Safely home

Safely home but I think not without a bit of us left with our friends in the Eastern Cape. It seems hard to believe that they are there, six thousand miles away, getting on with the business of sorting out their libraries.

Leaving Port Alfred was emotional and although our journey was beautiful and much less demanding than the one we had through the rain on our way there, we were very aware that we weren't coming back this time. As we drove along the coast, I couldn't help wondering if this was going to be the next big holiday destination - there is huge potential for that kind of trade in the part of South Africa and the beaches are the key to it. They are stunning. Having said that, I wonder if it would be better if the coast stayed as it is - wild and dramatically beautiful.

The final evening in East London was interesting and gave us the chance to see just a little of a much bigger African town. The Sea Front was remarkably like our own sea front in South Shields and the flavour of East London wasn't a million miles away from home in that respect. It's a working town with a large river port so we felt reasonably at home.

Our journey home was about to get tortuous. We spent Friday morning waiting for the South African Airways plane to sweep us back to Johannesburg and a further five hours there waiting for the first of our Emirates voyages to the Persian Gulf. All appeared to be going to plan and we got on board on time. An hour later we had put up with watching as the baggage pallets were very slowly loaded on board, we waited whilst a passenger was ejected from the plane and we waited again whilst their bags were taken off....

Arriving in Dubai, still an hour late, we realised that we had just fifteen minutes to get through security, run to the far end of the United Arab Emirates (well it seemed like that) and join a bus to a far off departure gate apparently somewhere in the desert! We made it with seconds to spare. Some 28 hours after leaving East London we flew into Newcastle and I have never been so pleased to see a soggy North East England.

It was all worth it though - even the long journeys. Who could imagine what we have seen in ten days. It was a truly special experience for us all and one we will never forget.

Out of Africa

Here we are on the last night in East London at the Garden Court. We have left our new found friends in a cloud of real emotion. The challenges they face are huge but they have real spirit and it's been a great experience to work with them.

Tomorrow it's back on the plane to England and the prospect of another 27 hours of travelling. It has been worth it though and we leave this place completely changed. Partly wanting to stay and partly wanting to be back with our families.

Indaba days

Last day for us at the Indaba. We set off for East London this afternoon with our faithful driver Mcne. He has transported us hundreds of kilometres across the Eastern Cape and we have become very fond of our larger than life African friend.

We are about to have a debrief from our friends sitting in the sunshine here in Port Alfred. The new librarians are being inducted upstairs and it's exciting to see the enthusiasm they have. It's a lesson we can definitely learn from them - we could do with some of their young views in our own situation.

So we leave the Sunshine Coast this afternoon and it's back to East London Airport tomorrow morning for the beginning of our long trek home. I think we'll all leave a part of ourselves here with our colleagues in the Eastern Cape, but it's not an end but a beginning for us. We have made so many contacts and I am sure that they will endure and grow strong. Now we look forward to their first visit to the UK so we can reciprocate their kindness.

Magnificent Beasts

Today we have spent the morning working at the Indaba with our colleagues looking at their Annual Performance Plans and their priorities for next year and the year after, using their Government Grant. They are looking at how to use ICT, how to meet the Government target of 50% of the population literate by 2010 and how to maintain and upgrade their libraries.

They face a real challenge but they have started along the road to improvement and the enthusiasm and commitment we have seen in both the staff and the politicians is inspiring. Although they are short on many resources, the work we have seen going on will make a huge difference to the vast numbers of people who are in need of basic skills and support.

This afternoon we spent our leisure time away from the conference on a visit to the Addo Elephant Park just north of Port Elizabeth. It was a bit of a hair raising drive as we chose to a short route through the hills to cut off a corner. It looked like quite a major road but we later found it to be a gravel track with a selection of very large potholes. Half an hour later we finally made it to the main road! Roaring up to the Park reception with two minutes to spare, we managed to make the tour vehicle. And how worthwhile was it.

Addo was set up in 1920 to preserve the indigenous wildlife and the community of elephants who live within the boundaries of the park. It's a fantastic place and we set out amongst warthogs, kudu and ostriches thinking that the distant views of elephant we were getting were going to be the end of it. Ten minutes later we were right in amongst the animals on a wind swept but sunny South African hillside. It was truly inspiring. Our trip took two hours and we saw countless elephants on our way was well as herds of zebra, one of whom decided to block the road and have a good look at us.

Back in Port Alfred now and time for dinner - back to the Action Plans tomorrow morning and then off to East London tomorrow night for our last night in this beautiful and inspiring place.

Catching up

Hello from the Cape.... Our blog has proved hard to keep up to date as we have had no internet access where we could get to update our diary up till tonight.

Our journey down from Newcastle to Jo'burg was very smooth despite a slight delay. Apparently there was a major weather problem the day we flew out which grounded all the aircraft in Dubai and caused the delays.

Peter met us at Johannesburg and we left on time to fly on to East London where we finally arrived, rather weary after 27 hours. The flights were good but none of us got more than three hours of sleep, so the prospect of a briefing when we arrived wasn't really our first wish!

The weather in East London when we finally arrived was warm and sunny and it was certainly apparent it's Summer here. The place is very interesting - you were instantly aware that you are in Africa, with people walking everywhere, even on the main highways.

The last few days have been very very eventful and we have seen the most amazing contrasts from the millionaires houses here in Port Alfred today to the extremes of poverty in the townships. There is an inconceivable gulf between them.

We have now got to understand that timetables and life go at different pace here. Our two days out with colleagues looking at libraries gave us a really memorable experience. We have been to two different parts of the Province, the first day in and around the Alice/Fort Hare area where Nelson Mandela studied at the University.

We also visited a library in a township just outside Fort Beaufort which really was an amazing experience. The Library habit there is very strong and the purpose of libraries is so apparent - that space in the community which is free, safe and for everyone despite their backgrounds. In the background you can see, on the photo, a group of young lads who are sitting doing their homework which is a health related topic. I was really impressed with the way they just sat and worked together. Outside, although this library is new, and, as you can see, very spacious, the township is a network of dirt roads, delapidated buildings and shacks. It's hard to believe that anyone can manage to keep improving in such an environment but they do.

On our second day out we went in the direction of Grahamstown which was completely different. We visited a community library which really does have it right - and this has been a feature of our visit. Although resources are scant and the bookstocks are not up to date at all, the willingness of many of the staff and the real innovation they show in dealing with their community needs is astounding. Karen, in the picture with Ann is in constant contact with the four local schools in the area and she has a passion for supporting the children there, who have no access to internet or to a wide range of resources in their school. The library here is a credit to her and to her manager.
Grahamstown is a delightful place where we stopped at a very European but very African tea shop! It's a Victorian town in aspic with beautifully preserved buildings.

And today we have been delivering our presentation at the Indaba. The drive down here was very long and very arduous last night but this is a lovely place and we have at last been able to get onto the web to update the blog.

Our impressions of this place then - stunning beautiful, happy and committed people who range from those who have everything to those who have absolutely nothing. Everyone we have met has shown us hospitality we couldn't have dreamed of and our lives are changed.

We have learned a great deal from the experience so far and we will keep in touch beyond the Swallows Partnership I am sure - it's certainly be a very thought provoking and humbling experience to see what is happening here.

It has been hard work but we have found time to visit the Animal Reserve on Sunday when we took the trip round on a very shaky land rover to visit the lions, giraffes, elands, ostriches and impala. Unfortunately no elephants yet, but who knows what tomorrow will bring.

On our way

Made it to the airport - we are all very suspicious travellers so have left far too much time! Unfortunately the plane was two hours late leaving Dubai so we have slightly longer to wait than we would have. Still, the plane has made up an hour and we are due to take off at about 14.20 and the time is going quite quickly. Another hour and we should see it arrive in the eastern sky.

Weather here cold and a bit cloudy..... forecast for East London for tomorrow is sunny all the way. Roll on Summer, in twenty four hours time.

From North to South

It's the night before and everything (I hope) is packed up. We are checked in online and I think we are all ready to go. Ann, Laurayne and I will be meeting at the airport tomorrow morning and then it's all systems go for the Southern Hemisphere.

Today was our Society of Chief Librarians Meeting in North Tyneside and it was odd to see the planes taking off over our heads knowing that tomorrow we'll be passing over the new community centre where we met. The new Library, Health Suite and Community Facilities at Dudley have only been open two days and it was chance for us all to see a brand new building. It's a very impressive place and I am sure it will be a huge asset to the local people when the business starts to build up. Some parts of the building are not yet open.

So this time tomorrow we'll be in Dubai. Next instalment of the blog from foreign shores. Watch this space.

6000 miles

Hard to believe but 7 days from now we will be 6000 miles away from home on the other side of the world in South Africa. That's what it has been like for the Premier's party this week. They have been in the North East since Thursday and I hope that they have found the welcome warm. We met with three colleagues from the Provincial Government yesterday to talk to them about the library services in the North East and their contribution to Culture and the lives of our people.

It was great to meet them and to put some faces to names. We will be meeting some of them again I hope next week when we reach King William's Town and see them in the context of their services, as they have seen ours. It was so interesting to talk to them about the challenges of providing public services. Our Cultures may be different on the face of it but our challenges and issues are very much the same.

Last night we all got the chance to experience the Swallows Partnership in its dramatic best at the Theatre Royal in Newcastle for a production of Elephant. It was really interesting to see how the two companies dealt with a very African production. I loved the musical side to it and it never fails to impress me how some cultures and indeed languages provide the most fantastically musical people. The people of South Africa are like the Welsh in this country for choral singing I think - they have a natural inclination for rhythm and a distinctive musical sound. I loved the stories and the Elephants stole the show for me. I was really taken by the way the puppetteers were able to capture the movements of the animals in an utterly convincing way. It has been made all the more poignant by a story I have read in the Sunday Times today about the way that elephant populations have now increased to such a proportion that there are too many - a difficult problem to deal with because of the emotional connetions humans feel to these magnificent animals. I am afraid that the production has left myself, Ann and Laurayne with an even stronger desire to see the real thing whilst we are in Africa.

Roll on Wednesday, we can't wait to get to a different continent.

The Swallows meet

Just a week to go and the Swallows met in Gateshead this morning to talk about the arrangments for our trip next week. Here we all are at Gateshead Old Town Hall where Ann is based (Left to right - Laurayne, Ann, Mark).

The Premier and her party arrive in the Region tomorrow and we are due to meet them all on Saturday at the Library in Gateshead for a presentation and a chance to talk about our plans.

On Saturday night we are all looking forward to sitting down at the Theatre Royal to watch "Elephant". I am hoping that we get to see just a few of the real thing when we reach Africa and I know that I am not the only one. We are all looking forward to the experience so much.

This week has been very busy. The schools have gone back and there is much more traffic on the roads. We have had some very windy weather and this has caused quite a few problems round the country. In Newcastle yesterday, the main roads across the Tyne were badly affected. Of the three available bridges, two were out of action and the other is not a particularly easy route for traffic, so it was chaos. To end the day well, in the early hours of this morning, parts of the UK including the North East felt an earthquake which was of quite a significant magnitude. A number of people at work felt this and some were even woken by it. It's rare to get this in England and a quake of 5 on the Richter scale is unheard of.

So, this time next week, we will be en route for Dubai and our onward flight to Johannesburg.

Weekend in sight

Mmm, I have blinked and the week seems to have gone.

Half Term here has meant a lot of people are on holiday so it's been a little bit quieter than normal. Weather is warmer than it was but it's very windy today and I wonder if the side of the library is about to fall off every now and then. It certainly sounds rather like Wuthering Heights in here. The cloud has cleared a little though and this always helps to make it feel a bit more spring like here on the north east coast. Glad I am not on the ferry going out of North Shields today... the sea looks very rough!

Yesterday was more exciting though. We got the chance to attend the filming of the BBC's Question Time programme which had been planned to take place on March 6th around about the time we would be arriving in East London. The programme was switched at the last minute because of the hot topic of the Northern Rock Bank Nationalisation which has been taking place this week. We rang up yesterday to see if there were any spaces left and managed to get a couple of seats. I haven't seen a television programme put together like this before and it was fascinating. The programme runs for an hour and is shot in one take, with a panel of politicians and experts taking questions from the Audience. The whole process was very slick indeed and it was fun to see ourselves on the front row when the programme went out late last night.

Only another week to go before we prepare for our trip to the Cape. Have been reading up some of the background to the area and its history. We have also had the details of the visit by Premier Balindlela to our Region starting next week and I am looking forward to being part of that. We will be meeting the party at Gateshead Central Library on March 1st to talk about our library development here in the North East over the past few years.

Monday and Tuesday have slipped away

It's late on Tuesday afternoon and it's been another lovely day here - this has meant a very sharp frost though and like yesterday it was -2.5 this morning on the way to work. The mad thing is that by about 2.30pm the sun has reached my windows (there are a lot of them) and it's up to about 30degrees in here. Hence the need for the not very effective air conditioners. It's quiet this week both at work and on the roads coming in. Half term has come at the local schools so it's busy in town as a consequence but the rush hour isn't as bad as normal.

Yesterday was spent in my office dealing with bits and pieces rather than anything major. That's what takes the time up really. Our branch Library at Whitburn reopened as well and today it has been the "Official Opening" of the new South Tyneside Homes Office which has been added to the side of the library. South Tyneside's Mayor did the honours and cut the ribbon. The library looks a lot more spacious and we are all pleased with the results of our efforts. We would have liked to have undertaken a complete refurbishment but unfortunately our budget wouldn't run to that. The work has allowed us to fit a few more computers into a fairly small space and I know that this will be popular. The Children's Library also looks much nicer with its new shelves, seats and book boxes. We get very good support for our children's and adults events here and the new meeting room which has come as a part of the new extension will be very useful for us.

Only two weeks to go now till we board the plane and I am haunting the pages of Flickr to find pictures of the Eastern Cape so that I know what it looks like. Reading the newspaper each day seems to suggest a lot of rain at the moment. Here's hoping for some sunny weather when we get there. We get enough rain here!

Friday afternoon

Friday afternoon has arrived and it is cooler as they promised. Today is one of those grey Northern days which is neither one thing or the other. Have been out to our library at Whitburn this afternoon where we are about to reopen with a few improvements after a six week closure. Our shelving there was over forty years old and we have replaced it with some newer units which we bought from a bookshop in Sunderland who had gone out of business. The children's area has had some purpose built units installed and all in all it looks much better. Our Housing Company, South Tyneside Homes, has also built a small extension to the building to house their enquiries office.

I notice, from the Daily Despatch website in East London, that there have been freak storms which have caused flash floods. Strangely this is something we are all getting used to in England too. It's only a few weeks since a similar but probably slightly colder, storm caused havoc in the uplands of West Yorkshire and around the West of England again. Last year we had devastating floods in the Severn Valley so we all appreciate the difficulties when you are faced with too much water. It is interesting to read the local newspaper from so far away and to get a flavour of the kinds of issues which face people in the Eastern Cape. They look remarkably similar in some ways.

I have also found out this week that there is a strange coincidence to our visit to South Africa. My grandfather, whose family came from Northampton in the Midlands of England, had an uncle George who I vaguely remember my father telling me ended up living in Durban. We don't have many family photos from that side of the family and most of them are no longer with us so we have to rely on bits of information from my grandmother, who is still alive. I do have a picture of this particular man though, and, on the rear under the backing paper it has an inscription which says it was taken in 1924 in East London. I am fascinated to know what he was doing there but also a bit aware that I might not want to know. From what I can gather, East London in 1924 wasn't a particularly happy place to be and you find yourself wondering what kind of people your ancestors were.

Hotter than the Cape

The unseasonal weather here continues and my office is now hotter than the Cape! We are told it's going to get colder toward the end of the week and at least I will be able to turn off my air conditioner then. It doesn't seem to work that well - the office faces west and towards the end of the day can get unbearable as there are no air handlers or ventilation at all.

We've spent the afternoon trying to wade through the complexities of the replacement of our People's Network computer systems. The computers which we were able to install as part of our Government funded scheme are now six years old and although they are still running, they are very outdated and we do receive more negative feedback from our customers now. The difficulty has also arisen that because some machines were put in later they have different operating systems in some cases and different packages. We hope that we can make the case to have them replaced by our ICT department over a couple of years and have already had some indication that they'd consider this over the next couple of years.

Ann, Laurayne and I have been in touch today to sort out a visit to see Elephant at the Theatre Royal and also to organise a session at the Central Library in Gateshead before we go, to meet with the Premier and the MEC's party. It will be great to talk to them before our visit.

Today has been interesting in that Central Government have announced a new scheme to guarantee that school children are given 5 hours per week of cultural experience. It's not entirely clear how this will be delivered yet and we are expecting more information after a local meeting with a number of our local Art and Cultural organisations. There will be a number of pilot schemes which it would be good to be part of and library services have been identified as part of this cultural offer.

Exciting day

Just another day in the life really but it ended up exciting! This morning in South Tyneside was very sunny but very cold. It's still midwinter here so a fine day means a cold one - mind you it hasn't been like that all over the UK today. Temperatures in Wales apparently have been up to an unseasonal 18 degrees C.

The work day was not particularly special - a Principal Officers Senior Team meeting to start the day with a discussion on workforce development. The main issues we identified were the challenges now in recruiting young people to work in our Local Government and the "generalisation" of jobs which has meant a lack of people trained in specialist work.

The afternoon was spent dealing with staffing issues, planning for next year's budgets and their implications. Sent some details to the Council's web team for a page to advertise and promote the National Year of Reading in our Borough. Spoke to our colleague at the Museums Libraries and Archives Council in Newcastle to discuss a proposal for a Regional Coordinator to look at the Year of Reading across our twelve library authorities. Late afternoon the day got much more exciting with the news that our tickets for South Africa are booked and we are all set to board the plane on March 6th. Now planning our visit to watch Elephant at the Theatre Royal in Newcastle on March 1st.

Here goes with our collective blog for our journey to the Southern Hemisphere to meet our colleagues in the Eastern Cape Provincial Library Service. It's three weeks to go and we are all very excited at the prospect of making the long journey south to a different world.

Today we received the first draft of our journey through the Eastern Cape to visit a number of libraries and to take part in the planned Indaba at the Mpkweni Beach Resort in Mid March. I confess to having searched the web for photographs of the countryside to see what it's going to look like and I can't wait for the experience of travelling through the open spaces of South Africa.

We're all looking forward to seeing how a different country develops its library service, especially one which has such huge challenges but such a great opportunity to look at its service from a new viewpoint. It's almost impossible to think about the size of the Province - I have to keep comparing it to the UK and the thought of having to run a service across such a wide area is both frightening and stimulating. It will be great to take our experience to the Cape but for us to learn from colleagues there as part of the visit.

The photo shows a very different coast to the one we'll see in the Eastern Cape but one with strange similarities too. The North East shares with the Eastern Cape a "Wild Coast", a rural hinterland and a number of coastal towns, ports and cities. Our ports are like those of the Eastern Cape, busy functional but attractive places with a long and varied history.

We are all impatient to get there.... all we need now are our tickets! Mark.