One of the most moving, difficult and memorable demonstrations I have been priviledged to participate in closed the WSF in style on 25 January.

Gathering in the Kariobangi slum in Nairobi, at a catholic church and school / community centre, thousands of people, mostly Kenyan but many from overseas, having been conferencing the previous 4 days poured into the area. You could tell what a change from the usual routine this was by the reaction of the school kids in a neighbouring school - frantically cheering and making an unnatural noise as people poured past to the assembly point, such energy in a school yard I’d not seen.

On arriving at St John’s church, we were greeted by South African socialists singing and dancing. “My mother was a kitchen girl, my father was a cabin boy, that’s why I am a socialist, I’m a socialist I’m a socialist” You need to hear the passion and music to get the full effect, but it was something quite extraordinary. T shirts were sold extremely cheaply and there was a scramble to get them (mighy fine they are too). Without announcement it seemed, the march began. Unaware, we hung around and then ambled out - into the teaming streets. Everything stopped at this spectacle. We marched for hours and hours through slums and more slums. The small, the heat, the sights were totally overwhelming. The harsh reality of what the UN call under-a-dollar-a-day really hit home.

The derpivatiuon was a full assualt on all your senses. I tried to take many photos of what I saw, my own account of the poverty and the problems imposed by corporate globalisation, but it felt intrusive and explotative at times. Some p[eople did proud stand in front of my camera - as if to say yes, here I am, but no less of a person than anyone one else. That fact that a protest against the system putting them in such a state helped somewhat.

Perhaps the most extraordinary part of the march came as we passed a school yard. It was breaktime, and hundreds of kids were in the yard. A group of perhaps 60 - 70 were st5ill by the fence watching the march proceed (we were far from the front, and the demo had been extremely strung out). We stopped the Globalise Resistance banner, now being primarily carried by Kenyan school girls evidently bunking off for the day, towards the yard and chanted “Free, Free Education” it was immediately echoed by the kids. The South African who’d liberated the megaphone from us went through a whole gamut of chants - free Palestine, Iraq, water, homes, education, Africa - the works. He paused for breath, and instantly a cry of “no more Bush, no more Bush” came from the yard. By this time the crowd must have number 300+ kids. Awesome, just awesome. I felt like simply insisting the future should be put in the hands of some of these children, some as young as six.

The march continued, 14km in the searing sun. Obtaining water was hard from the shops - slums don’t have a supply of the bottled stuff. At the occassional stewarded stops, there was no water remaining, having been drunk by those ahead of us or looted by those in more need than us. Our hands were swollen through dehydratioon, our skin burnt by the sun. The end seemed so far away as rumours of “it’s only 3 kilometres to go” were scotched by reports that it was more like seven.

Eventually Uhuru Park came into view, some GR members who’d not been on the march had, as instructed by text, gone and bought a crate of water greeted us and we drank. And drank. And drank.

The final or closing rally of the WSF was in full swing. I can’t tell you much about it, although things did fall pretty silentn when Danny Glover (a film star it appears) spoke, but I was too exhausted, too excited, too elated, too disturbed to take any of it in.

In a week or less there’ll be images and maybe sounds from the protest posted here - it will be well worth you checking in for that. But the technology situation is wanting in these parts.

Hasta la victoria!