The Rest of Orientation Week

I actually slept through the night on Wednesday, which was a pleasant surprise. Because we were leaving to go back to Geneva, we got all of our stuff together, headed downstairs, ate breakfast, and filled out applications for our passes to the United Nations' Library. We get access to that, the library at the HEI (the Graduate Institute) in Geneva, and to the crappy little "library" where I am currently writing this on the grounds of the Knox Centre. Once we had finished that, we loaded up the bus and headed towards Vevey, the home of Nestle's corporate headquarters.

Initially when I heard we were going to Nestle, I was excited because I thought we were going to tour a chocolate factory. A girl from B-W did this program last semester, and they toured Callier. Unfortunately, that wasn't in the cards; we were just going to hear a corporate presentation from Nestle and to tour some of their HQ. Driving through Vevey was interesting. We literally drove down this road that was lined on both sides by deteriorating urban factories, and then turned right into a very nice, upscale town center. Nestle was at the end of this road. It is a large, u-shaped, modern building that is covered with windows and sits on the shore of Lake Geneva. We walked in, were met by a couple of Swiss women, got our visitors passes, and climbed into an elevator to head upstairs. I don't know the name of the woman who gave us the presentation, but she led us into a meeting room that was almost like a small theater. There was a desk with a few chairs and microphones facing us with a large projection screen behind it, and we sat in the theater-style chairs facing the table.

Our presenter gave us a fairly long, overly-detailed presentation about Nestle's history, corporate structure, products, policies, budget, corporate philosophy, etc. I found out a lot of things about Nestle that I did not know before, mostly different products and brands that they own. Nestle has purchased Friskies, Purina, Gerber, San Pellegrino, Edy's & Dreyer's ice cream, and Carnation. They also have a presence in at least 130 different countries. Some people began to wonder if Nestle was a corporate Leviathon that was looking to take over the world, and you did kind of get that sense from this woman. She toed the company line and followed that mantra that Nestle could do no wrong. Dr. Peters asked her to respond to criticism the company had faced about 20 years ago when children in Africa got poisoned from drinking Nestle powered baby formula. The woman was quick to respond (perhaps she had rehearsed her answer before?) and told us that it was not Nestle's fault for 3 reasons.
1.) Nestle cannot guarantee that all of their products will be 100% safe 100% of time, so things like this will eventually happen, but they have very good recall procedures in place.
2.) Nestle is a great corporation who knows that there is a market for formula in Africa, because the mothers are malnourished and cannot produce proper breast milk. Nestle does recognize that breast milk is preferable, but it is not always possible.
Now that all seemed alright, until she got to #3.
3.) Most of the burden of responsibility should fall on the mothers, because they did not follow the instructions that Nestle listed on the box. Instead of putting five spoonfuls of powder into the water, they only used one or two "to just give it the color" of milk. Therefore, they are responsible for their children getting sick and/or dying.

I was blown away. I was like, whoa, wait a minute. Did this woman just blame impoverished, malnourished mothers for trying to ration their baby formula and essentially say they killed their children? It appeared to be that way. Other people asked her several more questions, about topics such as Nestle's environmental policies and the manner in which they acquire their products, particularly chocolate and coffee, but she was ready with the rehearsed response for all of them. Nestle is God. Nestle is never wrong.

After being brainwashed for an hour, we walked through the gift shop area and saw a number of exhibits and pieces of information about Nestle. Ashley did discover that the Nescafe coffee machine gave out free samples, which was nice, and the woman gave us a gift bag that included a box of Callier milk chocolate when we left. Despite this, everyone got a kind of creepy feeling from that place. Since last Wednesday, I have made a conscious effort not to buy Nestle products. It has been difficult, because only 65% of their products are sold under the name Nestle, but I think I have been successful thus far. I've already spoken to a couple of Swiss people who hate Nestle and follow similar practices, so I feel justified in doing so.

For lunch we headed to the Alimentarium, a food museum and restaurant on the shore of Lake Geneva that is run by - guess who - Nestle. The food itself wasn't too bad - there were a few different types of pasta - but the woman serving it was a bitch, and I got sick from it, again. Then we walked outside and looked around. For some reason, there was a giant fork built a few feet into the lake. There was also a statue of Charlie Chaplin, who owned a summer home somewhere in the area. Once we had gotten our fill of touristy photos, we got back on the bus and returned to the Knox Centre, where we finally had half a day off. We took it fairly easy the rest of the day. Ashley and I organized our rooms and went on the internet in the library. We discovered at dinner that they have beer and wine for sale in the kitchen, so we each tried a different kind of the Swiss-German beer Feldschlossen. I got a dark one that was really good, and Ashley had a lighter one that was also good.

After dinner, I was planning on going back to the library, but we ended up going into Chris & Sam's room and bitching about some of the more obnoxious people in the program. This went on for a few hours, and several others filtered in and out of the conversation. At some point most of the people decided to go out to a bar, so we got ready and started walking with a group of about 8 people down towards Grand-Saconnex. Ashley, Jason W., Rachel, and I got stuck at a particularly long light; since we didn't feel like getting hit with a CHF 100 jaywalking fine, we waited until the light finally changed (the Swiss government has cameras everywhere, and they want you to know that Big Brother is watching you), and by that time the rest of the people had disappeared. We walked to the Auberge du Grand-Saconnex, and Ashley & Rachel asked the bartender and some Swiss people if they had seen our group. They told us they had seen some Americans head over to a bar down the street, so we decided to go there. The group we were with wasn't there, but we ran into a few other people from our program, including Jason H. & Phil, who is fluent in German. Ashley & I each had an Erdinger (a citrusy German beer) and a Heineken (I think the Spanish-Mexican-Swiss bartender ripped me off CHF 2), then we headed back with Jason W. and went to bed. I failed to sleep, once again, however, and ended up getting out of bed at 4am. I idled away the time by reading a French phrase book and watching CNN International on the TV in our student lounge.

Thursday morning we all got ready and went down to the United Nations to get our library passes and take a tour of the Palais des Nations. Our tour guide was very interesting, even though his name was Jillian, and he made a very compelling case for the UN. We saw the original UN building, which was actually finished in 1936 to house the League of Nations. The League of Nations continued to operate in the building until the UN took over in 1947. We had lunch at the UN cafeteria, which was more expensive than advertised. They sell alcohol here as well, and it was rather foreign for me to see diplomats and other UN personnel drinking on their lunch hour. Right before Ashley and I got up to leave the table, a group of four guys from the South Korean delegation sat down next to us and blocked us in. For some reason they had all gotten the mixed sausage and sauerkraut plate, and the one guy directly next to us really seemed to enjoy eating ketchup and mustard.

We left the UN after lunch and headed over to the US Mission building. After passing through their extremely rigorous security check (which was run by non-Americans), we headed inside and sat down for the presentations from some of the members of the Mission. Six officials spoke to us about what their departments do and what they specifically do with the UN; most of them took a pretty standard, pro-administration stance regarding their issues. One woman in particular, who looked as though she was maybe 26 and worked in the political and specialized issues part of the Mission, essentially spit out Bush administration talking points. She complained vocally about countries such as Libya having a seat at the table of human rights discussions. While I can agree that there does seem to be a conflict of interest there, she seemed to take the stance that "if you don't agree with us, you shouldn't be allowed to talk." The one guy who actually criticized government policy worked for the US Trade Representative. He was Mr. Laissez-Faire and attacked both Bush and Obama for being pro-government; he particularly criticized Obama for being anti-trade.

We left the US Mission and walked back up to the Knox Centre. Along the way, I commented about how there are a bunch of buildings in the Geneva area that are really nice but need a lot of exterior renovation. I pointed to one in particular that was covered in rebar. Ashley saw the opportunity to make a joke. Invoking Dr. Haesook Chae, my Korean comparative politics professor last spring who routinely confused her Rs & Ls, particularly in the world "liberalism," Ashley said "rebararism." I thought it was quite funny.

Thursday night I began to get legitimately sick. I started to get achy and came down with a fever. I was not looking forward to the next day, which would once again involve a lot of walking, so I took some NyQuil and hoped for the best. Unfortunately it did not work, and I woke up the next day feeling like shit as well. After I got ready, I found out that I was far from the only one who had gotten ill. Ashley, Jason W., and at least 5 other people all complained of somewhat similar symptoms. Despite this, we decided to stay with the group and head over to the Museum of the International Red Cross & Red Crescent. There was an exhibit in the museum called "The Walls Between People." It was a photographic journal of walls that have been constructed around the world and the consequences of those walls. It probably would have been pretty cool, but some teacher had decided to bring his whole class of 14-year old Swiss kids to do an assignment there. These kids were quite rude. They stood in front of the text for the exhibit and routinely bumped into us without saying anything. One girl walked right into my arm, knocked the form out of my hand and kept going as if nothing had happened. The rest of the Red Cross Museum was mostly unmemorable. Our tour was really rushed, so we didn't have time to see a lot of things. We did see some cool stuff, including the original Geneva Conventions, the Nobel Prize from Henri Dunant (the Swiss businessman who founded the organization), and the stacks of POW cards from WWI, including that of Charles de Gualle. Our tour guide also told us to look out for the "Red Crystal." It was a small white flag with a red diamond on it that was created at the behest of Israel. The Israelis had requested they make at Red Star of David, but the Red Cross refused, because it is solely a religious symbol. She said we would never see it used because the Israelis would never consent to it being used.

After the Red Cross tour, we were supposed to go on a tour of Geneva's Old Town. By this time I was sicker than ever and about to throw up, so Ashley & I decided to head back to the Knox Centre and lie down. I ended up taking a four-hour nap and spending the rest of the day there, so there's not much else to tell.