Stop all the Clocks

http://www.sundayobserver.lk/2018/02/25/news/farewell-una

Una was my great friend, since our first meeting at Eurocentre Lee Green in 1989, where we were both English teachers to Swiss and Brazilian students. We both lived in North/ East London, and commuted together, always staying in touch even after she went back to Spain to teach. I visited her in Puebla de Atlixco, Mexico, in 1990, when she worked as a volunteer at an orphanage for street children, and that was the beginning of our many travels together. Around the time I went to work in (then) Czechoslovakia, Una took an MA in overseas development, and from then on her work was increasingly politicised and frontline: she worked with reuniting child soldiers with their families after the war in Liberia and Sierra Leone; for Save the Children and Rada Barnen  in Guinea Bissau, amongst other places. Once she and her colleagues spent Easter Sunday hiding in a cupboard whilst their building was being shelled. She got rescued by the Navy Seals, too...From there she went on to Kenya, Togo, Panama, Sri Lanka. Her managerial skills were second to none, as she was excellent at seeing everyone's point of view, and calming people down when things got heated.

We had holidays together in Derbyshire, the Forest of  Dean, Jersey, Corfu, Crete, The Gambia, and most recently in Sri Lanka, where she wanted to go shopping for clothes in the Sale department of the cheerfully grotty House of Fashion store! We also travelled to Kandy, to the temple of the Tooth,  a tea factory, and the elephant village of Pinewalla. She had hired a driver for our visit, and let us go wherever we wanted, despite having to stay home to work herself. She was a highly principled person, with humanitarian values that infomed her life and practice, but never, ever a bore. A humungously humorous humanitarian.

But I had known her since we were both poor, when she came to my unfurnished squat, travelling by train with a giant rolled-up carpet. Generosity and inventiveness were her trademarks. Later, she rescued me from financial difficulties more than once: I'm glad I paid her back

I hadn't known that Una was ill again. She was still tweeting in her capacity as UN envoy in Sri Lanka (the first woman to take this no.1 United Nations position in SL) one week ago. It seems that the cancer she'd had in 2015, had returned, but the symptoms were at first masked by the flu. She went to Singapore, where she'd been treated before,  for an investigation, and was pronounced clear. As the pain had not abated, she went to a Sri Lankan  hospital, where she was diagnosed correctly. A medical plane was chartered to take her to London for treatment, but unfortunately she never even made it to the plane. She died last Friday night, leaving her family, friends, and Sri Lanka in shock and mourning. 

Here we are together on Negombo beach, Sri Lanka,  on 2 January 2016, with Una on the right. Clean Steve took the picture. We'd had a perfect day, starting with breakfast out with her housemate Barrie at the fabulously-named Tintagel hotel,  a trip to the beach, lunch at another wonderful beach hotel, a paddle in the wild waves....

Afterwards, I had to head off to the airport for my flight back to grizzly England, via snowy Belgrade. I stepped off the plane at Nikola Tesla airport in my flip-flops. Ouch. 

So long, Una, and thank you for all the memories. I cannot believe you're gone.