well, here i am in kenya.

I am a little late, but I thought some folks might be interested to hear some of what happened here in Kenya on September 27, which was the global Stop EPAs day.

We gathered at Freedom Corner in Uhuru Park (the main park in downtown Nairobi, and a very historic area - lots of free speech and political change events have happened there). 2 oil drums had been painted by University of Nairobi students to look like a giant tin of tomato paste from Italy and a giant tin of milk powder from Holland. Farmers were present from the Kenya Small Scale Farmers' Forum, as well as lots of other folks from the Nairobi civil society scene. Moses Shaha, the chair of the KESSFF spoke some about EPAs, and then farmers got together and "crushed" some of their produce (tomatoes, bananas, beans, etc) with the giant tins of "European Imported Food", demonstrating the potential impact of EPAs and trade liberalization on Kenya's small scale farmers.

It was fun. Ruthpearl got arrested ahead of time by the Nairobi City Council and we had to pay a ridiculous amount of money in "licenses" for wearing "branded t-shirts" and passing out fliers, etc. Ah well. She got out. And Ruthpearl is really the best person to get arrested. She talked her way right out of the cells and into the head office.

We got lots of good press, especially internationally (BBC, Reuters, etc). And we squashed some tomatoes and stood up against more of the police who came with big trucks to haul us all away despite us having permits, and even though I forgot to put on sunscreen I did not get burned.

Success!

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/talking_point/africa_have_your_say/default.stm

Check it!
BBC program Africa Have Your Say had a one hour pan-African conversation on EPAs!!

You know, Economic Partnership Agreement negotiations. The thing I spend all day every day fighting. Those.

I was in the Nairobi BBC studio for the live broadcast! They had a number of us lined up to speak in Nairobi, but only got to John Ochola from Econews Africa. Actually, I asked NOT to speak because, while i feel that I represent fairly well an African organization, I do not exactly represent African civil society.

Anyways - only up on the BBC for a week, I think. Enjoy it while you can!

...is that I have gotten used to certain spellings, like “programme.”

Now, when I read the word “program” it looks too short and I end up reading it as “pogrom”, which is really not the same thing at all.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pogrom

Goodness.