Finding My Virginity: The New Autobiography

by Richard Branson

  —

  Sam was also stretching his wings, albeit in a different direction. North, to be precise.

  At an event at the Roof Gardens in London, the pair of us had the chance to meet up with explorer Will Steger. Will ran Arctic expeditions, which were high-endurance challenges, living in the wilderness for months on end. By now, Sam was twenty-one, very much enjoying life, but still finding his path toward what his calling would be. I thought this could be a wonderful way for him to grow up and learn a lot about himself.

  Of course, I didn’t present the idea to Sam in that way—who wouldn’t run a mile at such talk from their dad? Instead I spoke about what an adventure it would be, and that we could take on some of it together. Sam also wanted to draw attention to climate change, a problem he was already acutely aware of from my dealings with former US Vice-President Al Gore, and the documentaries we watched together. This was a chance for us to see its effects up close and personal.

  In March 2007, Will invited me to come on the first week of his Global Warming 101 expedition with Sam and a group of about twenty young people, traveling 1,200 miles from the south of Baffin Island to Igloolik. I joined the team at Clyde River, a small community on the northern coast on Baffin Island, where the Inuit people continue to live the way they have for centuries. On the first night, the Inuit villagers threw a welcoming party for us in what was effectively a very large, cold shed. In the center of the floor they had laid out an incredibly generous feast with raw reindeer, caribou heads, raw fish, seals and fermented walrus, which had been buried under the snow for a month. We had to go forward in turn and cut off a chunk of raw meat. I was dreading my turn. It was not easy to swallow but we had to do it in order not to offend. I chewed with my thumbs up, trying to hide my expression as the partially frozen seal melted in my mouth. It was all a far cry from the Roof Gardens where we’d first met Will.

  The next day we got up at 6 a.m.—not that it was ever easy to tell what time of day it was that far north—to melt the ice covering our tents and coats. Then, as the sun was coming up, we headed off down the most exquisite ice valley. I had a leg injury so sat on the sled with sixteen baying dogs ahead of us, while Sam ran behind. The landscape remained unchanged for hours on end, but it was always breathtaking: the sweep of the ice and the mountains, the sharpness of the white against the crisp blue of the sky.

  Not everything was beautiful about the location: going to the toilet in such surroundings was also something else. As the temperature was so low, between -10 degrees C and -25 degrees C with wind chill, there were times when your excrement froze before reaching the ground. Coupled with that, you would have to constantly monitor all around in case polar bears sneaked up on you whatever you were doing.

  We had a beautiful week together sleeping under the stars before I left the group and the hard work for Sam really began. He was to stay for another two weeks. They battled through hazardous hills of ice with their dogs and sledges. The team had to survive the practicalities of living in the ice, and learn how to catch and eat raw fish.

  I’m certainly not a believer in sending people to the army or even to strict boarding schools—as I had to do—but to go through hardship and overcome it is incredibly good for you. When Sam returned, he said it was one of the best experiences of his life. Later, Sam joined Will and a group of young explorers on a longer, more arduous journey across the Arctic to raise awareness about climate change.

  “If you can handle a trip like that,” I told him, “you will be able to cope with pretty well anything.”

  As a smile spread across Sam’s now bearded face, I realized that my son had gone away a boy and come back a man.

  CHAPTER 17

  The Elders Assemble

  Every January, the world’s great and the good gather together in the Swiss mountain resort of Davos for the World Economic Forum. It is a coming together of both political and business leaders, and an opportunity to catch up with old friends, make some new ones, and above all to debate, discuss and share the latest ideas. There’s something about the crispness of the Swiss air, the crunch of the snow underfoot and the compactness of the setting that really helps to crystallize ideas.

  In January 2006, Jean Oelwang and I flew in late one evening to join them. As the shadows of the Swiss mountains spread out in the moonlight below, I mulled over what we were there to achieve. Rather than a business idea, we were there to push our concept of the Elders, and to see who we could persuade to come on board. I was both excited and a little nervous at the prospect: normally when I start a business there are rival companies which aren’t working the way I would, and I use their (bad) example to inspire my new vision. But with the Elders this was going to be very different—nothing remotely like this had been done before. Peter Gabriel, Jean and I brought together an amazing team to work on incubating the project, with documentary maker Andrea Barron and Peace Direct’s Scilla Elworthy among many volunteering their time to shape the idea. But now we needed wider help.

  Over the next three days, Jean, Peter and I pitched hard for support. We didn’t just need people with deep pockets—they also had to understand and believe in our vision. I managed to persuade a variety of wonderful souls to get on board, including the futurist Peter Schwartz and his wife, AKQA founder Ajaz Ahmed, Jimmy Wales from Wikipedia and Larry Brilliant from Google.org. One lady came into a meeting and I offered my seat to her. She turned out to be Pam Omidyar from Humanity United, who has gone on to commit millions to the Elders.

  “I’ve never forgotten your courtesy,” she told me years later.

  There is a lesson there. Good manners cost nothing: little kindnesses will take you a long way.

  Six months later, in July 2006, in somewhat different weather conditions, I was hosting three back-to-back gatherings on Necker Island. As well as business leaders, philanthropists and politicians, we also invited two people Nelson Mandela was earmarking as potential Elders: President Jimmy Carter and Archbishop Desmond Tutu. We met each morning in the Temple, a stunning construction next to my house with 360-degree views of the ocean and a great long table to sit and debate at: the perfect location to inspire what we were trying to achieve.

  I moved around the groups, trying to get people animated about the Elders concept. We discussed its purpose, what areas it should focus upon, how it should be governed and structured. On the first morning, I announced, “From now on, there is a ban on PowerPoint. It just gets in the way and bores the audience. Everybody has to speak from the heart.” Jean later told me she had been up all night preparing her PowerPoint presentation. Instead she gave her vision of the Elders as I’d hoped she would: expertly and with real passion. Peter and then I got up and explained why we believed this was the most important thing we had done in our lives.

  I thought the meeting was going swimmingly, but then Jimmy Carter stood up, dusted down his white shirt and cleared his distinctive, airy voice.

  “I’m sorry, Richard. I appreciate your intentions, but I just don’t see how this is going to work.”

  I felt shaken by his intervention. This was a man I had grown up revering, the only US President not to go to war, and a wise and honest statesman who understood how the world worked. If he didn’t think the Elders was a good idea, then what the hell were we all doing there?

  I ushered Jean and Peter into my very small office. We all felt deeply disappointed, and I was embarrassed that we might have brought all these remarkable people together for nothing. But then Peter suggested we could look at this the other way around, as an opportunity.

  “We’re overcomplicating this,” he argued. “Why don’t we ask them what they think could work?”

  Peter and I had only ever wanted to be facilitators and supporters. We realized that we needed to give them a sense of ownership, and the chance to shape their own organization. Regaining my composure, I went back out to the assembled guests.

  “If th
is is going to work,” I told them, “we all have to trust each other, and be completely open. I don’t know how to do this. Peter doesn’t either. I don’t think any of us do alone—but together we might have a chance.”

  At this point, Archbishop Tutu—“just call me Arch”—backed me up.

  “When we started South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission, we didn’t know how to go about it either,” he remembered, to nods all round. “We just started, and together built it into something that could work.”

  From funding options to issues to focus on, targets to governance structure, a brutally honest discussion on how the Elders truly could make a difference began. Later, I watched as Arch and President Carter sat down under a tree on Turtle Beach, overlooking the ocean, and drafted the first values and core principles of the group together.

  “The Elders represent an independent voice,” they wrote, “not bound by the interests of any nation, government or institution. We are committed to promoting the shared interests of humanity, and the universal human rights we all share. We believe that in any conflict, it is important to listen to everyone—no matter how unpalatable or unpopular this may be. We aim to act boldly, speaking difficult truths and tackling taboos.”

  At the end of the two weeks, President Carter stood up and gave a magnificent presentation about the potential of the Elders. He said that, while the UN had a crucial role to play in conflict resolution, the Elders could have a far bigger impact. “It could be fiercely independent and move quickly; it wouldn’t be beholden to big countries; and it could base all decisions on moral authority rather than political impact.”

  I watched on in awe. Ever since that moment, both he and Arch have been behind the idea 100 percent.

  —

  While Archbishop Tutu was helping us to pull the Elders together, back in his native South Africa an issue was rearing its head that I didn’t feel I could ignore. Despite the hope and awareness the 46664 concert in South Africa had raised, I was getting increasingly frustrated with the inaction of the South African government to tackle HIV/AIDS. There just didn’t seem to be the political will to act in the face of a disease that was killing hundreds of thousands of people.

  Then, in August 2006, South Africa’s health minister, Manto Tshabalala-Msimang, went to an international AIDS conference in Toronto and stated that HIV could be cured with potatoes, beetroot, garlic and lemon. It was maddening. I went back to South Africa on 26 October to visit a number of community homes for AIDS orphans with an organization called Starfish. I remained preoccupied with the South African government’s inaction.

  Before I went onstage at a charity event in Mupmalanga, I turned to Jean Oelwang and said, “I’ve got to say something.”

  “If you do speak out,” she warned, “you could get kicked out of South Africa. We’d be letting down so many people who we are working with here.”

  I understood, but was so angry that I couldn’t let it lie. When I stood up, I pushed my prepared speech aside and did what I’d told those at the Elders meeting on Necker to do: speak from the heart. I began by praising South African President Mbeki and the ANC for all they’d done against apartheid. But then I called for them to be indicted for crimes against humanity for letting so many people die. By denying antiretroviral drugs they were killing their own people. This was a crime I felt made President Mbeki and his health minister, who fully deserved the nickname Dr. Beetroot, guilty of genocide. That sounds like strong words, but in 2008 a Harvard study found Mbeki’s policy of blocking the provision of medication to AIDS patients was responsible for an estimated 330,000 unnecessary deaths and more than 35,000 HIV-infected births.

  Never one to duck a fight, I went on national TV to continue to make my point. “If you go to America or Britain,” I told the interviewer, “people don’t die of AIDS anymore. But you have a government in South Africa whose health minister still advocates garlic as a cure and a president who is not much better as far as AIDS is concerned. It’s just too sad for words.”

  To my surprise, and his great credit, President Mbeki had the grace to send a long handwritten reply, which I’m told he sat up all night composing. “Because of the respect and regards I and many others in our country have for you,” he wrote, “we take with the greatest seriousness the grave accusation you allegedly made.” Mbeki vigorously defended his HIV/AIDS strategy, but requested that I meet him and his health minister, and said he was willing to hear me out.

  After canvassing opinion from a wide range of experts on what could be done to help change South Africa’s health policies, I replied on 6 November. I apologized for speaking so emotionally after a very disturbing visit to a rural community being torn apart by HIV/AIDS and said the whole world needed to get behind the South African government: “We certainly don’t have all the answers,” I wrote, “and fully respect that the issues are far more complicated than anyone outside South Africa will ever understand.” I promised to support the country in whatever way I could and offered to meet him that month.

  President Mbeki’s response was to handwrite a lengthy reply from the heart himself, explaining how his upbringing and life had led him to draw such terrible conclusions about HIV. He wrote about what he felt needed to be done to combat the problem, as well as address South Africa’s lack of job opportunities. He then told me of the desperate problems they faced in alleviating decades of poverty. He said that black South Africans “hope that, one day, they will have ready access to the health facilities that would help them fully recover their health when they became gravely ill. . . . We are who and what we are as a people,” he wrote, “because of respect for, and unqualified devotion to, the ethical and humanist principle that ‘umuntu ngumuntu ngabanye’—every human being thrives as a human being because others thrive as human beings!”

  I was touched, too, as he went on to suggest meeting his elderly mother: “My mother turned 90 in February this year. She lives still in the rural neighborhood where I was born, and remains as mentally alert as ever. Again, God willing, you will one day have an opportunity to meet her at her rural home. If this were ever to happen, I hope that you would listen carefully to what she would tell you about disease and death among the rural people who have been her closest neighbors for many decades.” I was humbled he had taken the time to write such a personal letter and I took heart in its basic message of humanity. “Your honesty and sincerity in your letter have truly helped me understand more deeply your perspective,” I replied. I added that I would be delighted to meet his mother to hear her views, and asked if I could bring along my mum to share the experience: “My mother is now 81 and is also a pretty formidable lady. I’m sure the two of them would get on well.”

  We continued to exchange letters, and I suggested an idea for a Center for Disease Control in Africa as something positive to come out of our correspondence. It was bizarre that the continent that most needed such a Center didn’t have one. Furthermore, on 1 December, the South African government made a World AIDS Day announcement using the tagline STOP HIV AND AIDS and KEEP THE PROMISE. There was a long way to go, but, hopefully, mind-sets were changing. We went through weeks of meetings with the ANC government, and after lots of negotiating ironed out the details so that the Center for Disease Control could be launched.

  But the day before President Mbeki was to announce the center he was given a vote of no confidence by the ANC National Executive Committee and forced to resign. When President Jacob Zuma took over, he agreed to move the Center for Disease Control forward. He asked me to join him at a press conference to announce it, which I did—but that was the last we heard from him. We contacted the government regularly to try to push the project ahead, but, sadly, nothing happened. Without the personal drive of Mbeki to make it happen, there was no longer the political will to move forward.

  While the Center for Disease Control did not open, the Bhubezi Community Health Center is going strong. I have ret
urned to Bhubezi many times over the past decade. It is always a delight to see many thousands of people getting the care they need.

  I know that it’s a drop in the ocean, but in the past 10 years the Center has received over 325,000 patient visits, tested nearly 25,000 people for HIV/AIDS (40 percent tested positive and, where appropriate, started receiving free life-saving anti-retroviral treatment). And the Center doesn’t just provide support for people suffering from life-threatening illnesses; it has become a community center point, and a place where all manner of health advice and support is given. There are also visiting health groups, such as the Starkey Hearing Foundation, who provide hearing aids to people in remote areas.

  Some of the most moving moments of my life have been in Bhubezi fitting hearing aids to people who have lost their hearing. So far, the Starkey Foundation has fitted nearly two million hearing aids, changing people’s lives in the process. On a visit in 2015, I shared a really special moment with the very first girl I helped to fit with a hearing aid that day. She smiled up at me as I attached the device, and we went through the simple steps to tune it. When my voice got through to her and she heard sound for the very first time, she screeched with joy—a sound that will stay with me forever.