MATTHEW PARSONS
1993-94 Traveling Fellow
AIDS and the Global Village
Matthew’s project focused on grassroots NGOs and their responses to HIV/AIDS. Following his fellowship, he created a short documentary on HIV/AIDS in South India, a 14-minute story that traveled to over 30 film festivals in the coming years.
Hometown: Henley-on-Thames, England
Major: Psychology
Matthew is Vice President and General Manager at LRW, a global strategic consultancy and one of the largest market research consultancies in the world. He has over 17 years of experience serving pharmaceutical brand teams and technology clients by providing customized quantitative research to evaluate critical marketing events and strategies.
Following his Traveling Fellowship, Matthew went to the London School of Economics to complete an economics degree in Social Psychology. At Vanderbilt, Matthew was Interhall Student Body President and involved in AFS Vanderbilt and the Student Leader's Action Coalition.
“Be spontaneous. Trust in the kindness of strangers and that wonderful things lie around every corner. With patience you will always win. If you can wait out the trials and tribulations, solutions appear where none were apparent. Traveling of any kind does not necessarily expand your horizons; richer experience comes from choosing the harder way, the less familiar. Most people have a story and want to tell it.”
— Matthew Parsons
ITINERARY
Brazil
Kenya
Uganda
Tanzania
Zanzibar
Madagascar
India
Bangladesh
TRAVEL STORIES
In Florianopolis, Brazil, I filmed folks coping with drug addiction and HIV infection at a rehabilitation center, located in a former drug boss's lavish property. I taught each person how to use the camcorder. They were very creative choosing to be in front of a cow, at the dry bottom of the empty pool, showing only eyes, and or in front of a painting. The stories were devastatingly raw; but they relished the chance to be filmed and record what had happened to them.
I traveled through rural Uganda with the Islamic Medical Association conducting educational programs in towns and villages on HIV prevention. Sitting on the mud floor of a local village mosque, watching a demonstration of condom use on a wooden phallus by rural farmers is one of those moments you never forget. Suddenly the grand high brow educational mission of HIV prevention boils down to a terribly practical matter when the simple farmer points out, “the nurse’s station is only open on Thursday to get two condoms, and is located 6 kilometers from here on a dirt path.”
On a 38-hour train ride from Calcutta to Madras, I shared the cabin with a family from Bangladesh traveling for medical care; a nephew escorted four uncles, one for eye surgery, another for his heart, then a liver, and finally the last for arthritis - as if we were off to Oz. My size 13 sneakers were stolen in the night time - I'd forgotten to put them in my padlocked rucksack chained to the ceiling fan. My friends toured the entire train, front to back alerting all to the stolen shoes. For 30 hours, I was visited by scores of passengers offering me their condolences and, I think, coming to have a look at big European feet.