Random Rattling

This morning Ruth and I were going to go visit several libraries, both on the hospital complex where Tidziwe is and in the City Center of Lilongwe. We left Osman, the IT man who’s been helping us, to install Koha and went downstairs to catch a ride over to the city center. Partway there, Ruth grabs my arm and told me to look – I looked, and she told me there was a baboon! I looked again, and this time i saw it, too late to grab my camera. I had had no idea there were wild baboons in Lilongwe – incredible. He was just sitting there by the side of the road, thinking baboon thoughts. Very cool.

So, we drove through Lilongwe. Lilongwe is much more like a US city than is Lusaka – it has many very standard large business buildings and shopping strips. It also, however, has people burning things at the side of the road, homeless children begging or playing at one or two corners, many more people walking around, and baboons!

We arrived at the National Library, which is a circulating library as well as the central point for cataloging in Malawi, and also a distribution point for donated books from all over the world. We started our tour in the Children’s section, which has children’s books and tables, and met a librarian who had also been at the SCECSAL conference – we’d had lunch at the same table on the last day, although I was so distracted that day that I didn’t remember meeting him.

He was very nice to us, showing us all over the building – there is an incredibly full and crowded back room full of books being processed for distribution, an overworked tech services department, and a warehouse full of books donated by various international organizations, such as Book Aid. I think that there were more books in the back than in the front! There were reading tables in the big main room, and also in an atrium outside – all of them full, mostly with people studying for exams. They’re using a freeware version of a library management system from UNESCO, called ISIS.

Also, the UN had recently closed their library and dropped all of their materials on the National Library – so we saw that area, already set up in a big front room so that people could use it. The British Counsel had also closed their library, so many of those books were waiting to be added to the circulating collection or distributed.

Not nice – too many libraries closing. At the SCECSAL meeting, the president of the Malawi Library Association, had asked a representative of the US State Dept’s American Corners library facilities several pointed questions about whether it would close – that makes sense now. Maybe the library owners think they aren’t needed now, with the Internet, but a lot of people in Malawi don’t have much access to the Internet, and books are still very heavily used.

We also walked around the corner to visit Ruth’s sister Allena – it’s nice that she has family so close. I’m almost envious.

The next place that we went was the American Corner in Lilongwe – this is a service provided by the State Department that involves a small library with a reading room, books about the US, and cheap internet access. I never knew they existed before this conference and visit, but I think they’re a great idea. Ruth studied at this one in secondary school – people definitely use it. I knew it belonged to the US when I had to go through a metal detector to enter it – the first one I’ve seen in Africa. That’s sad.

We walked back to the British Counsel for lunch – they have a small cafe in their garden, with a woman selling the same types of Malawian food that we’d had for lunch the day before. I got beef stew, Ruth Chambo, and we ate in the garden. It was very nice.

So, after lunch, we went to Kamuzu College of Nursing to meet their librarian and see their library. To get there, we took a shortcut through the hospital’s pediatric wing.

The hospital is blue, and smells of some sort of iodine. There are many, many patients – it’s a free public hospital. The children’s wing’s entry was full of parents and children – they looked at us, then lost interest when we walked through. We walked past a yard full of parents and patients sunning themselves, another outdoor area where women were washing clothes in outdoor sinks, a naked little boy being washed off too, and then through an empty play-yard with old empty cribs stored in it. There were swings, but no children were using them – I don’t know why. We walked on through it to see a big building that would have been perfectly at home in Austin – and saw why. It was Baylor’s version of the UNC Project. I think that UNC’s looks like it belongs here more, and there were a lot more people around it, too.

There was a beautiful view over the edge of the hill that the hospital complex sits on – there was a chance of rain today, and there were dark clouds chasing behind the low hills. We walked down the road, past people pulling live chickens out of their trunk, down to the Kamuzu College of Nursing, or KCN.

It’s a relatively large campus, neat and orderly, and we walked all the way through it to the library. The library has a nice big building, with lots of study carrels, but a relatively small collection of books. It’s still much larger than ours in Tidziwe, and is entirely focused on nursing. The librarian is still on leave, so we were shown around by an assistant, and we spoke to the IT staff – they’re using The Library Company’s system.

We walked back to the other side of the hospital, and then through to the Malawi College of Health Sciences on the other side of Tidziwe. It seems to be a school for the Allied Health Sciences, and it’s one of the schools whose students take turns using the UNC Project Library, as do KCN’s. It’s also fairly sprawling, with the library in a big building all of its own. That’s where the similarities end – this library has very outdated books in no very recognizable order. Regardless, there are many students studying, and using the computer terminals. As in the other libraries, they have to pay for internet access – ours is free, and our books much newer, adding to our appeal. If I am donated any allied health books that HSL can’t use, I’m going to send them to Ruth to give to this library – it needs them.

After that last distressing visit, we walked back to Tidziwe, and went upstairs to ask a question. We found a group of people giggling over a computer – some stupid person in Blantyre took a lot of naked photos of himself and his married lovers, and then left them on a computer. An IT person took the photos and made a CD, which he then happily sold all over the country. Some of the people are recognizable, and the staff were looking to see if they did recognize them – they did, to everyone’s horrified glee. I walked in to see a certain portion of female anatomy that is not usually displayed on office computers. Porn is illegal in Malawi, and the police want to arrest the people who filmed themselves – they want to know for what purpose that was intended (!) – and also the distributors. This was on the front page of the newspaper, so everyone is looking up the webpage and waving around the newspaper. Well, it broke any tension.

On Tuesday I met “my” driver – Chola – who will be picking me up and dropping me off each day. He’s very nice, and likes photography and music, so we will do just fine.

Ruth and I talked about too many things, and worked on Koha a bit. Then she showed me around the building, introducing me to people. There are lecture rooms, offices, labs, and examination rooms with quiet gloomy people waiting outside of them – usually mothers with small children watching the too-loud televisions in the hall.

The labs were very interesting – I kept thinking of my friend Cass, who also does HIV research. The one that we went into was Level Two, and we had to wear pink robes that said, “visitor”. I met several researchers, including one who did microbiology, in the quieter lab. There were humming and throbbing machines, piles of old manuals and lab binders on shelves, refrigerators full of reagents, and at least twelve busy people in lab coats. They are running HIV tests, CD4 counts, malaria tests, TB tests, and many other things.

After the tour, we ate lunch outside – there is a woman who comes to make and sell lunch things each day. They are Malawian foods – chicken, liver, beef stew, chambo fish, rice, nsima, chips, red beans, lape greens, and more. It was very good but they give too much! Ruth was afraid that I didn’t like it because I didn’t eat all of it, but I really did. I was a little squeamish about the chicken – I hate eating off the bone – but the vegetables were great. We ate sitting on the edge of one of the concrete lined narrow water ditches that are everywhere here – dry now, because it’s winter. A whole group of other Malawians were also eating in the same area – it’s the regular lunch crew, apparently. I didn’t bring a bottle of water, though, and I can’t drink the tap water – I’ll know better tomorrow.

We had met the manager of the guest house earlier in the library – Godfrey – and he really wanted me to see it, as I would have been staying there if it had not been full. I wish I had – it would have been nice to really meet some of the other Chapel Hillites who are here. The hotel’s pretty nice, though. Anyway, we walked around the Lighthouse facility next door to see it – it looks basically like a long duplex, with a big porch.

There are goats! Godfrey keeps his own brown goat, and also takes care of one that was given to a now-departed Chapel Hill student that remains. Goats are the perfect domestic animal – small enough and hardy enough for most people to keep them, providers of milk and cheese, and eventually a nice dinner. They’re also cute, and smart, and I like them. I will still eat them, though.

We met a med student who’s there for a year with her surgeon husband who complained that the goats had eaten the mango trees that they’d tried to plant in the yard, but I still like them. She also took us into the guest house to meet a student who’s returning to Chapel Hill on Saturday – I’d met her earlier on the tour, a researcher who’s studying diarrhea (and had lots of jokes), and another student. The other duplex is full of other visitors, but I don’t know who they are. Maybe the students from Dundee – there are also three Scottish students here, from Dundee University, who work with the UNC Project.

The med student told me all about getting an article from the Health Sciences Library while here in Lilongwe (she unwittingly got a big fine because she didn’t realize she needed to pay) – she’s very thankful to us, and so Melanie, for it. I promised to tell Melanie. Ruth and I talked about possibly setting up some sort of easier method to get articles from the HSL scanned and emailed to the UNC Project Library, if we can figure out how to manage the expenses and administration of it. I will talk to Melanie about it when I get back, and then she and Ruth can work it out, if it’s possible.

So, the server keeps resetting, interrupting when we try to download the pieces that we need to install Koha on a Windows machine (it’s supposed to be on a Linux machine). Very aggravating. We managed to get all the pieces, finally, and will ask the IT people to install them tomorrow – we can’t, as we aren’t administrators on the machine.

I ate in the Indian/Pakistani restaurant tonight, and it was excellent – I kept wishing my friends Janie and Allie were there, because they would have liked it. It has mutton instead of lamb on the menu, like you’d see in the US – I really wish it was easier to get mutton at home. Cooked right (which is problematic), it has more flavor than lamb. I had Peshawari Mutton – I’ve only had the dessert-type Peshawari Naan before, nothing else Peshawari.

The power keeps going out briefly, in the restaurant and in my room – load-shedding. Luckily, this thing runs on battery in between and I haven’t lost any data.

We missed our plane! We got there and it was in the air! It left early! No planes leave early! This one did, because apparently there are problems with the lights in Lilongwe so they have to make all of the planes arrive and leave during the day. Fine, but they never let us know! If they had contacted the people who bought the tickets, they would have contacted us – they knew where we were. Air Malawi… eAaa!

To get to that point – we got up early to watch the lions eat, walking over to their enclosure. When we got there, the two females were pressed up against the cage door, the two males in the two dungeon-like side cages. Eventually the keeper arrived, and went into the enclosure. He put two dead chickens, feathers and all up in each of three trees, then hopped back up on the second level of the cage. The lions are in a lower section – we had to crouch down low to be able to go into it the day before (yes, it did smell horribly musky) – with an upper section for the keeper to walk on so that he can pull up and latch the cage door.

He did, and three lions came charging out – the two females and the older male who had been locked up the day before. They went straight for the trees, bounding up and pulling down three of the chickens, then separating to tear them up and eat them. The younger female finished hers, then came back and pulled down two of the remaining ones, then wandering around. This was a bad choice because her father then came over and ate both, while her mother took the remaining one. She tried to eat parts that were left, or to take the mother’s leftovers, but her mother chased her all over the place. It was a lot of fun to watch, and to listen to. I got some film clips of it on my camera, so they might be interesting. I haven’t been able to watch them yet.

Then we walked back to take a quick shower and grab breakfast. This is where it began to be tight – we ate breakfast in the big room (the yellow birds were flying around and flitting down to steal fruit – I’m glad I can’t eat melon anyway) and checked out, bumping and bouncing back down the road to the highway.

We should have gotten there about forty minutes before it was due to leave – 11:00 am – which should be plenty of time in that almost-security-free tiny airport on the perennially late Air Malawi. Just in case – I was worried, used to long security lines – Craig called them to make sure for us, only to find out it was due to leave at 10:30! So, we hared down the road, rushing through traffic, only to get there just as it locked and took off.

Horrible, horrible way to end a very good week. So, we talked to the clerk – the next flight to Lilongwe is on Wednesday, and it’s Sunday. She can get us on Air Zimbabwe Monday night, IF they fly, which isn’t sure of and can’t guarantee anyway. Air Zimbabwe? Who isn’t there that day at their office, and hasn’t updated their website’s schedules since March? I don’t think so!

So, we went to Zambian Airways to see if they had a flight. They don’t, but they do have one to Chipata – a Zambian town about an hour and a half from Lilongwe. Fine, that’s what we did. We thought it was more important to get the work I came here to do done than to worry about a $186 fare – I hope that Infectious Diseases agrees!

At least we made a decision before I had an asthma attack out of anxiety, or Ruth had a stroke. Neither of us has ever had this happen before – and hopefully never will again.

So, we drove to talk to a missionary friend of Chimwemwe’s and pick up a couple of cacti – cactus and succulent plants are everywhere in Lusaka, another reason why it reminds me of Phoenix- gave three American kids a ride to the Arcades, and grabbed lunch from a Subway. Subways are apparently everywhere, with the same menu, although this one also had a hugely overstuffed hotdog thing and a chicken tikka sub to suit local tastes.

Then we walked around that same tourist market that I had wanted to look at the previous week. That was nice, but I’d rather have spent the afternoon in Lilongwe!

We DID not return to the Chrismar – instead we got a room at the Cresta Golfview, which we had seen when we picked people up every day on the bus. It was very nice – with excellent water pressure in the HOT shower! I liked the restaurant better, too – I had room service while Ruth went to a church group meeting with Craig and Chimwemwe. Chrismar was decent, but this was better – we should have stayed there instead. Oh, well – my hotel in Lilongwe will be a Cresta too.

Today we slept in, going to breakfast (cold sausages, of course) at 8:45. We ate slowly and wandered around, sitting outside until it was almost 11 – Chimwemwe was going to come pick us up. Checking out took forever because they had to go get me a refund from another building – I had prepaid for Saturday night back when I was in the US, but we had decided to spend it at Protea Safari Hotel! Craig and Chimwemwe had found it after another one had fallen through.

So, we went to their apartment, which is very nice and full of light. Outside on the grounds of their complex are many vegetable gardens – Chimwemwe says that people work on them or hire people to maintain them for them, but that it costs about as much as buying vegetables at the markets. I like them – we wouldn’t be allowed to have them where I live. A bunch of little boys were running races on the grounds – no shoes on, and it’s really cold! Low 60’s or high 50’s, I think.

One note – I’m writing this as the power flicks on and off – load shedding is a curse!

Craig came home, and we drove off through the city towards the safari lodge. As we drove out of the city, we saw lots of cement houses and thatch huts, scrap-built stalls selling things on the sides of the road, people walking, sitting, running along the roads, and then finally long stretches of land with small clusters of huts and houses – farmsteads and tiny roadside villages. The land is arid but not desert – it’s a lot like the area outside of Austin, Texas. I could see masses of smoke way off in some directions, but not enough to be a brush fire and too much to be a regular house or cooking fire. No idea what that could be.

We came to a dirt turn-off for Protea, with a bunch of people standing or sitting around it. I’m not sure why – maybe a minibus stop? – they didn’t have anything to sell and didn’t beg. We bounced and bumped down the road in Craig’s truck, on the left side of the road, seeing lots of scorched and burned stubble under the trees. Chimwemwe said that they burnt the underbrush off because of tics – tics in Africa are not nearly as dangerous as tics in North America, but they’re still bad.

The hotel is really nice – with lots of little individual “chalets”, each with a thatched roof. The main eating area also has a thatched roof, with no walls – we walked through on our way to the chalets. Ruth and I each have one, and Craig and Chimwemwe another. There were water buffalo and kudu calmly eating the lawn – very cool to see. Luckily, it cost approximately the same as our original hotel had – perfect.

We met back at the main lodge at 14 for a safari ride, on a jeep through the range nearby. It was odd – I didn’t see any fencing anywhere, but the animals were definitely part of Protea. Maybe they were just all native to the area, which was very populated – I didn’t think to ask.

We drove along a small lake, finally stopping at a big enclosure – an acre, they said. Lions! There are a few animals that are kept as pets at Protea, and these lions are on permanent loan from Munda Wanga, the zoo/wildlife sanctuary in Lusaka. There are four – parents and a son and daughter. They have to lock the father and the son up on alternate days – they can’t tolerate each other. The father is sad – they had to neuter him at some point, and he lost all of his mane. The cage is not good – it’s small and all concrete. They let us crawl in to see the father on his day in the cage. He growled and snarled at us – I would have too, I suppose.

However, as bad as the cage is, the enclosure is great – it has hills, trees, lots of plants, and it’s all natural looking. The lions that are outside seem to be fairly content, and they’re all a good size and have healthy looking (if they were dogs or cats) coats. If the father and son can’t be together without fighting, at least each has equal time outside. The driver told us that we could come at seven the next day to watch them feed the lions their breakfast – we definitely plan to do so. He says that they put the chickens up in trees to give them something to do.

The first thing I saw once we drove away from the lions were more of the big black crows with the white chests that I’ve been watching at Mulungushi. Then we started to see the animals – many kinds of antelope, kudu, shy hartebeasts, zebras, sables, and more. Some stood, used to seeing jeeps, and others bolted. The hartebeasts were very shy, apparently – they ran right away.

There were large groups of guinea hens, all of them running like herds of big gray dustbunnies away from us. I don’t care for guineas normally – traumatic chasing experience as a child – but I liked seeing the big groups of them safely on the ground. There were also lots of bright yellow birds – I couldn’t get a picture of them, but Ruth says that people eat them, like doves, I suppose. They’re about the same size. Her mother used to cook and sell them, anyway.

We stopped the jeep near some men who were digging – I thought to talk to them. Then Ruth said to look – there was an elephant in the trees, and she turned and came to the jeep! This elephant, a young one, only 17, was one of a few animals that were kept more or less as pets at the lodge. She came right up to the jeep, and we got down and went over to examine and touch her. She was very patient, one of the men who had been digging feeding her sugar cane and tree fungi to bribe her. She was very warm, and she had stray hairs and wrinkles all over – I hadn’t realized that they had such long eyelashes. I fed her a piece of sugar cane. She put out her trunk to sniff and feel my hand, too – very interesting.

I really liked the elephant. I was wondering if she might be lonely; elephants are very social herd animals, but they said that they’re working on getting a male of the same age. I wonder if a female might not be a good idea, too – if I remember correctly, they usually spend a lot of time with other females.

After seeing many more kudu, we drove back to the lodge. Craig went to change, and the three of us sat on loungers near the pool to talk and sunbathe – it was in the high sixties. There were some little red spotted deer-like antelope wandering through the bushes, and also one lone kudu.

The kudu was funny – he was trying to steal from a guest’s plate at the picnic tables on the other side of the pool, and a waiter chased him away. About fifteen minutes later, a cook came out and gave him a big plate of bread. That same waiter came up the path and kept having to bang a big tray to keep the greedy kudu away – the waiter looked disgusted. Then the same cook came out and gave the kudu MORE bread – at this point the three of us agreed that this was bad and unhealthy, and no wonder it was trying to steal. The small red antelope tried to get some too, but the kudu head-butted them away – they kept trying to sneak back, though. Ruth said that the cook saw some women and wanted to impress them. He impressed us alright, but in a negative way.

We met back up for dinner, which was a grill (although they called it a barbeque). It was a very cold restaurant, as it had no real walls, but they had those tall gas heaters that you get on patios and loggias – the ones that start up with a big gout of flame and then die down. They’re very effective, but not as picturesque as the baskets of charcoal from the Cattleman’s Grill. It was a nice dinner, with a wonderful cream soup to start and crème caramel to end – excellent food to end a very nice day.

Raleigh to DC Dulles to Rome to Addis Adaba to Lilongwe to Lusaka… 22 hours. Janie drove me to RDU at 3:30 – she must really like me – and I flew to Dulles at 6, arriving at 7. I checked in to Ethiopian and wandered around until 9:20 – we were supposed to leave at 10. This was my first taste of the fact that Ethiopian usually does not leave on time. So, I people-watched as lots of apparently Ethiopian families milled around with their toddlers (lots of those) and luggage collections, mixed in with a large bunch of religious and volunteer groups. I remembered that a nurse at my doctor’s office had mentioned a student who had also gotten vaccinated to go to Zambia and wondered if he might be there. Sure enough, someone told me later that there was a kid (really, he’s nineteen) from UNC there. I never spoke to him, though.

Anyway, I was in row twelve, right behind first class and also right behind the row with the hooks for the baby bassinets. I had three babies and a toddler right in front of me, and right behind was another wall with the restroom and a steward’s station. Right behind it were three more babies. Hmm. Most of them were pretty quiet, but there was a set of twins that was separated, and they didn’t like it. The one in my row (they switched back and forth between parents) yelled and screamed piercingly often enough that none of us got much sleep all the way to Addis. The little toddler boy and his grandfather and I became good friends by the time we got to Addis – he was a nice little kid. I gave the grandfather a copy of a grant opportunity that I brought fror Ruth – I can look it up again for her. His son is going to build a library in Ethiopia – he is a doctor, but he wants to help the area his father came from so he’s going to fund a library.

Ethiopian has decent food and is generous with it – there was even cheesecake. There was tea periodically, and everyone was very nice. This flight, though longer and populated by unhappy babies, was much more comfortable than one I took on Continental from France to Houston. I think Continental.

I got into Addis about an hour late, and I had only an hour and a half layover. I booked it up the airport terminal, and then back the other way after I found out the correct gate, and went through a very scaled down security gate. It reminded me of the security gates at Hobby in Houston when I was a kid, before 911. Then I sat around for an hour because the plane took forever to load and sulked while some guy smoked vile cigars right near me. In the airport. Yuck! If I had realized that it would take so long, I would have looked around the big, huge duty free area. Maybe next time!

So, we stopped in Lilongwe. I was so tired I could barely keep my eyes open, but I forced myself to look. The windows were too dirty to see much, but I could tell it looked very rural – the city is supposed to be very spread out. I will find out! It was a small airport – we let some people off and picked up a few more without getting off the plane. Someone later told me that Ethiopian is the minibus of airlines – stopping everywhere to pick up and drop off. Blue and white minibuses, packed to the gills, are the cheapest most favored form of local transport in most of Southern Africa. I can’t wait to go until next week! I badly wanted to stop just to be able to sleep.

I zombie-walked through the immigration and customs line, then stood around waiting for my bags. Lusaka, airport for more than a million people, has only two baggage carousels. I enjoyed watching a wrapped carved spear, tourist quality, go round and round while the one bag man through our bags on the carousel. I got mine, in fine shape, and staggered off to go try a taxi.

First thing I saw were a bunch of SCECSAL signs, and the second was Ruth! She’d gotten there the day before and got her friend Chimemwe to come get me. Thank goodness! It was so nice of them, and it absolutely made my day much, much better.

Chimemwe then drove us to the Arcades, the newest shopping strip in Lusaka, one of two, where her husband, Craig, met us and traded some money with me. Then we walked around – the Arcades are outdoors and the weather was beautifully warm.

They dropped me at the hotel, the Chrismar, and went out again for a meeting. We are going to meet tomorrow, and I’ll go to church with them. I haven’t been in a while because of traveling and volunteer work, and I kind of miss it. I don’t think this church will be much like mine, but it will be interesting to see, and it’s still church.

I ordered dinner to eat in my room. The hotel was nice enough – older but clean, with a bar, a breakfast buffet area, and a restaurant attached. I was horrified to find that there WAS NO HOT WATER on my first night – I was absolutely filthy from the plane and I NEEDED a shower. I took one anyway, so shocked by the cold water I kept gasping. I am sure that there had to be some problem, or maybe just that it was late in the day. Also, the wifi doesn’t work for me – I can see the wireless points, and they seem strong, and I can connect, but the browser won’t open. So, as I expected, no email for at least a week.

As is obvious, I’ve never posted the rest of the Tarheel Bus Tour.  I shall do so when I return home – none of those posts are on this computer.  I’m currently in Africa, and I’ve had bad access.  So, here’s what I have so far.  Hopefully, I’ll have better access going forward.

This morning we were able to sleep in until 6:30 – thank goodness. We drove the short distance into Charlotte to meet with Pathways to Prosperity, a group project made up of UNC’s Center for Community Capital, the Charlotte Housing Authority, Third Fifth Bank, and others who work to help improve banking and financial literacy among the clients of the CHA.

Many people fall into a trap, using credit to pay credit, suffering massive health bills when uninsured, or failing to understand how to manage the money that they have. These people are often unable to organize their debts to pay them, or to get a bank account. North Carolina makes payday loans – usually viciously predatory – illegal, which helps, but many people with a low income are unable to use banking services. This group from UNC partnered with CHA and these others to teach the clients of CHA’s FSS (family Self Sufficiency) program to manage their funds and how to least painfully pay off their debts, while also offering a variety of banking services designed to support people with past unfortunate banking histories to relearn how to use a bank account or credit responsibly.

The CHA is also heavily involved in renovating and changing their subsidized housing projects to make them into much more attractive mixed income developments. This has brought up property values and sparked new growth and development near each project, but has also driven property values up massively. Nothing without cost.

This is incredibly valuable – how could anyone get out of debt if they didn’t have a way to manage it? Or have never learned how to think about money?

After lunch at the dam, we rode drowsily along to get to Kannapolis, where a new research campus modeled on the RTP is being built. Along the way, Jim Laloudis gave us a talk about the economic and desegregation history of the area, as he had done all throughout the tour. He flew out after dinner that night, which was a loss, but we gained Ferrell Guillory to also give us historical background for some of the rest of the tour.

Kannapolis was a company town for Pillowtex, a very large textile manufacturer that went out of business in 2003. The town began to sink fast, and is at 30% unemployment. David H. Murdock of Dole Foods had an affection for the town as he had once owned Pillowtex in a previous incarnation, so he bought it. He decided to work with the state universities to create a center for research like RTP, focusing on biotechnology, nutrition, and health research. He moved two of his factories to the state and took funding for the universities to use in this project instead of the usual incentive tax breaks for moving the factories – generous. The new UNC Nutrition Research Institute, part of the School of Public Health, will focus on nutrition and food and plant science. Carolina, Duke, NC State, UNC A&T, UNC Charlotte, and others will all have faculty and projects based there, working in many cases in the same labs, as well as assorted private companies focusing on biomedical endeavors.

We were each given a hard hat and a florescent vest to wear – the center is still under construction. I had looked up a few pictures, and there were some in our Tour Book – but nothing could prepare me to see this building. It looked like many other buildings I have seen – vaguely Georgian, with red brick and tall white columns – but is incredibly massive. It’s five stories, but it felt more like ten.

The entry way to the Core Lab – the only one safe enough to visit yet, even with hard hats – is a huge rotunda, going up all five stories. It reminded me very much of the Texas State Capital building, except that it was far more light and better lit, with yellow paint and white marble. The Capital building always reminded me of a cave, although that might be because I always entered it directly from sunlight while wearing sunglasses.

Anyway, Murdock is building for posterity – there is 2-inch thick carved white Italian marble all through the entry way, and will be through much of the first floor. There is a beautiful inlaid marble design on the rotunda floor. Each building is meant to have the absolute best lab equipment, some of which is being designed and built specifically for the new Campus. They are attempting to gain Leed Certification, at least silver, although they think they might be able to get gold for some buildings. That’s very impressive when you recall that they had to import that Italian marble, and that will certainly count against them when the distance traveled is counted.

Two things about the design struck most of us as really valuable, both related to transport – there is a large parking structure built (something to be appreciated by anyone who tries to park on our own campus, especially as a few people just got evicted from their usual parking grounds due to construction), and there will be bike and walking paths from several nearby residential areas. They will install showers and locker rooms in the lab buildings so that people can bike to work and then rinse off – very cool! I myself prefer to walk the distance to a bus stop far off from my house, but won’t on my way to work or when it’s hot because of the need to be clean for work.

The building that is being called the UNC building – its official name is something else, but nobody is calling it that at this point – will be focused on nutrition research and include NC State and other researchers as well. It will be open in about a month, which is only a month behind schedule. The project leader seemed distressed by that, but I thought that was impressive – that seems a small delay for such a big project, especially as so much of it seems to be original to this building. It will have 18 tenured faculty from Carolina, who are currently being recruited. These faculty will be tenure track but not teach, which will be new for Carolina. They will be supervising grad students and postdocs, however.

After visiting the site, we went to a bank in town to listen to Dr Steven Zeisel, the Institute Director, talk about the history of the project. We discovered (while searching for the restroom, which we do a lot of on the bus tour) that the old vault was still there, and the door was open. Very cool – the mechanisms of the vault lock were visible, and some people went into it. It had children’s book mural on the walls for some reason.

Interesting visit – this should be an exciting addition if everything goes well. I am curious how the businesses and rival schools will function together. Everyone is also anxious to see how this will affect the town – there are plans for a community college annex on the Research Campus to train interested residents to function at a variety of research and lab support jobs, and this will certainly bring new money into the community, but it will surely change many things. Hopefully, everybody will benefit as much as there is potential to do so.

Good morning!  Your regularly scheduled blog posts will not be available until very late today – the beautiful inn that we stayed at Wednesday night only has wireless in the lobby, and my little computer doesn’t like it.

This is being written on a borrowed Mac – thank you, Kristy!  Suffice to say we had a great time and there’s a lot to write about later on.