Letter to the brave Nairobi Internet conference delegates

Dear ICANN delegate,

First, on behalf of my fellow country-men, I would like to extend our sincerest welcome to you to our country.

I trust that your week-long stay here will be both productive and restful as you deliberate on the future of the internet at the 37th meeting of the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) at Kenyatta International Conference Centre.

Further, I would like to thank you for being brave enough to visit our fair city in the sun.

Your presence means a lot to us, and I’m not just speaking for the many hoteliers who are charging you $500 a night.

The fact that you defied the edicts of your governments, casually casting off their claims that Nairobi is as insecure as Kabul, is a highly commendable act. I trust that as you arrived at our international airport you were reassured to find that it is indeed as big as many other average airports in the world.

As you drove along what we fondly refer to Mombasa Road, I hope that you managed to catch a glimpse of our famous wildlife huddling in what is left of our city’s national park.

If you did not, do not be discouraged, it may have been difficult to see through the towering buildings and industrial parks that line the highway.

I am sure that while you were caught up in our (in)famous two-hour “jam” stretching from Nyayo National Stadium to the Bunyala roundabout, you had time to appreciate our intrinsically commercial nature as hawkers attempted to sell you everything from imported shower heads to ripe mangoes.

And after you checked into your hotel and probably locked your door, I hope you had time to turn on the television and enjoy our local programming.

Did you catch a glimpse of our politicians on the evening broadcast? Although we are angry at some of them for stealing our hard-earned money, we find them quite entertaining.

Hopefully you even caught a glimpse of our newest political force, it’s known as the Placenta Party of Kenya. Anyway, what I do hope is that you did not spend your time cowering in your hotel room every night, anxiously waiting to hear a burst of gun fire outside or worse still, the knock of a gangster on your very door.

It would be really disappointing if you whiled away your evenings locked up in your room, laptop plugged into the high speed connection on the wall.

That would be sad because although you are here to discuss the internet and its future, you do need to socialise.

It’s my sincere hope that as you pack your bags this Sunday and retrace the route back to the airport, you go easily into the night (or day), having come to the realisation that Nairobi isn’t Kabul.

Spread the word to those who would not come here because they were concerned about the city security.

I am sure you now know that Nairobi is just like your own city, and has its own highs and lows in the security department.

Yours sincerely,

Kui.