts of the networking zone, and we had some good talks. She was half french, half west-african, and a very nice woman :) I loved her French- English :) She lives in London, but didn't have London accent at all :) In the woman's networking zone, we had a string of bras and underwear hanging on a line to signalize it was a woman's area. Funniest thing happened when we were setting it up, because this woman from Uganda came and pointed up on the underwear, but she was speaking very soft, so I could not hear what she said. I came closer to her, and apparantly she was asking how much she could buy this one piece for... lol that made me laugh so hard, not in her face of course, but later :) She was cute, typical of her to think so :) The string of underwear was made of underwear donated by people part of the different organizations in the WNZ.
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| string of underwear |
I thought it looked nice with the string, and it had many nice colors, and actually lots of nice underwear, so if I could have bought some, maybe I would have done as the Ugandan woman and ask how much it would be to buy certain pieces of underwear, lol. The colors in the zone were orange, pink, red, and white, very relaxing colors. It was a cosy zone just to hang out in. All the furniture was bought in IKEA, I think, and they would donate it after the conference. It was nice furniture, almost made me consider if they could ship it to Denmark... haha. I wonder who decided on the set-up of the WNZ, but I think Amandine had a lot to do with it.
Other events taking place this day was the sex worker demonstration, where they basically chanted that "sex work is work", and had red umbrellas while demonstrating. I did not understand why they all had red umbrellas, so I looked it up. It is a symbol of sex workers all over the world to carry red umbrellas. First time it was used was in Venice, and was good way of drawing attention to them. The color red symbolizes beauty and strength, and the umbrella symbolizes protection. The International Commitee on the Rights of Sex Workers in Europe adopted the red umbrella as the symbol on the rights of sex workers. Here they are headed into the registration area and go outside. They started in the sex worker zone in the global village. They were also advocating for the continuation of funding AIDS, by chanting "No retreat, fund AIDS." It really seemed so nice to be around people fighting for the same cause, and gave some sort of surreal feeling of being in "another world", but it was a nice feeling. There were other marches going on, which the pictures later on will reveal. We participated in the Human Rights March. The final event of the day was the opening of the conference in session room 1, the main hall of the whole conference. Bongiwe and I were at this time busy dishing out material, so we partly listened and gave out material. This was our first newsletter, we just gave a bunch to one person sitting at the beginning of a row so that person could pass down the row. We did not want to disturb people too much, as I understood they wanted to listen to the op
These pictures are from the sex worker march, the guy on the right was a picture I took, and my boss used it for one of our newsletters :) Notice the MSF banner in the back ( Medicines sans Frontiers). Below is the march outside the "messe center".
The opening session had different prominent people talking, but to be honest, I cannot remember exactly who. Maybe you can have a look at the pictures and see for yourselves :) There are also pictures of Bongi dishing out material, and you can get a feel of how big session room 1 was. This is it for the first day, and as you can tell, there was a lot happening in just one day, and I will update you and second the day of conference soon. Thank you for reading about this, and stay tuned for day 2 of the conference :) Please feel free to comment on my posts, or indicate your reaction in the boxes :) I finished my first novel of the Vienna conference with this post, I just saw how long it is!
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| There was time for a little fun as well :) |
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