At the university...

Yesterday was a simply crazy day - in the evening, two very interesting kelompok diskusi. In the morning, I gave a talk about "the Anthropology of HIV/AIDS in Indonesia" at the School of Public Health at Hasanuddin University, the top university here in town (indeed, in all of eastern Indonesia).


Ilmi, a good friend of mine and my academic sponsor for this trip, is a professor in the anthropology department here; Bill and I got to know her when we were in Australia in 2001. She was finishing up her PhD there and I ended up being a member of her dissertation committee. She arranged this talk. It was great - I talked about the HIV/AIDS situation in Makassar and my experiences. Akbar came along and sat up with me and helped field the many interesting questions afterward. About 100 students and faculty there; as you can see, the talk got written up in the two biggest newspapers in town, Fajar and Tribun Timor.

We're making plans to get the public health folks at the university, many of whom are very forward-thinking, working more intensively with GC on some research projects - all sides would benefit and it would be very interesting!