niko sawa, kuna joto sana nairobi

I am back writing, since it was difficult to have access to the net, which is quite slow here in Kenya.

Just to explain that what I wrote above means "I am doing fine, it is very warm in Nairobi"

I still participating at the gathering of the GYG, 12 km from Nairobi... We are at the USI University, and we are staying at a Camp, approximately 150 people from all around the world. As I mentioned previously I am sharing the tent with 2 South Korean girls and a new girl arrived yesterday, Christine. She is a Kenyan biologist currently living in Germany. Lovely girl!!!She was living in Tanzania, and met her current husband, who is a University lecturer and was her lecturer too. Hope that we will be able to meet again in Germany or Ireland.

Yesterday we had a fantastic evening, as a group of kenyan playing percussion and dancing came to the Camp to play and dance. The name in Swahili is wanamuziki wa kiasili. It was amazing, afro-music, it reminds me of the Afri Brazilian music from
the Capoeira....good interaction between european, africans and the rest of the participants... even at midnight an australian jumpled into the swimming pool...

I had a nice chat with an australian girl, Nicola from Perth, about views on climate change in Australia, about politics, indigenous people's rights together with Robin a Swiss researcher from Bern.

This morning I was walking to the University and talking to Martha, expecting a baby in 5 months and staying at the camp too. She is originally from Eritrea and currently living in Ethiopia. She is quite interested in women issues. She works
for an NGO on the field of Sustainable Development.


Today we had good discussions about the goals and mission of the organisations.
I met some nice people from Barcelona, one of them Naia, just elected to the Catalan parliament.

I was in charge of facilitating one of the sessions this morning.... it is going well. Something it is difficult to remember the names.

Tomorrow will be a long day, as we are going to plant trees in the morning. The Green Belt Movement is hosting the event. It seems that now is not the best season for planting trees....


Now, just changing the topic to the World Social Forum, I got a message from Dunk, an Irish friend of mine living in Barcelona, who sent me a contact of a Kenyan community activist working in Kibera, the biggest "favela" ( they don't like to call it slum) in Africa. There is going to be a community radio program in Barcelona about Kibera. I will arrange a meeting for Saturday

more info about Kibera coming soon. If you watch the film called "The gardener" this was screened in Kibera....


"Macharias journey: Kibera and a story of Hope"
kibera:
Kibera in Nairobi, Kenya is one of the largest slums in Africa with a population of over one million people (estimates range widely). The name "Kibera" is derived from kibra, a Nubian word meaning "forest" or "jungle." (1) Although over a million people live there the government recognise it officially as as a "squat" or illegally occupied land, this allows them to basically do nothing for the inhabitants.

There are 3 public schools, no running water, no running electricity, 5 toilets and 5 water pumps which both have to payed for. As a result there is huge illeteracy and education problems, crime is seen as the only way to survive. Due to the lack of toilets, people shit in plastic bags which are then flung onto the terribe smelling pile of previous peoples work; this is known as the flying toilet. Needless to say rivers of shit and piss and who knows what else flow from these piles of waste, these rivers run into the nearby river causing massive pollution. Despite this locals still wash, drink and take fish from this river to eat. There are widespread disease epidemics, along with Aids and the other usual diseases. People from rural Kenya still come to Kibera to live, believing like so many others around the world that the city will give them the chance in life to make it, to own the big house and the big car and all the rest that "they have in the west". Landlord exploitation and lack of basic law means profits and no justice in court should there be any issues of land use or ownership, oddly enough, although officially the government sees Kibera as an illegal settlement, many of its ministers are getting rich as they are the landlords in question. (2)