And this life is slipping
as rain slides down
thick trunks of trees

And it dissappears
neath the mossy sea
it turns green and ugly

Feeding the beast

Indeed this life is slipping
as sweat slides down
its dirty sleave

BLACK SKIN – WHITE MASKS AT THE WORLD SOCIAL FORUM
Nairobi, Kenya 20-25th Jan 2007

Amongst the crowd, out the corner of my eye I saw an elderly man with dreadlocks down to his ankles. This was maybe an unusual sight under normal circumstances but hey I was at the World Social Forum, and I was expecting anything to happen! The World Social Forum, the largest gathering of Civil Society organizations upon the planet was taking place in Nairobi Kenya and I had the privilege to be there. Over 50,000 delegates from all over the globe had gathered to discuss how to work together to make this world a better place. Or as the slogan goes ‘Another World is Possible’.

I decided to start my discussions with the elderly man with dreadlocks. After introducing myself he tells me he has been growing his hair for 27years, which was probably older than many of the delegates at the Forum. He then tells me he comes from the small Caribbean island of Martinique and was here to share the message of Frantz Fanon a fellow countryman. Frantz Fanon (1925 – 1961) was an intellectual who focused upon the issue of decolonialization and the psychopathology of colonialization. His most famous work ‘Black Skin – White Masks’ details the idea that cultural norms and language in particular imposed upon a people by a colonial power subjugates all value and worth of the people consisting the colonial subject. So here I was a white man from Australia talking English to a French man of African decent from the Caribbean in Nairobi and I wondered ‘what language are we speaking now?’

As we talked the primal language of hunger started taking over and I became distracted and looked around for anything that resembled a food stand or passing vendor. To my right I saw a lot of white delegates eating different kinds of tasty foods under a shady tent. With my hunger getting the better of me I told my dreadlocked brother that I had an important meeting to attend, took his phone number and promised to contact him later. With that I moved quickly into the shade and lined up for food. When I reached the front of the line I realized that the food here was not cheap, maybe accounting for the presence of a large number of white people in the café. Anyway I was hungry and I could afford it so I bout my food and ate with intent.

Upon leaving the café I was confronted by a group of children who asked for money and said they were hungry. Having eaten my food I was in the mood for discussing again so I stopped to talk and asked them where they were from and what they were doing here. They explained that they were a mixture of orphans and street children and had heard there were a lot of good people at the Forum that may help them. During my years of work in East Africa I had been told by my colleagues and working partners to never give money to begging children, it creates a begging culture. I explained this rationally to the children and quickly moved on. I later witnessed a direct action by the street children and their supporters upon the café, they shut down its operations and eventually the remaining food was distributed to the children. Throughout the demonstration people were chanting ‘together united we cannot be defeated!’ The owners of the café were noticeably upset, but I figured that just like me the kids just got too hungry to care.

Further along the path in the scorching Nairobi sun I bumped into an old colleague from Tanzania, she was representing the women’s organization Kivulini, meaning ‘in the shade’ in Kiswahili. We exchanged the usual greetings and started to talk about the issues of the Forum; workers rights, empowerment of women, HIV/Aids, trade, sustainable development etc. etc. She wondered whether it was all just a lot of hot air and posturing by different organizations to show how good they are about making this so-called ‘other world possible’. I agreed that this maybe the case but my thoughts drifted back to Frantz Fanon and the language we were speaking here, and suggested maybe this is a place where we can find a common language as a civil society to go out into the world and deliver our demands and solutions to the issues of poverty and global injustice more clearly. My friend did not really agree or understand what I was getting at, so with that I handed her my business card and started to leave. Then she asked ‘Forum Syd’ what does that mean? I said it means ‘Forum South’ in English, a meeting place to discuss global issues of international solidarity, justice and sustainable development. She sounded interested and asked where and when we had our seminar. I explained that we did not have one and that we were here as ‘observers’ at the Forum, but maybe next time.

As I walked into my next seminar held by Friends of the Earth I started thinking how important it is for Forum Syd, and not just its member organizations, to be present and be active at such forums in the future. With the wealth and experience of development co-operation it was a shame that Forum Syd could not have held similar seminars to the ones being held where organizations could exchange ideas and develop future plans. I wondered if Forum Syd’s active engagement in such Forum’s need to be so complicated. Frantz Fanon also once said that sometimes the colonizers get caught up in their own language and cannot see beyond it resulting in stagnation and eventual demise of their own self worth. His point was that no one feels good or gains from being in a vacuum of power imbalance. So I thought maybe we should forget our Log frames, Octagons, comparative advantages, and strategic plans, at least for this week. Maybe a rights based approach means that we meet our friends and partners from the South with humility, to sit, to eat and to talk about life, our concerns and what we really mean about this other ‘possible’ world.

Upon leaving the Forum grounds I noticed the large number of armed guards and soldiers around the perimeter of the stadium. After just attending a peace rally and disarmament talk, I felt compelled to ask one of the soldiers what the purpose of his duty was? He looked a bit confused. Then I asked, are you protecting us from the outside world or are you protecting them from us? With a wry smile and not really answering my question he said ‘you can’t be too careful these days about terrorists’.

Bumping along on the bus between Nairobi and Dar I was left with the images, impressions and long list of contacts from my week at the World Social Forum. Perhaps the strongest memory I had was of the former President of Zambia Kenneth Kaunda at one of the women’s forums, stamping his feet and shaking his customary white handkerchief in the air. He repeated with conviction and resounding purpose ‘enough is enough! Enough is enough!’, and the woman were cheering him on. With the image of him fresh in my mind as he drove away in his Mercedes Bends, I wondered what he actually meant by ‘enough is enough’? Does it mean he has enough, or has had enough? This contradiction I believe is highly relevant to my own situation. How can I as privileged white man, together with my colleagues at Forum Syd really and truly contribute to a better (or another) possible world?