Doing what we can

My high point today has been hearing a very powerful and moving speech from Professor Wangari Maathai, the first African woman to win a Nobel Prize. (The low point was realising that my voice recording of her speech hadn’t worked – but we are hoping to get a copy of a video recording.) She spoke of the illegitimacy of much of the debt claimed from poor countries – the fact that creditors lent irresponsibly knowing that the money was not going to help the poor, or knowing the countries couldn’t afford loans – and how today ‘the poor are being sacrificed so that debts can be serviced.’

But she also spoke about what we can achieve together, with the commitment to “do what we can, whatever we can, wherever we are.” She reminded us that, ‘We are loud enough to be heard by all G8 countries, to be heard saying “These debts are illegitimate - and you know it.” We can shout from Nairobi and be echoed in Europe, in North America, in Latin America, in Asia and Australia. Because there is no part of the world where we are not represented.’

The determination to do what we can seems to be the theme linking everything and everyone here: from those taking part in the angry debates about China’s role in Africa that I heard this morning, to the band I can hear behind me now singing about access to water (‘H – 2 – oh-oh-oh’, etc). There is a wide variety of perspectives, and even more so of experiences. About an hour ago I stopped to take a picture of an AIDS ribbon tree, commemorating those killed by AIDS. The man beside it asked me to take a ribbon, and write on it the name of someone I know who has died from AIDS. As I hesitated, he said ‘Any one of them will do.’