Remembering Nairobi
We have all now returned, prepared our reports, shared our impressions and concluded that, in spite of clear limitations and drawbacks, the World Social Forum (WSF) in Nairobi was a mild success. Being still so close to the event I am unable to decide one way or the other. There are, however, two images that remain stamped on my retina: the inauguration ceremony, and the Moi stadium where the WSF was finally organised.
We watched the inaugural ceremony sitting on a gently rising hill in Uhuru Park. As Chico Whitaker, one of the Brazilian founders of the World Social Forum in 2001, was delivering the formal inaugural speech, an impressive ecumenical Christian group made its entry into the amphitheatre, marching from left to right, keeping a typical African beat and moving forward at a maddeningly slow pace. The men and women were dressed in white. The women looked like Catholic nuns in white habits with a long cloth covering the head. The group was so commanding and impressive that Chico interrupted his speech for almost 10 minutes until the entire group had passed before the stage. It was in a way symbolic: the Forum leader acknowledging the importance of religion and respecting the spiritual roots of Africa. Religious groups of all shapes and sizes came to the WSF. To give an example close to us: Caritas managed to have one of the largest tents and a banner hanging at the very entrance to the Forum. A typical secular European adventurer of many Forums commented, “You religious people have taken over the Forum!” An African Jesuit, however, had this to say: “At Nairobi the secularisation process appears to be a typical Western phenomenon!” Nairobi gave the Forum a strong religious flavour many foreigners did not expect.
When I first arrived at Kasarani, the place where the WSF was held, I was impressed by the grandeur of the Moi International Sports Complex and particularly of the athletics stadium. The WSF organisers had originally planned to install the Forum at Uhuru Park, in the centre of the city. Three months before the event, the City Council decided against it. The venue had to be hurriedly moved to the Moi stadium located in Kasarani, 16 Km away from the city centre. Considering that they had to adjust to the limitations of a stadium, the organisers did a commendable job. They sealed off the “arena”, the athletic tracks in the centre, and managed to prepare all the rooms for the workshops among the lower stands of the stadium and in small tents around it. This left the heart of the stadium untouched and took the Forum to its periphery. It was interesting to see that while hundreds of workshops were in progress, a few athletes continued to practise unimpeded in the quietness of the cool morning breeze.
Many felt that the very poor of Nairobi could not participate at Forum. Others complained that the entry fees were too high, that the food was expensive, that there were no free public drinking water facilities at the venue, and that the slum dwellers of Kibera, a poor Nairobi slum of around one million people, were forced to organise almost a parallel forum. The Forum appears not to have touched the heart, the core of the poor. If organisers managed to install the venue at the periphery of the stadium, that is where it remained: outside the slum of Kibera. The problem, however, may have more to do with the WSF than the fact that it took place in Nairobi. In Mumbai, India, the Forum bypassed the slums of Dharavi!
Fernando Franco SJ (31 January 2007)