©WSF

Impressions from participants from the province of Uganda-Kenya

The first and enduring impression of the Forum was of confusion and disorganization.  Events that seemed to be part of the Forum turned out to be parallel 'happenings'. The thick, newspaper-format programme listing all the events was not available until the second or third day, and the information in it was not always accurate. For example, the group wanted to go to the presentations by 3 Nobel Peace Prize women, but the venue had changed and it took an hour walking from one end of the forum to the other to find the place. No one seemed to know where any event was taking place.

However, the Forum was certainly an interesting and mind-broadening experience.  Groups from all over the world - Dalits from India, Aborigines from Australia, refugees from all over Africa, evicted communities from lands claimed by the government, slum children, women fighting to protect the forests, pro-life and pro-choice groups, homosexuals, paraded constantly around the perimeter of the forum, chanting, dancing, waving banners. It was an education just to sit and watch!  Beautiful Kenyan artifacts were on sale everywhere, as well as bottles of very expensive water!  Many NGOs and Church organizations had booths.

At the opening ceremony Paulina Lopez Ridruejo rscj managed to find a place on a balustrade only about 20 ft. away from the main speaker, Bishop Desmond Tutu.  Margie Conroy rscj climbed up to join her and they enjoyed to the full his humorous, sharp and  truthful comments about slavery, colonialism, neo-liberalism, corruption and violence.  No-one, white or black, was spared, but everything he said was said with a love and compassion for sinful humanity that made it acceptable. The theme of the Forum, 'Another World is Possible' was his theme. Another world is possible if we change our greedy hearts and begin to care about God's little ones, the poor of the earth.

Margie went to Christ the King parish, Kibera, on the Sunday.  She enjoyed the lively, crowded Mass at which the 3 choirs of Christ the King outstations outdid themselves, dancing and swaying as they sang.  Afterwards the Social Forum participants divided into groups to visit the various parts of Kibera slum. They saw for themselves the crowding, the plastic litter, the gutters overflowing with rubbish, the small children playing in that dirty environment. Some of the 'streets' are only wide enough for a single person to walk, straddling the gutter in the middle and bending to avoid being cut by the overhanging tin roofs.  There are mud houses lining either side, with doors opening onto that 'street'!  Single rooms house families of 10 or 12 people and they have no toilets or bathing facilities and only kerosene lamps or candles for light.  Cooking has to be done inside over a charcoal 'sigiri'.  Water, charcoal, kerosene, food, all have to be bought each day, and if the bread-winner doesn't find work, the family doesn't eat.

Many of the families are headed by women who do cleaning in the city or sell greens or tomatoes in the local market. The husbands have deserted them to start another family or have died of AIDS or alcohol.  It was moving to see the courage of the women in the face of the terrible odds they face in trying to bring up their children.

One big problem is that the government is planning to upgrade Kibera slum. This means that many hovels will be torn down and replaced by permanent, more spacious structures housing fewer families. The rents will go up and the poor will no longer be able to afford to live in Kibera.  They will have to go to slums further from the city centre where they will be forced to spend money on transport to get to and from their jobs.

These slum-dwellers also marched at the Social Forum, protesting. In fact, on the third day the poor of Nairobi arrived en masse and broke down the gate to get into the Forum. They said the Forum was all about the poor, yet they were excluded because they couldn't afford the registration fee (about $7 U.S. for residents of Africa) or the transport.  They went into one of the food tents and cleared out all the edibles before being persuaded to leave.

The Forum was an unforgettable experience, but it would have helped a lot if themes had been grouped in the same area, so that someone interested mainly in climate change, privatization of water etc., for example, wouldn't have to walk miles to find the places where these topics were discussed. The organizers were handicapped by such things as power failures that prevented them from printing the bulky programmes on time or being able to count on loud-speaking equipment.  Also, the number of participants prepared for was over 100,000, and only half that number actually came, so that it was a financial disaster for the organizers. What they could have and should have done more efficiently was to communicate better both before and during the event.

Nevertheless, the RSCJ who attended the forum - Anastasia Shibutsi, Rosemary Akhwiyanga, Jennifer Simwa, Juliette Nguementa, Helen O'Regan, Paulina Lopez-Ridruejo and Margie Conroy - found it an exciting and stimulating experience.

En el Foro Social Mundial

Mi entusiasmo por ir al Foro en África no es casual. He tenido el privilegio de asistir a cuatro foros: en Porto Alegre, Brasil en el 2003, el Foro Social de las Américas en Quito, Ecuador en el 2005, el Foro Social Policéntrico en el 2006 en Caracas, Venezuela. Es un espacio que nutre mi esperanza, refuerza la convicción de organizarnos en redes que buscan por todos los medios transformar la realidad injusta y aportan propuestas y acciones para ello; me exige conversión para aceptar la diversidad que hay en nuestro mundo y que desde distintos puntos de vista también desean ese otro mundo posible en contra de este sistema neoliberal que aumenta la pobreza, excluye a las grandes mayorías y amenaza con la misma supervivencia del planeta.

El que el Foro se realizara en África fue para mí un acto de inclusión de la realidad dolorosa de este continente. Ahí también constaté la alegría, la belle-za de la raza negra, sus manifestaciones culturales, sus luchas y sus esperanzas.

El Foro es como una inmensa tienda donde hay de todo y uno tiene la difícil tarea de elegir con la incertidumbre de si aquello elegido realmente va a responder a las expectativas que uno tiene. El Foro destacó en su lucha contra el sida por la devastación que esta enfermedad ha causado en África, en todas las edades de la población, sobre todo en los países sub-saharianos. También la lucha contra la deuda externa y ahora contra los EPA que según entendí es algo parecido a los tratados de libre comercio pero con la Unión Europea; el tema de la migración; la soberanía alimentaría, el peligroso deterioro del planeta, entre muchas otras.

El tema de la mujer me parece que se aborda de una manera femenina, equilibrada, de denuncia y a la vez propositiva, tal ha sido mi experiencia tanto en Porto Alegre, en Caracas donde recuerdo con deleite la Corte Internacional de las Mujeres y ahora en Nairobi los testimonios de heroicidad y valentía de mujeres del mundo entero. Una exce-lente pedagogía y conducción.

En relación a la educación popular uno la palpa en muchos de los talleres del Foro. En Nairobi fue muy lindo ver a la gente sencilla, involucrada en las luchas conduciendo y facilitando los talleres. A mí me tocó uno sobre soberanía alimentaría con una excelente participación de los que compartían su experiencia. En este foro, a diferencia de otros hubo menos ponencias de expertos y mayor participación de las propias organizaciones.

Al final del foro hubo 21 mesas que abarcaban las diferentes temáticas con el fin de proponer acciones concretas. En algunas se dio, en otras no y estamos a la espera de su publicación en la página web. El Foro en sí no es tanto para tomar acciones sino para que las redes se encuentren y es desde éstas que se va avanzando. La acción más grande pro-puesta por el Foro fue antes de la inminente guerra de Iraq, que, si bien, no fue posible detener la invasión, el mundo manifestó masivamente su repudio a ella. Mucho más habría por compartir...pero lo dejamos para otra ocasión.

Socorro Martínez rscj
Provincia de México - Nicaragua