EAMUN Thursday & Friday

Jambo bwana!

Thursday and Friday were spent in the general assembly, discussing the resolutions that had already been passed in respective committees. The general assembly was much bigger than the committees, with up to 600 students in each room. The quality of these debates was generally higher as new arguments against certain resolutions had to be strengthened. One of VRG’s accomplishments during the general assembly was preventing a resolution from Austria to pass. This resolution concerned Israel’s occupation of Gaza and as it quite openly criticized Israel and was thereby written in an undiplomatic fashion along with going against the UN core principles of respecting sovereignty. Delegates from Canada and Lithuania persisted in going against this resolution and to our satisfaction, the resolution was voted down. During the Thursday and Friday, delegates from Congo and Canada took part in ECOSOC (Economic and social committee) where the focus was more on collaboration than criticism which a certain delegate from Belarus had a hard time understanding and acted in quite an undiplomatic fashion. Both Congo and Canada played a vital part in the ECOSOC discussions. After the closing ceremony, we were finally able to breathe again and went to a very famous restaurant in Nairobi called Carnivore. Here, we were served different types of meat including crocodile which tasted like fish and chicken and ostrich which tasted like exotic meatballs.

… and now it’s snowing, HAKUNA MATATA!
Jambo bwana!

Thursday and Friday were spent in the general assembly, discussing the resolutions that had already been passed in respective committees. The general assembly was much bigger than the committees, with up to 600 students in each room. The quality of these debates was generally higher as new arguments against certain resolutions had to be strengthened. One of VRG’s accomplishments during the general assembly was preventing a resolution from Austria to pass. This resolution concerned Israel’s occupation of Gaza and as it quite openly criticized Israel and was thereby written in an undiplomatic fashion along with going against the UN core principles of respecting sovereignty. Delegates from Canada and Lithuania persisted in going against this resolution and to our satisfaction, the resolution was voted down. During the Thursday and Friday, delegates from Congo and Canada took part in ECOSOC (Economic and social committee) where the focus was more on collaboration than criticism which a certain delegate from Belarus had a hard time understanding and acted in quite an undiplomatic fashion. Both Congo and Canada played a vital part in the ECOSOC discussions. After the closing ceremony, we were finally able to breathe again and went to a very famous restaurant in Nairobi called Carnivore. Here, we were served different types of meat including crocodile which tasted like fish and chicken and ostrich which tasted like exotic meatballs.

… and now it’s snowing, HAKUNA MATATA!

Gospel church visit

The third day on the trip, we had organized to join the Swedish Schools school trip that included a hike. Though it seemed like a great experience to have done and seen, I had to turn the offer down though. Honestly, walking is not my cup of tea! The thing was that a girl from last year’s group, Olivia, had an arranged to visit a local gospel church through one of the Swedish schools bus drivers, which was a famous artist around Nairobi. His name was Julius and he was a genuine guy, happy and funny, and he had an attitude that kind of gave the expression that everything always sorts out. A relaxed guy you could say. Nevertheless, Julius had talked to his pastor at his church and asked if it was okay for us to come to one of their assemblages and see how different it was from the Swedish traditional church.  We were three students from VRG (Me, Olivia and Dennis (he had some ugly blisters under his foot so he couldn’t join the others) that sat in the mini bus heading towards a destination that was unknown. together with our driver and personal entertainer, Julius, as well as our Swedish friend from Birka, who had arrived at Kolping guest house (the place we stayed at) the day before and was curious and exited to join us, we soon arrived at the destination. But the trip was not that bad or boring at all, we saw some amazingly beautiful landscape as well as a poor poor village that we went through while listening to Julius dedicated song about Barrack Obama. (they really love him there, his father was from the Louou-tribe , which is one of 42 tribes that they have in Kenya, the Louou-tribe is also one the biggest of the tribes. However they see Obama as a symbol of hope, that a BLACK can be president in one of the greatest countries in the world; is amazing for the Kenyan population). 

Furthermore, when we arrived to this so called “church”, which actually was an old abandoned barn, we were welcomed of 20-30 people who all showed their appreciation of having us there. So we were well taken care of. We all sat down on these garden-kind-of-looking-chairs made of plastic, and they all started to sing, and they kept singing for about 30-40 minutes and we, the students, tried to sing with them. At first we all were a bit shy, but when we noticed their hospitality we felt comfortable and could loosen up a bit. Then we were presented and went up to the podium where we thanked them for having us there and so on. Then the pastor preached about the challenges you meet in your every-day-life. Then we finished the assembly with a nice “hallelujah-song”. Afterwards we thanked them once again just to show our appreciation and went back to the Swedish school with a big smile on our faces.

That’s all for now!
Yours truly Adam Sandstrom
 

Monday – Kibera

After returning from the safari the afternoon was spent I Kibera, the largest slumarea in Nairobi and one of the largest on the continent with a population of approximately 1 million (which is more than Stockholm) living on an area equivalent to that of the golf course in Nairobi.

The social worker and Swedish school’s link to Kibera, Francis, passed away only a few days before our intended visit. Naturally his tragic death affected our plans, however we were still able to go even though the visit was shorter than planned.’

My first impression when we stepped out of the bus was that it wasn’t as bad as I had pictured it to be. However straight after that thought had formed in my head Tobias, the teacher from the Swedish school, told us that the part we were in, Olympic, was the only area with electricity and water. Olympic was surprisingly lively. We saw for example small shops, a gym and an aerobics studio. We were constantly met by children, many dressed in school uniforms, excitedly almost shouting “How are you?!” at us.

We visited two support groups for women with HIV/AIDS. Both groups sold jewelry for which the profits went directly to the group and stopping HIV/AIDS. Both groups talked to us about the loss of Francis and arrangements for his funeral. I was impressed by the courage these women showed talking about Francis to a large group of strangers merely days after he passed away as it was clear that he had been close to them. We also visited a school where we talked to student and were shown round the school.

On the whole what I was most surprised by was the positive atmosphere that lingered over Kibera. There was no doubt that it’s a tough place to live in, however it is also full of hope and inspiration (however cliché that sounds) and I think we had imagined it to be more “dejected”. We never got the impression that people were ashamed of living in the slums, on the contrary it seemed like people were proud of being Kiberans. There was also no evidence of people just “waiting to be saved” and in Olympic we didn’t see any beggars. Instead, as the women’s groups were excellent examples of, many seemed eager to build their own businesses and earn their own money. What they wanted help with was to be recognized and for people to be aware of their existence, not be given food.

/Sara Väljamets

Day 1 & 2

 Friday and Saturday

Friday started of with breakfast after which we quickly took the bus that would take us to the Swedish school. The Swedish school’s principal, Per, gave us a tour of the school. We met some students that were very nice to us and told us some small facts about how it is in Kenya. After the presentation we walked to a shopping centre that was located nearby. It was called Nakkumatt Junction, but we learned to call it Junction like the natives. Kenya’s version of Starbucks is called Java, which was the place we had lunch and lots of milkshake, “much like kaffe latte in the rich countries”. After that we walked back to the school, were we spent some hours hanging, enjoying the sun and playing some water polo in the pool. That night, the students at the school, together with us, went to a place called The Blue Times. We were expecting something more, dancy, but were met by a bar and nostalgic music that hadn’t been heard for years. Seriously, Spice girls?! Anyways, the night ended in a quite stressy way, since we all had to catch the bus that would leave at 12.30, and if someone missed it then they would…well…next subject!

Saturday morning started with country meetings with Rich, which included going through policy speech, the country’s position and ecosoc rotation. Toy market was the next stop, it was quite hard to find but since we walked together we managed to keep ourselves on track, at least some of us. The majority of the group went downtown while a small portion of us stayed at the Swedish school, chilling at the pool and enjoying the warm weather.  Later that night we went to the Prestige Plaza, which is a bit bigger than Junction. There we had dinner at a random food court after which we visited a necklace/souvenir stall where some of us purchased fine African artifacts. We then jumped into the bus, which took us to the Swedish school. The students had already arranged a barbeque which we joined and relaxed for a few hours. The ended early as many of us were tired and anxious to start the role-play.