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This morning, I went to wipe my hands on a tea towel, and while I was using it, it seemed like it felt a bit light. I unfolded it and realized my daughter had cut little bits out of it to make frocks for her dolls!
It is remarkable how many misconceptions there are here about life in the developing world and I think that that knowledge gap has done a lot to contribute to the imbalance quite frankly.
The only way you can have it all is by delegating all the running of the home to other people – which I don’t ever want to do… So you do it yourself, and it takes time and energy and effort. And if you give it the time, it’s profoundly enjoyable.
I have had lots of friends who’ve been affected by Aids and a very good friend of mine, Oscar Moore, died of Aids and I was with him in his last year quite a bit. And of course he was a man living in a very rich culture with a wealthy family who was able to afford health care.
I don’t mean being famous is a perk, because one knows that it’s not necessarily a perk, but there are certain perks to being well-known and respected in one’s field. Public perks. Like, I don’t know, general friendliness and willingness to please, just to point out two.
I understand what it’s like to come with your family, and to uproot yourself and come to another culture. You need a lot of support. People say, ‘She’s got her daughter she’s got her husband.’ Yeah, but she hasn’t got anyone else.
Any problem, big or small, within a family, always seems to start with bad communication. Someone isn’t listening.
I was brought up by very witty people who were dealing with quite difficult things: disease and death… I was brought up by people who tended to giggle at funerals.
But when I lose my temper, I find it difficult to forgive myself. I feel I’ve failed. I can be calm in a crisis, in the face of death or things that hurt badly. I don’t get hysterical, which may be masochistic of me.
And it’s absolutely true that male sexual behaviour and female responses to male demands change a lot when they start communicating – and the levels of the communication that I’ve seen on the ground in very, very poor areas are so high and I think why don’t we have that here?