Saturday 11th. Demonstration Day at Uhuru park
I got a problem in waking up because I had had a long night after the party at Africa unleashed. It rained heavily in the morning when it stopped we had to move to Uhuru park, where we were to meet others who are concerned about a cleaner environment especially on climate change.
On reaching the park, we where disappointed because we did not find anyone. To make matters worse, the youth organizers were still in bed when we called to ask where they were. That wasn’t funny.
We joined other campaigners for a clean environment who had also taken to the streets of Nairobi to put pressure on governments to act urgently on global warming. This was fun!
We were dressed in Solar Generation T-shirts, had our banner written on Greenpeace and had turbans on our heads: this made us “stand out of the crowd”.
The most interesting part came when we had to sing a song which goes like this:
“ OOOOps it’s hot in here! There’s too much carbon in the atmosphere! Take action, take action and get some satisfaction!”
Even the school going children had to learn it and join us.
Different campaigners had different banners written on something, this included: “Stop Climate Injustice”; “Stop Climate Chaos”. The most funny one was the one that had Bush’s picture. It said that he is WANTED FOR CRIMES AGAINST THE PLANET.
Speeches were given by different people all talking about environment. Poems were said by school children and songs sung. This really interested me because the children get to have a touch with the environment. They get to know that things like deforestation is a bad practice which could lead to the alteration of the environment.
By the end of this, we were all exhausted and hungry, we had to move a long distance looking for where to eat, at one time I lost hope thinking we would never get there. But I was wrong!
We went to Masai market where people had to buy things. I did not like it because it was too hot and got a problem because of language barrier.
We walked back to our hotel, we had a long way to go… At one time I thought to get a “matatu” taxi but another thought told me it was unenvironmental friendly: so I stopped thinking about it and had to increase my speed!
In the evening I had nothing to do so I switched on the television and …SURPRISE: the demo was broadcasted in the news, and I saw our group! At the end of it all, the reporter said she hopped that delegates make good decision in the remaining days of the conference.
Cathy