I’m sitting on the veranda of a small boutique hotel in a suburb of Pretoria. The lovely colonial-style hotel is embedded in a large, exciting garden amongst uncountable flowers in full bloom and bushes emitting a sweet exotic fragrance. The many wonderfully colored birds in the mature trees finish their evening concert soon after sunset, to be replaced by the constant chirping of crickets. The monotonous sound stimulates the thoughts in my head, which is full of impressions from my first day at the University of Limpopo. We are here to start a research project on skin of different ethnicities. Never before have I had the chance to experience and evaluate so many different types of skin. Now I understand why South Africa is called the Rainbow Nation. And once again I am confronted with the fact that there is a huge difference between planning a project on the drawing board and implementing it in reality – a difference that can raise fundamental questions and discussion points.
For example: we were intending to include expert gradings of skin phototype, skin dryness and skin aging of female subjects from different ethnic groups in our investigations, using Fitzpat ...