My brother, Stephen Turner, who has died aged 69 of bowel most cancers, was a improvement guide who spent a lot of his profession in Africa, notably within the mountain kingdom of Lesotho.
A delicate soul, Stephen had a knack for forging consensus and reaching outcomes. He was dedicated to bettering the lives of the poorest folks in Africa. From 1987 till 1990 he was head of the environmental division of the Lesotho Highlands Water Undertaking, calculating compensation for villagers whose lands have been flooded by dams constructed to supply water to South Africa, and energy and earnings to Lesotho.
In 1990 Stephen moved to the Free College of Amsterdam as a improvement guide, finishing up assignments throughout southern Africa. From 1994, on the College of Namibia, he labored on conservation and land reform; and from 1996, on the College of the Western Cape in Cape City, on sustainable land use and agrarian reform for a number of the poorest and most distant communities in South Africa.
In 2000, he returned to the Free College, finishing up nature conservation and rural improvement initiatives for the Worldwide Union for the Conservation of Nature, Unicef, the World Well being Group and different teams in international locations together with Costa Rica, Yemen, Palestine, Bangladesh, Timor Leste and plenty of in Africa.
Stephen was born in Kaduna, Nigeria, the elder son of British mother and father, John Turner, a college professor, and Susan (nee Hovey), a instructor. In 1961, the household moved to Exeter in Devon. Listening to the cathedral’s nice bells and the organ within the icy winter of 1962-63 left a permanent impression on him.
From 1965 to 1972 Stephen attended Waterford Kamhlaba faculty in Swaziland (now Eswatini) in southern Africa. Lourenço Marques Radio launched him to pop, rock and soul. With South Africa beneath apartheid, Waterford drew college students from throughout the continent.
Stephen studied geography at Cambridge, then for his geography PhD at Soas College of London realized Sesotho and lived for a 12 months within the village of Ha Tumahole within the Maluti mountains of Basutoland (now Lesotho). Hitchhiking from Swaziland to Lesotho in 1974, he met Monono Matsaba. They married in Manchester in 1986 and had two sons, Mothusi and Karabo.
In 2007 he went freelance, working as principal guide and, from 2017, director of the Oxford-based worldwide improvement consultancy Mokoro. Three years later, Stephen and his household returned to Manchester, near the place our mother and father have been residing. He stated of his continued work in Lesotho: “This was the happiest a part of the job for me … working at village degree, addressing public conferences in Sesotho, driving these wild, lovely mountain roads, respiratory the excessive Maluti air.”
Stephen loved a Maluti beer (or two) on a final go to to Lesotho in January 2023.
He’s survived by Monono, Mothusi and Karabo, our mom, Susan, and me.
