Back home after British Airways leaving Nairobi hours late, and American Airlines finally arriving in Madison about an hour late. I rarely seem to fly any more on the schedule that I book. A friend writes me the following:

If I were you I would avoid British Airways for a few years, at least. They seem to be having major labor issues that has been affecting their performance in all areas. They lost BOTH of my bags coming back from London and it has been 3 weeks of hell. I've since found out that they have a dump hole, literally, at Heathrow where thousands and thousands of bags are ending up and disappear forever because nobody is dealing with them! They ruined so many people's Christmas vacation in Sierra Leone when lots of people's bags failed to show up!

BA workers may go on strike tomorrow, and the airline already has canceled 1,300 flights to and from London airports for Tuesday and Wednesday. I'm just glad to be home before that.

I'm sitting on a plane at midnite sighing a deep sigh of relief that I'm finally leaving Nairobi and I haven't been robbed again. The pilot comes on the intercom and says that engine #4 won't start, and they are working on it. The attendants finally put on the BBC news hour to amuse us while we wait, and the BBC warns us that we better get home quick because British Airways is going on strike on Tuesday. The engine problem still isn't fixed, so they put on a movie. My handset doesn't work, so I'm stuck with the default movie which is a stupid propagandistic war movie. The movie is over, and they finally announce that we are not going anywhere tonite–they'll have to fly in a part from London tomorrow. The situation degenerates into an incredible chaotic mess. No information, no sense of direction. Finally we get off the plane and groups of people crowd around agents. When most are gone, I finally get a slip of paper that says '680.' I go back out thru immigration with my grey visa and they load 9 of us on a van to take us to the 680 Hotel, apparently so named because there are 680 rooms in the hotel. By 5am, I'm finally in a hotel room.

In the morning we wander around trying to find out information on what is happening. It is Saturday, and BA does not seem to have a single person on duty anywhere in the country. One traveler person calls London, and an agent there advises us to go out to the airport. No one is at the airport, and ground staff advise us to return at 5pm. Back in the 680, rumors fly whether or not the spare part is in the country. During lunch, a staff person parades through the restaurant with a sign that says "9pm British Airways Bus to Airport." We might leave at some time after midnite - and hopefully before Tuesday's strike.

So, I am back in Nairobi again, facing yet another chance to be robbed. A lot of people have been robbed during this forum. Organizers are not all that sympathetic to our whining. Njoki Njoroge says that we must realize that in Kenya people deal with those problems every single day. When we come here, we have to deal with those problems as well. That might be the case, but I do not want to live in a world like that. I want clean air, warm weather, a blue sky, soft grass, and music that touches my soul.

Everyone I talk to seems to be ready to leave Nairobi. Here I sit in the 680 waiting for the 9pm bus. It seems that I should go out and take advantage of being in Africa. I'm not sure what I would do–other than go out and get robbed or run over by a bus and breath polluted air that is hurting my throat.


Last nite I hung out in the departure lounge with Danny Glover. He said he was happy to be here at the forum. He notes that the forum is critical to our collective growth. At the Assembly of Social Movements on Wednesday, he emphasized that our voices are of fundamental importance to stopping and defeating oppression. We are the essence of those actions, he said. On Thursday at the closing rally at Uhuru Park, Danny stated:

Those who cause conflict must understand that peace is not just the absence of war. It is the presence of justice. The victory of the WSF at Kasarani is mobilizing grassroots organizations to have progressive leadership in power. The movements must resonate into the countries that commit atrocities.

The 7th World Social Forum closed today with a rally in Uhuru Park in downtown Nairobi. Danny Glover spoke, and there was a lot of music.

I saw a picture in the newspaper of the same park packed for an election rally. When we arrived, Andres commented that the park did not seem to be that full. It wasn't. How do you define success? Just by numbers? Just having the forum in Africa was a huge success in and of itself.

I am now trying to write up my notes and reports from the forum. Tomorrow I plan to attend the International Council meeting that will discuss future directions for the forum. Tomorrow nite I get on the plane to go back home.

The part of the forum at the Moi Interational Sports Complex in Kasarani is now over. We engaged in a series of strategy meetings, culminating with a large Assembly of Social Movements in which we reported back to the entire group plans and strategies for action.

Due to popular protests, the forum gates were opened wide today. It changes quite dramatically the nature and flavor of the forum. The first day this seemed to be an overwhelmingly northern event. Now it is overwhelmingly Kenyan, with all sorts of vendors rushing in to try to sell things to the gringos.

Outside they are breaking everything down. Tomorrow there is a closing rally back in Uhuru park where we started. Here at Kasarani, there just seems to be a couple of crazy people pounding out stuff in the computer room.



It has seemed a bit boring to blog without pictures, but here are a couple that I was meaning to upload. Many events were held in sectioned off sections of the stadium seating, with tarps over for cover. (Hearing that we were going to be meeting in a stadium brought images to my mind of Chile's National Stadium after the coup.) The fixed seating is not very conducive to collaborative or innovative education or learning practices. The forum seems to have that problem.



I do have a bunch of hand written notes from meetings. If I have time and inspiration, I'll type them up to post (without pictures, of course...) to the NIGD website. This is part of our NIGD group, at a luncheon the first day of the forum.

Yesterday a vendor offered to sell me a pair of blue jeans. I know that mine are dirty, but it is perhaps the strangest thing I have every been offered at a forum. Someone unclear on the concept.

The forum is arranged around a stadium that increasingly becomes a carnival-type atmosphere. The noise sometimes drowns out sessions, as happened in Mumbai. There aren't lights in the rooms, so by the time stuff wraps up at 8 pm it can be rather dark.

Internet is very intermittent and time is always short, which makes it hard to keep up with the blog. Today is the last day of sessions, with an innovative "4th-day" approach.

I'm posting notes from press briefings at http://www.wsflibrary.org/index.php/Category:Press_Briefings on the WSFLibrary.org website. I'll try to post some of my reflections later.

At the opening ceremonies of the forum on Saturday in Uhuru Park, a man showed up with the sign:

Who decided to punish Kenya’s poor with a 500/= registration fee? Are there capitalists in the World Social Forum??????

If we define capitalism as the greedy and irrational exploitation of resources (since it is hard to find anything compassionate or rational about the current dominant economic order), then we would have to reply to the man’s second question with a resounding YES.

For me, it started with attempting to line up accommodations. One option was apparent fly-by-nite operations that were booking up cheap $10 a nite hotel rooms, and then reselling them to unwary attendees for about four times that amount. Three of us were then offered a room in a private house for $70 per person, which works out to about the same as we would have paid in Nairobi’s most expensive 5-star hotels. Additional searching found another place that was charging $100 a nite. So much for solidarity accommodations.

A group of people are walking around with yellow t-shirts and hand-written signs that say “official WSF transport.” They are selling bus rides from Nairobi to the stadium in Kasarani where the forum is being held for $7 USD, but public transit will get one there for 20 KSH (less than 20 cents USD).

A major theme that runs through the WSF and the broader social justice movement is a concern for the commodification of water. In Mumbai, water ran free and plentiful from taps. Here, informal vendors sell water in half liter bottles for up to 100 KSH, more than a dollar and double of the normal price. Empty plastic bottles become littered all over the place. I’m going broke just trying to keep myself hydrated.

Mumbai also added an element of a solidarity economy where local cooperatives and activist organizations set up food stalls that provided a stunning array of delicious, nutritious, and inexpensive meals. Although my map of the stadium in Nairobi shows food stalls off on the margins on the other side of the fence without clear directions how to get there, right by the main entrance the Windsor Golf Hotel and Country Club set up what appears to be the main concession with corresponding prices (water, again, is 100 KSH).

Registration fees for the WSF have always been nominal. In Mumbai, for example, they were so insignificant that local people flooded into the forum just out of curiosity. Charging almost $10 USD in Nairobi prices it out of the range of most Kenyans. Northern internationals are charged an outrageous $110 USD, assuring that only the more affluent activists can attend. This has been a growing concern that rather than an expression of civil society, the forum will become an increasingly exclusive event–limited not only to those who can afford the transportation and visa fees, but now also those who can pay abusively high hotel rates and registration fees.

The result of all this is a notable shift in the face of the forum. In previous years, the overwhelming number of a participants have been from the host country and that has helped define the look and feel of the forum. For the first time, this appears to be predominantly a western European and North American event. Mumbai energized Indian civil society. Nairobi has failed to do the same for Africa. Local papers provide almost no coverage of the forum. Many Kenyans remain in the dark what the WSF means. For example, a security guard asked us how he could join the US army because he wanted to go fight in Iraq where he could be a real soldier. There is a rumor that Kenyans will storm the gates of the forum this morning, demanding free admittance.

This is in marked contrast to last year’s polycentric forum in Caracas. When a bridge from the airport to Caracas was on the point of collapse, Chavez responded with free transportation on the dangerous and slow back roads. The government provided free transportation to events. If this is “civil” society, than give me the state with all of its dangerous coercive apparatuses.

The result is a bonanza for certain people, but certainly not those who believe that another world is possible and are striving to make that a reality.

(Coda: issue of attendance was discussed this morning at a press briefing. See my notes at http://www.wsflibrary.org/index.php/Press_Briefing_January_22.)

Moderating a panel on scholar activism and trying to take a couple pictures. Left my camera in my bag on the front row after taking a couple pix of the panel. Someone comes in, walks down to the front row, sees my stuff, and then leaves. Panel is over, and my camera is no where to be found.

I have a couple fotos that I'll post tomorrow, but it is another trip w/o a camera...

(To the dude who took my camera: you steal from the man, not your fellow comrades.)

Today the forum began with marches from various points (including the Kibera slum) that converged on Uhuru park in the center of Nairobi where the opening ceremonies were held. Speeches and music celebrated what will be the forum’s main themes. For example, former Zambia president Kenneth Kounda spoke about the struggle against AIDS in Africa. He has taken a leading role in the struggle, including acknowledging the death of his sun from AIDS and personally getting tested publicly. Part of this is fighting the stigma of AIDS. But more needs to be done, and Kounda urged the forum to be a platform to be a network in the struggle against AIDS.


I have spent much of today working to get out a brochure of NIGD events. The forum program gets printed, but I don’t get a copy because I don’t queue up for them quickly enough. This is a common problem. So, we end up piecing programs together on our own.

Feeling just absolutely sleep deprived and ready to crash.

2 a.m. and the noise from the pounding disco and street traffic are starting to diminish a bit. At first I just fell asleep from exhaustion, but then the constant noise slowly started waking me back up. Maybe in a little bit I can fall back asleep again.


The forum starts today with a peace march from the Kibera slum to the Uhuru park in the center of town. For the last several days, delegates have been registering at the Kenyetta International Conference Center (KICC). White tents are spread around a peaceful green space that provide information, and then registration itself takes place in the tall, circular building. A story in the paper notes that the KICC used to be one of the premier conference centers in Africa, and indeed in all of the world. With neglect, it had declined but the government is pumping funds to restore it to its previous glory.

The forum originally was to take place in the KICC which is located in the center of town and close to many of the hotels–just a couple of blocks from Hotel Gloria. Several months ago the location was moved to the Moi sports complex 10 kilometers from town. No one seems to know how or why that decision was made. It seems to complicate some of the forum’s logistics. It makes me hope that I can move out to a home stay closer to the stadium and away from this very noisy corner that are leaving my nerves feeling completely shot.

5 a.m. and small buses with very loud airhorns blast outside the hotel for passengers. Nairobi: the city that will not give me any sleep.

9 a.m. and the street is incredibly quiet. But now it is time to get up and start the forum.

Arrived last nite after 24 hrs of travel thru Chicago and London, but no problems. Called Rapha from the airport and he had found a Hotel Gloria. The receipt reads:

Hotel Gloria in Duke House (Corner of Ronald Ngara Street & Tom Mboya Street, telephone 228916). Nairobi's Latest Luxury First Class Family Hotel situated in the Heart of the City. Fully Furnished Clean Rooms, with attached Baths, Lifts and Telephone Services Available on all Floors.

The description reminds me of those billboards we used to see in the 1970s advertising "Modern Hotel" by which we knew that it was up to about 1920s standards of "Modern." This hotel is perhaps "Latest Luxury First Class" by 1920s standards, but at least it does seem to be a Family Hotel because you know what low-end hotels can sometimes be like. But I did have a place to stay last nite, which was a big relief since I was panicking about that. Still sorting out hotel options, so not sure where I'll be tonite.

Slow Internet connections...

In London Heathrow on way to Nairobi. 3 airports, 3 security checks. Still not sure where I'm staying in Nairobi....