I met Carol in 1962--we were college roommates at Barnard in NYC, for a year.
We re-connected, briefly, in the fall of 2007, by e-mails, thanks to the internet, and caught up a little, on 25-30 years of missing news. One of the first things she immediately told me of was that she had advanced metastatic breast cancer, but she intended to work "until the last nail was put in her coffin." Why--because she loved her work. And couldn't imagine doing anything else, of travelling the world to talk about sex!
I offered--or tried to offer--to help, and she refused. Perhaps Carol had some sense of how short her remaining time was. She was absolutely determined to get together with Aaron and Ryan over Christmas, "even if she had to get on the plane in a wheelchair." So now I hope those days together at the resort did happen, and she heard of Aaron's kids's achievments, and Ryan's life in Amsterdam, and she had one precious last long time to spend with them all.
I have memories of long phone calls with Carol, when she was pregnant with Aaron, and too fat to reach her shoes, or of meeting her Travis while driving across the country to get to my dad's dying time. Of hearing of her first grant to go to Belize, and of days before that--when we swapped our enthusiasms from our college classes. If any of you know Carol, you can imagine her sitting on top of a pile of clean laundry, looking up from a physical anthropology text, passionately describing the evolution of the turtle's anatomy. That's a memory, that may bring your own to mind--of how she shared her intellect, her beliefs, her interests.
If anyone can forward my name and 3e-mail to Ryan and Aaron, I can tell them a little about meeting Carol's mom and dad in Atlantic City, about our times together in NYC, about her job at U of Penn studying fighting fish. I know how much she cared for and relied on Travis being there. This is the man who, she wonderingly showed me, loved her and bought her a new refrigerator! Music connected Carol to Travis, and the other way around. Piano, guitar, folk songs, jazz, and perhaps even her dad's own band leader days gave her in music what she shared with her husband, and probably what she conveyed to her sons. "Quite talented!" as she smugly put it, describing Ryan's bass playing, in Amsterdam. "A marine biologist, does very well, married and kids! " describing Aaron. If Carol so very succinctly said it, you know she felt it a thousand times more proudly, telling a long-ago roommate of her two grown sons. And missing Travis? Of that, a couple of sentences conveyed her total loss...
Once, maybe what, 15? 20? years ago, watching TV, I recognized Carol on a National Geographic special. That chin, those long earrings, that leaning forward, with a baby in her arms, giving rapid fire explanations to the camera, of the medical and anthropological facts on world-wide television. So I knew to be proud I'd known Carol, and I learned she'd done what she always wanted to do at age 17 and 18: be an anthropologist, keep her music alive, counter racism and rampant political misconceptions about human beings, with science and fact and intellect and passion.
It would have been really, really, really nice, to have had a few more years of Carol! ...to become "old ladies" together, e-mailing and mumbling about long-ago funny tales, sad tales, unusual events and people we'd known. If anyone can forward my name and e-mail to Ryan or Aaron, I've saved Carol's "letters" from this past fall, and can send them on, in hopes that maybe they'd like to hear her words. Or if I can tell them about her life before they were born, perhaps that would send them some sympathy and best thoughts. Offered to help Carol, so the offer extends now to her two sons, if there's something practical I can do.
Finally, I know Carol wanted Alternate Visions to continue. Her work, her family, her life--which of us has not had our lives changed, from knowing her?? I'm a little voice from long ago in Carol's intital times--to see the photos and read of her co-workers, her friends, the places in the world she made home, those are the large voices, that will carry on what Carol started--making the world a better place to live in.
Sincerely,
Johanna Zeh
Boulder, CO
USA
Friday, April 4, 2008
Sunday, March 2, 2008
Christine Stewart's recap of the service in PNG
Christine Stewart sent this description of the memorial held in Port Moresby last month:
I first met Carol Jenkins in 1992, at a meeting of the National AIDS Committee in Port Moresby, when Carol was only just beginning her work in HIV research and intervention design. Even after we both left employment in PNG, we kept up the contact. When Carol’s cancer was first diagnosed as fatal in 2005, I went to Bangkok to visit her, and then in January, when news arrived that the end was close, I returned to Bangkok to say goodbye, and I was there for the death and the funeral.
While in Bangkok, I prepared the shipment of much of Carol's extensive PNG library for consignment to the Australian National University where it will become the Carol Jenkins Memorial Collection. After days and days of sorting all those books and documents, searching the ANU library catalogue for absolutely every title to avoid duplication, we got the ANU consignment packed and shipped the day before I left, 39 boxes in all, definitely going by sea. I flew back to Canberra arriving on 6th February, and then flew out Friday to the memorial service in Port Moresby on 10th. As soon as I had heard about the service in Bangkok, I felt that I should go, and Aaron was delighted when I mentioned it, he was unable to make it himself, and was hoping someone from Bangkok would go.
So I 'carried the talk' and read out Aaron’s eulogy, as well as tossing in a word or two of my own. The service was lovely, about 50 people gathered in the Botanical Gardens on the University campus, on a cool cloudy afternoon so not too hot. Carol’s favourite jazz music was playing, Lady Roslyn Morauta was compère, and speeches were given by Dame Carol Kidu MP, Minister for Community Development, and many friends, colleagues and representatives of organisations Carol had worked for and with, including A man from the Hagahai, to whom I presented a huge bag of Carol's clothes to take back to his homeland.
I thought that I was doing this because there should be some sort of link between the funeral in Bangkok and the service in PNG, where Carol had lived and worked for so many years. But when I got to Moresby, I realised that I was doing it for myself too. For me, it was closure, and in many ways, far more real than the funeral. PNG is a home to my, and I have always understood why to Carol, it was her first love. So I'm so glad I went.
Christine Stewart
I first met Carol Jenkins in 1992, at a meeting of the National AIDS Committee in Port Moresby, when Carol was only just beginning her work in HIV research and intervention design. Even after we both left employment in PNG, we kept up the contact. When Carol’s cancer was first diagnosed as fatal in 2005, I went to Bangkok to visit her, and then in January, when news arrived that the end was close, I returned to Bangkok to say goodbye, and I was there for the death and the funeral.
While in Bangkok, I prepared the shipment of much of Carol's extensive PNG library for consignment to the Australian National University where it will become the Carol Jenkins Memorial Collection. After days and days of sorting all those books and documents, searching the ANU library catalogue for absolutely every title to avoid duplication, we got the ANU consignment packed and shipped the day before I left, 39 boxes in all, definitely going by sea. I flew back to Canberra arriving on 6th February, and then flew out Friday to the memorial service in Port Moresby on 10th. As soon as I had heard about the service in Bangkok, I felt that I should go, and Aaron was delighted when I mentioned it, he was unable to make it himself, and was hoping someone from Bangkok would go.
So I 'carried the talk' and read out Aaron’s eulogy, as well as tossing in a word or two of my own. The service was lovely, about 50 people gathered in the Botanical Gardens on the University campus, on a cool cloudy afternoon so not too hot. Carol’s favourite jazz music was playing, Lady Roslyn Morauta was compère, and speeches were given by Dame Carol Kidu MP, Minister for Community Development, and many friends, colleagues and representatives of organisations Carol had worked for and with, including A man from the Hagahai, to whom I presented a huge bag of Carol's clothes to take back to his homeland.
I thought that I was doing this because there should be some sort of link between the funeral in Bangkok and the service in PNG, where Carol had lived and worked for so many years. But when I got to Moresby, I realised that I was doing it for myself too. For me, it was closure, and in many ways, far more real than the funeral. PNG is a home to my, and I have always understood why to Carol, it was her first love. So I'm so glad I went.
Christine Stewart
Wednesday, February 13, 2008
Tuesday, February 12, 2008
2006 interview with Carol Jenkins
Thank you to Aditya Bondyopadhay who sent this interview with Carol published in OSI's "In SHARP Focus," No. 1, 2006.
OSI: Please describe your work on HIV and AIDS.
CJ: My work on HIV began in 1991 in Papua New Guinea and still continues. I have now worked in about 28 countries, conducted primary reserach, set up national second-generation surveillance systems, designed regional and country strategies for major donors and designed and implemented large scale interventions for injecting drug users, sex workers and MSM.
OSI: Describe your previous experiences with the IAC. Have you found participation to be useful? Not useful? Please explain.
CJ: Yes, some meetings have been very useful, and yet not all. Durban was good as was Germany and Japan many years ago. More recently they have become fiestas. Bangkok was great but only in the Global Village. The papers were not interesting, there were few debates, and outside demonstrations served as the only place to be heard for those who disagreed with major discourses.
OSI: You have been at the forfront of insistence that there be greater space and attention devoted to issues connected ot men who have sex with men, transgender folks and sex workers. This IAC seems to be giving a bit more attention to these issues than in the past. Is this your sense as well? If so, what do you think accounts for htis?
CJ: I have been insisting on space for sex work issues, but for this conference the only space has been reduced totally to a few main conference sessions and networking in the Global Village. It would seem that this is, in large part, the result of US pressure, despite little US financial investment.
OSI: Why did you decide NOT to attend the IAC this time?
CJ: My paper on violence againsst sex workers was rejected despite the relevance of the topic and the strong methodology. It makes me wonder if it was the submect matter that led to its rejection. So, I could go to hang out with my friends in the Global Village, but I'm concerned that the section will be kept off to the side and will have no influence on the main meeting. Until sex workers have political clout there will be continued oppression, which is definitely getting worse. The IAC has accommodated this anti-prostitution discourse. At a time when so much force is building up against investments for sex workers, the meeting should have emphasized that - instead it went the other way.
OSI: Please describe yourself, your work and your organization.
CJ: Traines as a medical anthropologist and human biologist, I worked for 10 years on human growth and nutrition in developing countries, a careet path that led through infectious diseases straight to HIV by the early 1990s. Since then I have served as Principal Research Officer, Papua New Guinea Institute of Medical Research, the Head of Social and Behavioral Research for Sexual and Reproductive Health at ICDDR,B (Bangladesh), Resident Advisor for Family Health International, Bangladesh, Senior Scientist for Social and Behavioral HIV Prevention Research at the Division of AIDS at NIAID (NIH), Senior Regional Advisor for the Asia-Near East for USAID, and have been a consultant for a large number of international NGOs, bilateral and multilateral donors. Presently I am director of a new company, Alternate Visions, which is working in Fiji for UNAIDS and planning to work in Pakistan and Papua New Guinea.
OSI: Please describe your work on HIV and AIDS.
CJ: My work on HIV began in 1991 in Papua New Guinea and still continues. I have now worked in about 28 countries, conducted primary reserach, set up national second-generation surveillance systems, designed regional and country strategies for major donors and designed and implemented large scale interventions for injecting drug users, sex workers and MSM.
OSI: Describe your previous experiences with the IAC. Have you found participation to be useful? Not useful? Please explain.
CJ: Yes, some meetings have been very useful, and yet not all. Durban was good as was Germany and Japan many years ago. More recently they have become fiestas. Bangkok was great but only in the Global Village. The papers were not interesting, there were few debates, and outside demonstrations served as the only place to be heard for those who disagreed with major discourses.
OSI: You have been at the forfront of insistence that there be greater space and attention devoted to issues connected ot men who have sex with men, transgender folks and sex workers. This IAC seems to be giving a bit more attention to these issues than in the past. Is this your sense as well? If so, what do you think accounts for htis?
CJ: I have been insisting on space for sex work issues, but for this conference the only space has been reduced totally to a few main conference sessions and networking in the Global Village. It would seem that this is, in large part, the result of US pressure, despite little US financial investment.
OSI: Why did you decide NOT to attend the IAC this time?
CJ: My paper on violence againsst sex workers was rejected despite the relevance of the topic and the strong methodology. It makes me wonder if it was the submect matter that led to its rejection. So, I could go to hang out with my friends in the Global Village, but I'm concerned that the section will be kept off to the side and will have no influence on the main meeting. Until sex workers have political clout there will be continued oppression, which is definitely getting worse. The IAC has accommodated this anti-prostitution discourse. At a time when so much force is building up against investments for sex workers, the meeting should have emphasized that - instead it went the other way.
OSI: Please describe yourself, your work and your organization.
CJ: Traines as a medical anthropologist and human biologist, I worked for 10 years on human growth and nutrition in developing countries, a careet path that led through infectious diseases straight to HIV by the early 1990s. Since then I have served as Principal Research Officer, Papua New Guinea Institute of Medical Research, the Head of Social and Behavioral Research for Sexual and Reproductive Health at ICDDR,B (Bangladesh), Resident Advisor for Family Health International, Bangladesh, Senior Scientist for Social and Behavioral HIV Prevention Research at the Division of AIDS at NIAID (NIH), Senior Regional Advisor for the Asia-Near East for USAID, and have been a consultant for a large number of international NGOs, bilateral and multilateral donors. Presently I am director of a new company, Alternate Visions, which is working in Fiji for UNAIDS and planning to work in Pakistan and Papua New Guinea.
Monday, February 4, 2008
Donations in memory of Carol
Carol set up the Travis Jenkins Memorial Award in honor of her late husband. The award is given to a current or former injecting drug user who has contributed to the health and human rights of drug users. Past recipients include Paisan Suwannawong, co-founder of the Thai Drug Users Network.
Many people have asked whether they could offer donations to a foundation in Carol's memory. Donations would be welcome to support the Travis Jenkins Memorial Award. Donations may be made by cheque payable to International Harm Reduction Association and posted to IHRA, Second Floor, 40 Bermondsey Street, London SE1 3UD UK, or by electronic transfer. Please write to annie dot kuch at ihra dot net for bank details.
Many people have asked whether they could offer donations to a foundation in Carol's memory. Donations would be welcome to support the Travis Jenkins Memorial Award. Donations may be made by cheque payable to International Harm Reduction Association and posted to IHRA, Second Floor, 40 Bermondsey Street, London SE1 3UD UK, or by electronic transfer. Please write to annie dot kuch at ihra dot net for bank details.
Wednesday, January 30, 2008
Thursday, January 24, 2008
Cremation ceremony on Saturday 26 Jan in Bangkok
Saturday 26 January 2008
At Wat Keaw Jam fa [Temple]
476 Si-Praya Road, Bangrak, Bangkok
15:30 Eulogy
16:00 Monks Pray: During the ceremony, all guests have hand palms closed in the Thai greeting ("WAI" - ไหว้) gesture and "WAI" several times during the monks prayers. Monks prayers are about the impermanence of life.
16:30 Last Goodbye: The cremation ceremony, guests lay down flowers, incense sticks and candles in front of the coffin. When the body is cremated, the soul [วิญญาณ] is released.
At Wat Keaw Jam fa [Temple]
476 Si-Praya Road, Bangrak, Bangkok
15:30 Eulogy
16:00 Monks Pray: During the ceremony, all guests have hand palms closed in the Thai greeting ("WAI" - ไหว้) gesture and "WAI" several times during the monks prayers. Monks prayers are about the impermanence of life.
16:30 Last Goodbye: The cremation ceremony, guests lay down flowers, incense sticks and candles in front of the coffin. When the body is cremated, the soul [วิญญาณ] is released.
Tuesday, January 22, 2008
Long live Carol Jenkins
Carol Jenkins passed away at 11 pm on 22nd January, 2008, in Bangkok, Thailand, of cancer. She was surrounded by friends from the four corners of the world, a full moon shone above, and sweet music was played for her by her two sons Aaron and Ryan.
Carol was born in 1945 in the USA, but she lived her life as a citizen of the world. Carol worked tirelessly for the health and human rights of marginalized people throughout the world, using her research skills to collect data and document the lives of people in order to improve their situations with evidence of what would benefit them. She often asked, ‘Where’s the data?’
Carol's recent work and publications included a study of life opportunities for transgenders in Thailand, a study of rape of sex workers in Cambodia, and HIV assessments in the Middle East and North Africa. She pioneered the use of respondent driven sampling with sex workers, in Fiji, Cambodia and elsewhere. But her first and greatest love was for her work and her many friends in Papua New Guinea, from the remote Hagahai to the street-dwellers of Port Moresby.
Carol’s achievements were not limited to research. In 2004, she established the Travis Jenkins Memorial Award in memory of her husband. The Award is presented each year to a current or former injecting drug user who has made an outstanding contribution to reducing drug related harm.
Carol loved music, especially jazz, and played jazz guitar. Her home was a haven for musicians and colleagues from all over the world. Carol’s door was open day and night to people dropping in to discuss HIV, health, research, and music.
She is survived by her two sons Aaron and Ryan Jenkins, and two grandchildren.
Carol was a giant in her field and will be sorely missed.
Carol was born in 1945 in the USA, but she lived her life as a citizen of the world. Carol worked tirelessly for the health and human rights of marginalized people throughout the world, using her research skills to collect data and document the lives of people in order to improve their situations with evidence of what would benefit them. She often asked, ‘Where’s the data?’
Carol's recent work and publications included a study of life opportunities for transgenders in Thailand, a study of rape of sex workers in Cambodia, and HIV assessments in the Middle East and North Africa. She pioneered the use of respondent driven sampling with sex workers, in Fiji, Cambodia and elsewhere. But her first and greatest love was for her work and her many friends in Papua New Guinea, from the remote Hagahai to the street-dwellers of Port Moresby.
Carol’s achievements were not limited to research. In 2004, she established the Travis Jenkins Memorial Award in memory of her husband. The Award is presented each year to a current or former injecting drug user who has made an outstanding contribution to reducing drug related harm.
Carol loved music, especially jazz, and played jazz guitar. Her home was a haven for musicians and colleagues from all over the world. Carol’s door was open day and night to people dropping in to discuss HIV, health, research, and music.
She is survived by her two sons Aaron and Ryan Jenkins, and two grandchildren.
Carol was a giant in her field and will be sorely missed.
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