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Nairobi If there’s public transportation in Nairobi, no one knows about it. There are matatus though by the hundreds. These are private mini-vans, jitney buses, and even larger buses that hog the roads and rule the roost. They seem to be semi-regulated, which means that in certain areas in downtown Nairobi a driver will [...]
Nairobi It took more than an hour for the members to arrive for the official launch of ACORN Kenya in Korogocho, but once they were all in there were more than 200 and every time one of the speakers said, “ACORN!” the called response was “Mabadiliko Sasa!” meaning “Reform Now!” I fell in love with [...]
Nairobi We hit the jitney early and made it a long day in the villages where we had been organizing. There were bases that needed to be touched with the Chief (a government appointee), the assistant chief, the ward manager for the City of Nairobi, and the Chair of the Highridge Village and Father John [...]
Nairobi For hours in the morning, Sammy Ndirangu and David Musungu, ACORN Kenya’s organizers in Nairobi working in two villages in the Korogocho slum discussed their work and the issues that members were identifying around health care, education, and housing. In the afternoon we were joined by the chair of one of the groups, [...]
Nairobi Flying to Nairobi takes forever. Seems to be no way around that fact, and despite email, Skype, digital pictures, and ubiquitous cell phones, anything nearly 5000 miles away is hard to hold firm in the hands. The work is slippery, no matter how hard applied, and there’s still nothing better than going out [...]
New Orleans Packing for the flight to Nairobi over Sunday and Monday, I read with interest a piece in the times about the usual run of charges that companies were charging for use of credit and debit cards outside of the boundaries of the USA covered in the “Your Money” column in the Times [...]
New Orleans Congressman Darrell Issa (R-CA) is the ranking Republican on the U.S. House Committee on Governmental Reform and Oversight. Wanting to make a splash and get in the press at the annual gathering of the right wing at the Conservative Political Action Committee (CPAC), Issa seems to have come up with a 60+ [...]
Dallas James O’Keefe never dressed in his racist, caricature pimp suit in an ACORN or ACORN Housing office. This has been an under-the-radar dispute for more than six months, largely because it fades in importance compared to the errors a small number of workers were trapped into making. But, with the new attention on [...]
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