Still alive

Hope none of you have been fretting. First few days here were completely ridiculously, alternating between feeling sick (flu-ish stuff) and try to register. Luckily I recovered in time for the beginning of the WSF, and since have been fairly busy with that + no internet access at the site (though I did find some Ubuntu kids) + problems with internet access at the hotel. Phone access is also a problem, for various reasons (summary: Africa) - I'm on my 3rd phone number since I got here!

I feel like I could write a couple of weeks' worth of entries just from the last couple of days, but I'm on limited time so first up, important bits, family please take heed:

I'll be flying from Nairobi to Cape Town on the 28th. I'll get into Jo'burg at 1035, and then leave for Cape Town at 1350. GREEK FAMILY: Perhaps you could talk to Helen and ask if she could meet me at the airport during my stopover, I think things will be hard to arrange otherwise. I don't think I'll manage to visit them at home, so the airport would probably be the best idea.

I'll arrive in Cape Town on the 28th at 1550. SOUTH AFRICAN FAMILY: Please tell me if someone can meet me at the airport, and if they can't please suggest an alternative way to get to Hermanus. Also, please tell me if it's Hermanus that I want to get to!

ALL FAMILY: Sorry for the calls for help, but communication is so improbably inefficient here that this seems the best way to assure that anything actually happens.

Also planned for my South African trip - a few days in Durban, probably from the 7th to the 10th, or thereabouts. Apparently Mango do cheap and frequent flights? I've heard rumours that I'm giving a seminar on my work at the Centre for Civil Society at the University of KwaZulu Natal on the 9th.

Some stuff so far, in a very scattered way

I'll write more later, and maybe put down some semi-coherent stuff on my somewhat-adult blog. Here are a few bits of what's been happening, though... [Just assume every sentence ends with, "but more on that later".]

The WSF is huge and chaotic and incredibly badly organised. Registration was a ridiculously tortuous process that took three days, and then yesterday they weren't even checking badges as people walked in. I don't think this is necessarily a bad thing.

On a related note, there've been quite a few protests from Kenyans at having to pay a registration fee (500 KES, then a bit more for others from the South, then a fair bit more for those in the North). Fair point, I think.

Opening ceremony was more of the usual bollocks. Various illustrious leaders of the revolution babbling on while people largely waited for the music. Kenneth Kaunda, who is apparently responsible for running Zambia into the ground (or so my friends from RSA claim - I really don't know about him), spoke. Some stuff from various WSF stalwarts. A bit of the usual "Viva the people! Viva the youth! Viva the disabled!" "Down with the World Bank! Down with neoliberalism!" etc etc. Unless I misheard, there were also a couple that seemed off-kilter: "Viva Zimbabwe!" and "Viva North Korea!" didn't really work for me. The enemy of my enemy is not necessarily my friend. Some good music and poetry and dancing, though, which almost made up for it.

The seminars/workshops I've been to have been of varying quality. Listened to a few WSF/movement notables, like Jai Sen and Vandana Shiva, probably others scattered around the place too. Some of it's been either the usual sloganeering or abstract academic wank, but a fair bit was interesting and new. Some cool stuff on oil workers' trade unions in Iraq, and I went to a talk on political prisoners given by the malcolm x grassroots movement today that I really enjoyed. A very 70s feel to that one, and one of the speakers had bought her daughter with her...8ish yr old kid running around with an afro and a che shirt, drawing pictures and making suggestions for the revolution and wanting to hug her mother while she talked. Also a great talk from the etc group on the anti-terminator technology campaign they've been running.

As with last time, it seems like the most exciting stuff happens at the fringes of the organised activities. I've met a heap of great people (often several times, actually, despite the thousands attending) - lots of information and email addresses exchanged. At the etc group's talk today there was a Tanzanian librarian sent to collect information from the WSF - he didn't know much about the terminator issue, just kind of wandered along. All the information gathered is going to be collected and put on a wiki.

Also hanging around a fair bit from the lot from the civil society centre - a bit strange that when I bumped into them Patrick said, "Oh, of course I remember you, you wrote about me on your blog!" Lots of great stuff coming out of the centre, it seems.

Eep! Think I'm nearly out of time, so perhaps I'll finish here so that it doesn't all disappear.

*waves frantically*