Letters to Gary Engelberg, RIP

Gary Engelberg, former president of Africa Consultants International

I have never seen Gary Engelberg or spoken with him. He lived and worked far away, in Dakar, Senegal, a corner of Francophone Africa. Yet, over five days in 1998 we had an intense, profound email exchange in which 13,800 words passed between Dakar and Delhi. Clearing clutter last week, I stumbled upon this astonishing trove of letters that lasted from September 28 to October 2 that year.

Not for the first time in my life, I had taken on a task for which I lacked training and experience. I had been contracted by the United Nations Development Programme to develop an advocacy strategy for UNAIDS. I had a street-wise understanding of HIV and AIDS and instinct more than expertise. I had no idea what advocacy meant and had never written a strategy.

HIV/AIDS had been sowing panic, mayhem and chaos for nearly 17 years. There was no cure, no vaccine and no better advice than to wear condoms, avoid sex with people whose HIV status you did not know, not share needles and ensure that you didn't receive infected blood in transfusions. Those mind-numbing messages surrounded us like metronomes, blunted through repetition, bereft of meaning.

Someone directed me to Gary Engelberg, and I wrote him a short letter inviting him to share his Africa experiences. Thus began a prolific, heartfelt correspondence where nothing was sacrosanct and there were no rules. I had more than many questions.

A big one concerned the alarming projections being made about how AIDS would devastate India. With a bare-bones surveillance system and no nationally coordinated system of data-sharing between states, I wondered what numbers drove the dire projections. I learned that the World Bank's calculations were based on countries they considered similar to India. These "nearest neighbours" were invariably Africa or Thailand.

But Africa is a continent of 54 countries, while Thailand is no bigger than a large Indian state. Neither represents India. Gary wrote of the need to understand the "Indian epidemic" and the link between India's diverse cultural beliefs and the spread of HIV. We spoke of viewing India as "HIV jurisdictions" rather than political units.

Over two decades later, those doom-laden prognostications have not come true. Surprisingly, HIV's prevalence in the world's most populous country remains at just 0.2 per cent - and not because of a superlative communication campaign.

I was deeply troubled, then and now, by how selfish HIV/AIDS messages were. Protect yourself, they seemed to say.

"There is something lonely about HIV messages," I wrote to Gary. "It's each one for themselves. Why don't we promote condom protection because of the people who love and depend on you and whose lives would be deeply diminished by your absence?"

"I feel I am dealing with a kindred spirit," Gary wrote back. "AIDS does to the community what the virus does to the body."

We spoke of the "perceived distance between a person and the disease and how one could reduce it through the voices of "converted" individuals who understood the urgency.

I cannot explain or understand why my communication with Gary ended so abruptly or why I never reconnected even after moving to Africa.

"I am experiencing withdrawal symptoms," he wrote to me on the fifth day. "Curious and uncontrollable longing for my daily letter from Gopi!"

But life pulled us down different rivers.

I imagined Gary to be a cross between Gregory Peck and Einstein, firm of jaw, kind of face, eyes that could put a room at ease, and a way of listening beyond the words being spoken. Triggered by my discovery of our letters, I wondered where he was now, two and a half decades later.

His email address pointed to Africa Consultants International, whose website listed Gary as President and former ACI Director. There was no photograph.

More Googling took me to Midwood High School in Brooklyn, New York, where Gary had graduated with the Class of 1961. He could not attend their 50-year reunion in 2011, but there were two photos of him on the reunion web page. The younger Gary definitely had that square jaw and, to my delight, the older one had all the sparkling kindness of Einstein.

Gary had fallen in love with Senegal, which he reached as a Peace Corps English teacher, and never left. He believed the Senegalese had a cultural gift for conflict resolution, among other strengths. His book, Learning to See, captures some of his stories about this gentle, wise country.

I wrote to ACI to trace Gary's whereabouts and received a reply within hours. On August 12, 2019, after battling serious illnesses for years, Gary had left Senegal and become one with the stars.

I am filled with wonder and regret at this man who flitted in and out of my life like a passing angel, and helped me refine my thinking in ways that informed the next two decades of my work.

One of the eulogies captured his spirit perfectly: "Gary was sweet, gentle and passionate, a giant like a baobab tree. Baobabs don't die when they fall. They continue to nourish the earth and the people, and enrich the cosmos."

You can reach C Y Gopinath at cygopi@gmail.com
Send your feedback to mailbag@mid-day.com
The views expressed in this column are the individual's and don't represent those of the paper.