I’m in Argentina at the invitation of BirdLife International, my favourite conservation NGO of all time.

Unlike many/most NGOs, it works from the bottom-up (I don’t like that top down/bottom-up analogy/metaphor/simile but it’s the best I can find for now), with most of its membership spread around the globe working on small, community-based bird conservation projects, usually on habitats called Important Bird Areas, or IBAs. BirdLife has a lean administration, with a small central secretariat based in Cambridge in the UK and regional support offices scattered across the major continents.

Most of Birdlife’s staff are locals. Birdlife works through local “peak body” bird conservation agencies (like Birds Australia at home) and has a lot of local site support groups (local landowners and managers) that do the on-the-ground work. It has IBAs and projects in some of the most poorest and most troublesome parts of the world, and at this meeting we have delegates from Zimbabwe, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Burma/Myanmar, Palestine, Sierra Leone, Khazakhstan and the United States of America – you name a place you’d be least likely to want to go to right now and BirdLife is there.

I flew into BA from South Africa last weekend and on the bus from the airport, after the usual stuff about the water tasting funny but being safe to drink and watch out for taxi drivers fobbing off valueless “old Peso” banknotes, our local guide then really grabbed our attention with her stories about the local pick-pockets and street muggers that prey upon unwitting tourists in this most European of South American cities.

“It is okay, they don’t use guns or knives” she said, a great relief to me after being in Cape Town for a couple of weeks, reading daily reports of murders, shootings, rapes and muggings-gone-wrong, an ANC President and his proxies gone feral and abusing the rule of law and more. And hearing in person from a Tanzanian Professor who could hardly move his jaw to tell the story of how he was robbed the day before – he’d been grabbed by two guys, had a gun barrel jammed into his mouth and been stripped of his dignity, passport, money and well-being not 100 metres from where I was staying on the University of Cape Town campus.

“Just be careful, they are very quick” says the guide, “Give them your money and they won’t hurt you.”

Yeah, right. The two Japanese delegates sitting in front of me on the bus shudder and mutter to each other. They look out the window at the massed crowds of city apartment dwellers who’ve escaped from the city on this first day of Argentine spring to enjoy the clean air and green grass and to set up picnics on the roadside verges lining the highway into town. What have we come to? Are they all criminals?

They ask, in all seriousness, whether they can hire bodyguards. “Yes, but they are very expensive” comes the bemused reply from the local guide who then makes us all feel a lot better by telling us that just the day before a delegate had her backpack stolen from under her feet as she waited for her luggage to be unloaded from the bus, right outside of her hotel and with a couple of dozen fellow-travelers milling about.

The next day one of my BirdLife mates tells me that on his first day in town he had been walking through town with a friend when out-of-the-blue some noxious liquid was sprayed in their faces and, while temporarily blinded, their laptops were ripped from their arms. “15 years I lived in Nairobi and I never got robbed…but I’m here for 5 minutes…”

My approach, as just about anywhere, is to try to look like you live locally.

This is of course a bit difficult when you the only white face in sight walking down a jam-packed River Road in central Nairobi, as I had been this time last week.

Here in BA, well there are some lessons that I learned as a kid walking through the then very mean streets of Sydney’s Kings Cross for a night of smoking opiated hash, munching on magic mushrooms and looking forward to a wild night at the Yellow House all those years ago when the Sharps (not Martin but the skinheads) patrolled the streets looking for a timid long-hair or ten to bash.

Keep your head up and your wits about you, avoid eye-contact and walk with a sense of purpose and direction…and run like hell if you need to. This was a real challenge when you were whacked off your face at 3am trying to remember if the last train had already gone or not, but without the substance abuse its worked so far in BA… I’ll keep you posted.