During that first year in Switzerland, I settled into some new \u2018routines\u2019 \u00a0complementing the daily thesis writing and introducing myself to exciting aspects to the beautiful city\u00a0 of Geneva, which had become my home.\u00a0 I signed up for French classes at the nearby Migros Ecole, starting as a real debutante.\u00a0 I had brought my bicycle from London, sent with my stuff in three metal trunks \u2013 accumulated over the five years of living in London \u2013\u00a0 and started exploring the city during the gentle autumn months, reminding myself frequently to ride on the right hand side of the road.<\/p>\n
The first six months we stayed in a small flat in Eaux Vivres, rue Emile Bloch \u2013\u00a0 a five minute walk down to the lake with the well-established garden and park almost adjacent.\u00a0 Very well placed.\u00a0 Ronald rode across the Pont du Mont Blanc to the HEI on the other side of the lake, where he was an assistant and receiving a small stipend.\u00a0 We lived simply.\u00a0 I was finding my way and loving the novelty.\u00a0 The international community makes up a third of Geneva\u2019s population.\u00a0 Indigenous Genevois \u00a0account for another third, and the balance comprises Swiss from other parts of Switzerland.\u00a0 It is a rich and expensive city with a shortage of low end and middle class housing but with excellent public transport and street collection services.\u00a0 I discovered this particular fact in the first month as I walked around and wondered at the perfectly good furniture and equipment on street corners waiting for collection on a particular day.\u00a0 Residents could get rid of unwanted goods, easily.\u00a0 And I found a perfectly good desk on the pavement downstairs which some teenager had outgrown, maybe because it was green.\u00a0 Easily transported in the lift, I continued writing on this desk, which accompanied me six months later when we found our own apartment in Nyon outside Geneva.<\/p>\n
Nyon was a small town on the shores of Lake Geneva, on the site to which Julius Caesar had retired his cavalry veterans around 52 BC.\u00a0 The Helvetian settlement called Noviodunum had stood there well before that.\u00a0 We were in the centre of the old town \u2013 our building several hundred years old.\u00a0 Our study windows on the second floor looked out at the site of the ancient basilica which had been excavated only ten years or so before.\u00a0 Many interesting finds, including an impressive collection of amphora for olive oil and wine, were now housed in the museum beneath the open square.\u00a0 In fact, we lived in the middle of an archeological site when an ancient burial site was discovered during routine digging for water and sewerage pipes running adjacent to our building.\u00a0 For months we stepped over bones and stony tombs while a team of archeologists and students completed their painstaking and detailed recording work.<\/p>\n
Our apartment was quite spacious, and the three rooms had ceilings with ancient wooden beams giving it a special character.\u00a0 From the front door, one arrived into a large bright kitchen with surprisingly tasteful green ceramic floor tiles. This opened directly into the living room, a long rectangular room with doors leading to the study and the bedroom. The external wall in the living room was unplastered, revealing the ancient stones with which it was built and containing a single window.\u00a0 There was an old mazout heating system with green tiles, and a thick black pipe found its way through the stone wall to the outside.\u00a0 We chose the corner room with two windows and the best natural light for our study with our two desks.\u00a0 My green desk not visible from the main living room but Ronald\u2019s was.\u00a0 It was his father\u2019s desk made of light oak brought from Zurich and had a rather large patriarchal presence.<\/p>\n
The apartment was full of character, warm and inviting.\u00a0 Not warm in terms of temperature as there was no double glazing on the windows.\u00a0 This was unusual for Switzerland and meant that our flat was classified as \u2018sans comfort<\/em>\u2019.\u00a0 But this status was duly reflected in the low rental.\u00a0 With any more comfort, it would have been beyond our means. Our first winter in Nyon was quite something when after a steady snowfall, we waded through snow drifts mid-way up our thighs, and our car a dark blue Renault 4, model de Base, disappeared under a white beehive of snow.<\/p>\n Amazed, I studied the thick layer of ice covering the inside of the window panes of our apartment.\u00a0 Ronald assured me that this was the principle of igloos, and we were in fact warmer than I thought!\u00a0 Double glazing just prevents the layer of ice forming, he said.\u00a0 So, in our igloo we sat at our desks hunched over old typewriters with layers of woolen jackets, long socks and scarves and steadily typed out our \u2018works\u2019.\u00a0 Ronald completed his thesis six months before I did, insisting that this was not meant to be his life\u2019s work but a necessary step to move on from.\u00a0 A good point, but I had a different relationship to my thesis and was not as well-organised with my material.\u00a0 He then started on his post-doctoral research programme \u2013 a fascinating study of the regional dynamics of de-colonisation in southern Africa.\u00a0 And I dreamt of working with the International Labour Office.<\/p>\n At a housing conference at the DPU before I left London, I had met someone from the International Labour Office in Geneva, and this proved to be my introduction to the ILO, the oldest international organisation.\u00a0 Established in 1919 with a tripartite structure, its mandate focusing on labour standards, and labour law had resonated with me as I explored various forms of labour exploitation specific to South Africa.\u00a0 And it appeared that my work on housing resonated with them.\u00a0 We started the process of discussions on how I might contribute to the ILO\u2019s role and preparation in the build-up to International Year of Shelter for the Homeless – IYSH, which the UN had just decided on for 1987.<\/p>\n I got the opportunity at the end of 1984 as I was literally writing the conclusion to my thesis.\u00a0 I was asked to go to Sri Lanka with members of the DPU from London, who were advising the Sri Lankan housing ministry on a high profile \u2018Million Houses Programme\u2019.\u00a0 It was Prime minister Premadasa who had proposed the idea for the IYSH to the UN, so they were keen for an endorsement from the ILO.\u00a0 As I had my final briefing at the ILO, Jurgen von Muralt, who was soon after to became my mentor for several years, said almost casually, looking up at me sideways as I was on my way out, \u201cTry and get to the plantations..\u201d<\/p>\n ***<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Arrival in Switzerland and our first years in Nyon, a small town on Lake Geneva. Completion of our theses, and my introduction to the International Labour Organisation. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"featured_media":260,"template":"","categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-259","episode_posts","type-episode_posts","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-part-1-threads-and-thresholds"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mylisteningheart.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/episode_posts\/259","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mylisteningheart.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/episode_posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mylisteningheart.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/episode_posts"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mylisteningheart.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/260"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mylisteningheart.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=259"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mylisteningheart.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=259"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mylisteningheart.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=259"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}