I was recently invited to comment on the amazing PBS documentary, Good Fortune, including the point of view of the Kibera News Network who watched the film with me. This is a beautifully filmed and highly personal documentary about the drawbacks of the slum upgrading project in Kibera and an agricultural development project in Western Kenya, and I’d love to hear what others might have to say about it. You can view the movie online here if you live in the US. You can also see the first installment of KNN’s follow-up reporting on the slum upgrading project here – if you live anywhere that allows Youtube. I’d strongly urge the filmmakers to make this film available in Kenya, online, for free – what is the point if Kenyans themselves cannot view, comment, and discuss? I myself have a copy in case anyone wants to borrow it.
Also fresh off the press is an article I wrote on the early stages of Map Kibera called “Putting Nairobi’s Slums on the Map“, in the World Bank’s Development Outreach magazine.
Something pretty amazing is happening in the dusty concrete rooms of our partner, KCODA.
It’s been about three months since we started working with 17 Kibera youth on the Kibera News Network (KNN) – an online “TV channel” for local stories and news about Kibera. They had no video experience and very little computer experience, and faced daunting challenges like lack of internet access, frequent power failures, slow computers, rampant viruses, and poor software – not to mention being nearly attacked for attempting to record subjects like a woman being beaten and looters on an overturned train. But they’ve now uploaded more than 20 short videos up on KNN’s Youtube channel, using Flip cameras and other supplies donated by UNICEF and computers at KCODA, and the new community journalists are posting more every week (or rather – giving them to me to upload, as we all wait for hallowed arrival of Safaricom wimax).
The purpose of KNN is to provide a means for Kiberans (mostly youth) to become citizen reporters of their community – sharing stories using Flip cameras and posting them online. The stories are also mapped on Voice of Kibera, and contribute to our broader goal of empowering communities to share and generate their own information. The news they report isn’t usually covered by other sources, so it’s a valuable community resource. It’s not meant necessarily to professionalize them as reporters, but to engage as many youth as possible in engaging with their community in this way – though those who enjoy it could certainly pursue journalism or videography careers.
I’ve watched the group evolve over the past few months. We started with five teams of 3 or 4, meeting once a week. Some of them asked if they could come every day to learn as much as they could. Luckily, the KNN leaders – two young Kiberans who are already skilled in filmmaking – were happy to hang out at the KCODA office, making use of the computers and help the students edit their pieces. Steve and Jahdi are also learning how to lead and support their peers.
Rather than following a traditional training model, it’s more like a youth group – peer education and management. This sometimes means that things get a bit messy. We lock our cameras and have one of the KCODA staff, also a KNN member, sign them in and out. Any lapse in procedure can be a big problem – we had a scare when one Flip cam went missing for about a week and then “mysteriously” reappeared after prolonged debate in our weekly meeting. In order to prevent such things, I think that a sense of group identity and ownership – this is our place, these are our resources – is key. This is already happening – within each team they are keen to weed out those who aren’t “serious” and find new recruits themselves. So the group has become self-regenerating. The 17 or so we have now are not all from the original group – we’ve had to do introduction sessions for new students.
Jacob demonstrates
One of the most striking things about the project is that so far it’s purely voluntary, including the trainers – except for lunch on meeting day. If you know Kibera, you know that very few people do anything for free, unless it’s really important to them. The group has pushed me to spend far more time on this than I anticipated, keeping up with demand for new skills and managing this growth spurt. They do get access to the computers and cameras and training, and I think the skill building is clearly a benefit. However, in the long run, we’ll have to think more about how to help them to raise their own funds for the project. There are luckily some opportunities locally, like A24, to market clips and videos, so I think they have a chance. But I’ll have to write a whole separate post to cover the topic of paid vs. unpaid community journalism. As with OSM mapping, citizen reporting is different when you’re not wealthy. I’m just hoping to create chances for those youth with something to say, to have a chance to say it.
Working on the site at KCODA
They think it’s exciting to see their work online, but are also interested in making sure the rest of Kibera also gets to see it. On July 17th, they’ll have a local debut – showing a few clips at the start of a documentary someone else is bringing to Kibera. In the midst of all this, we’ve managed to recruit some great volunteers in both tech and journalism (though we’re still looking for a longer-term intern!).
Now, I’m interested to see how the introduction of the internet at KCODA will impact KNN. KCODA is in process of installing full-fledged computer lab, and they already let KNN use 2 computers full time. The students will be able to upload themselves, and thereby become more like the citizen reporters we’re now used to in the US. But their relationship with the internet is different – it’s not something second-nature and constantly at their fingertips, it’s a prized commodity and valuable resource. We’ll see how things evolve once this resource is more accessible.
I recently attended the World Bank Innovation Fair in Cape Town, South Africa. It was an interesting assemblage of people working around the world on projects ranging from conflict mapping to social issue reality TV shows. Many involved technology, but a fair amount did not – innovation can come in many forms.
The conference was meant to last only two days, but due to a certain volcanic ash cloud, the informal after-conference lasted up to a week for some. In fact, I’m not even sure if everyone is home yet. Getting to know your colleagues off-Twitter from a variety of sectors is invaluable, and this crowd wasn’t made up of the usual conference-goers since 30 of the project leaders (including us) had won an online contest in order to be chosen. In fact, due to an abundance of strictly timed elevator-style presentations, much of the conference felt like cross between American Idol and an industry trade show, with everyone hawking their newest invention to age-old problems. Even when some of them seemed to fall apart upon closer inspection, I was impressed by the spirit of invention – dare I say, a DIY mentality? (Innovation is a nice word, but why not invention? The inventor conjures a half-mad genius in the lab, an Einstein, an Edison, who, fueled by the mad drive to create, finally produces a light bulb). Many of the attendees had obviously come with the hope of convincing the judges (er…World Bank) to finance their experiments. It was a long shot.
I had a moment of recognition that this is the best place to be in what has become the mega-industrial aid and development complex. I’d rather be around 30 creative inventors pitching their ideas with vigor (even if 29 of them never succeed) than 3000 executives at the next Global Conference on a Big Issue. It is those who take a chance on an idea and run with it who command my greatest respect. This is not coincidentally thanks to my experience of the difficulty of actually bringing an idea to fruition! That would be my only caviat: ideas are great, but talk to me after you have actually tried it out with real people.
So – here are just a few of the cool things I learned of, with great people to match (there were others I wanted to include BUT could not find online – if your project doesn’t even have a basic website how can it inspire others around the world? And if it’s not public, even worse.):
- Reconstructed Living Labs: – Using social media to reform lives; plus they use MXit to do counseling and they all blog on their phones. They’re highlighted in this video: (otherwise: warning, very cheesy conference video).
- Hibr: - Lebanese youth newspaper and online independent citizen media. They also want to create a traveling media lab out of an old bus.
- Voices of Africa: Nairobi-based project of solar-powered rural internet kiosks.
- UNDP Threat and Risk Mapping: Makes use of participatory mapping to determine local needs, and plan for village development in Sudan. Not sure if this is shared, public information though.
There are many days like today in Kibera. I went down to KCODA early today to pick up video clips, and ended up staying for hours with students from the nascent Kibera News Network : helping add voice over audio clip to a completed piece, realizing that we were editing the wrong clip, converting a mysterious file type into one compatible with our software (this never succeeded), transferring materials via my flash drive (a rare commodity) from one computer to the next, and then suddenly – the power went out. And then, it started to rain, hard. So we all sat in the dark office and watched the rain, our day suddenly stopped in its tracks. Julius, the KCODA director, about to leave for lunch, us about to finish editing some video, and then – nothing but the sound of the rain, nowhere to go, nothing to do.
I had started out the day rushing around trying to accomplish things without success: getting my computer repaired, exchanging my new USB plug-in modem for one that works. These tasks had also failed, and now, watching the rain pour down harder and harder onto the mud streets of Kibera, I had to just give up. And wait.
I often think that in Nairobi, things work just well enough to make it frustrating. You expect the power to stay on, you expect the computers to function, you think your new Orange modem will work with your Mac. Everything functions at breakneck speed, until we’re reminded (much like the lesson of the Icelandic volcano ash, I think) that it all really hangs on a thread and nature, bureaucracy, fate, malice, just plain traffic jam can pull it down at any moment. In fact, the Friday afternoon traffic jam today was standstill, given the rain.
After a nice chat with the guys at KCODA the rain finally eased up, and I left – frustrated, but not for long. Check out this insanely beautiful rainbow I was then treated to, while sitting in a dirty matatu listening to the driver’s reggae mix:
Oddly, no one else seemed to be looking at it. But what wonders a natural wonder can do for you after a week of struggling with community technology.
I would like to introduce…Kibera News Network, Kibera’s first TV news station. Featuring online content produced by 16 youth from Kibera!
Last week, we began training 16 enthusiastic youth on Flip cameras. We haven’t quite got the internet installed at KCODA for the uploading, so we’re not quite online yet. But I can’t wait. Just see below all the amazing stories that the teams are planning to report on. They have already started and I’ve seen some great footage! THESE are some of the stories that are hidden inside the slums waiting to be told. Notice that most groups categorized stories into themes (and some only had themes, so we will work on that).
Group 1:
Collins, Moha, Steve
1) Noise pollution: the noise rules are not followed; during day it is very noisy due to business activities like CD shops.
2) Olympic bus terminus: the bus turn about was repaired but it not used (waste of municipal funds?)
3) Need for bumps along chief’s camp road: speeding vehicles are dangerous to school children
4) Dangers of living along the railway lines: possibility that train will fall on them, endangering their lives
5) Grabbing of land meant for pavements and paths: no room for pedestrians due to building out into slum road
6) Youths and illegal gangs in Olympic – repairing your structure often requires bribe payment to them
7) Interference of power transformers by residents: those who live in kibera often replace the fuses themselves: this causes fire to houses such as that last week of several homes
8. Insecurity: Bars operate till very late, so they can harbor criminals
9) Presence of local artists who promote peace: like solo 7 and maasai 2
Group 2:
Regynnah, George, Eddie
1) Talents: profiles of especially talented youth: youths playing football, singing, other
2) Security: adopt-a-light program and how it has helped security since lights are now available in some areas, also chief’s place improvements that improved security
3) Education: in Kibera there are some very good schools like Olympic that is top in country, and Soweto academy: profiling top schools in slums
4) Unity: in case of fire outbreak, people unite to help each other and don’t wait for fire truck – team firefighting in kibera
5) Love: people don’t allow each other to go hungry, neighbor will give food if someone needs it
6) Informed: we as youths of kibera are well informed about our rights, not ignorant
7) Fighting poor sanitation: there is a cleanup process where youth gather together and clean the villages themselves
8. Fighting poverty: many people are self-employed, own their own kiosks and do not work for others
9) Self-reliant: Those in Kibera do shopping in Kibera, not Nakumatt – one can just get the same items cheaper here and that way the money stays local to Kibera
Group 3:
Mildred, Jacob, Shadrack, Sizzah
1) Sanitation: community health and garbage collection
2) Education: outsiders think Kiberans are not literate and educated; showing that is not true
3) Development: community initiatives that are trying to improve Kibera
4) Recollection: sports and events, community activities and talents, fun
5) Lifestyle: poverty – people are sometimes wealthy but staying here anyway – inside their mud houses you find nice things they have bought.
6) Housing and land
7) Human Rights
8. Intercultural and Religious: People intermarrying among tribes. Others think they cannot stay together due to election violence. Is this a problem since 2008?
9) Disease
10) Skills, Knowledge: one man built a vehicle for himself in Kibera using scrap metal alone – profile of entrepreneurship
Group 4:
Isabella, Wilfred, Hassan
1) Biogas projects coverage
2) Youth group activities documentation
3) Sanitation – water taps and toilets
4) farming produce in sacks – new method for business and fighting hunger
5) poultry farming – can get financially stable by chicken farming in Kibera
6) lobbying and advocacy
7) kazi kwa vijana: jobs for youth program follow up – is it working? have youth found jobs?
8. security
9) expansion of roads and impact that is having – some people are being pushed out
10) hospitals establishment: residents use local clinics not Kenyatta hospital – plenty of local health services now
Group 5:
Cliffton, Douglas, Lucy
1) Sanitation: UN toilet compared to CDF funded: comparison of quality
2) Education: informal vs formal schools – quality comparison
3) Health: how people approach public health and facilities
4) Transport infrastructure: looking at roads inlets and outlets
5) Business: kinds of businesses that exist here, commodities produced.
6) Drainage system: sewage disruption in gutters caused by blockages leading to home flooding, yet sewer lines run right under kibera without servicing it.
7) Housing: slum upgrading project and how are initial structures looking
8. Public health: Food kiosks: whether environment is sanitary at these kiosks
9) Water: toilets built along water channels, drainage creates disease
10) Tribes: enclaves: conflicts because people are now living in different areas not mixed. each village is enclave. how this happened, makes it easy for attacks on tribes since you know who is who.
11) Land issue: no one has title deeds which causes major problems
The small village of Wongonyi is located in the Taita hills not far from the coast, nestled among lush hilltops with views over the massive Tsavo game parks. Mikel and I had the good fortune to spend a recent escape-from-Nairobi weekend there. Our friend Primoz who sent us was a minor celebrity up in these parts for having actually walked and mapped the whole village, which is spread over several very steep hilltops.
Wongonyi views
The entire constituency of Mwatate, in fact, has been on our radar for a while; we visited local authorities with SODNET last year, and they were very interested in getting community feedback through mapping or other technology. We made plans to come up and do some training. But Wongonyi is literally off the grid. To what extent can technology make a difference, or even make sense, to the small-scale farmers living up here? Places like this always inspire me, and challenge me to question everything we consider to be “development.”
Just around the corner, but a million miles away
To get to Wongonyi, you must brave a matatu ride from the town of Voi up a steep, deeply rutted dirt road, for 250 shillings ($3 in a dollar or two per day economy), or for twice that amount you might get a seat in the four-wheel-drive truck. This is a road built where nature never intended. Following partly along the course of a dried riverbed, it hugs the mountainside improbably and forces a speed of about 2km/hr. At 7:30 each morning, the matatu pitches and heaves back down carrying some 20 people in seats meant for 14, along with several gallons of fresh milk in empty plastic vegetable oil containers to sell in Voi. Mama Ruth, our adopted mom on the mountain, tells us that improvements have been made: now we have 2 matatus and the truck, when we used to have just one matatu. She says it as though she owns them, and in a way, the vehicles do belong to the whole town – even she, who could afford a car, wouldn’t bring it up the mountain, where it might melt into the earth during a hard rain. It simply doesn’t make sense to own a vehicle that isn’t being used constantly and by everyone.
Mama Ruth and Kathy Wood
The road has actually been paved in concrete in some particularly unwieldy passages, rendering it passable on most days. Progress, we think. This must help the residents. Not really – matatu prices have not decreased for villagers, and the only change they’ve seen is that big logging trucks can now make it up the paths into pristine forest, and bring the goods back down. In fact, the local chief started to tell people not to cut their trees because a place like Wongonyi depends heavily on sustaining a delicate environmental balance. The shangas, or small household farms, are built on terraced mountainsides next to trees that hold the slippery earth in place. Most of the trees have been planted, after an initial shaving of the hillsides many years ago. A virgin forest – more of a jungle – tops the mountain, also preserved in order to prevent devastating erosion and to protect the watershed. When milk prices fall for these subsistence farmers, they are understandably tempted to cut the trees on their property for some 50 shillings (though the middlemen can make several times that in profit) and the chief must intervene.
Village to Village
Sarah and William
We happened to be in Wongonyi at the same time as a family of four Canadians, the Woods. Hailing from a small town in northern Ontario, they had turned fundraising for Wongonyi into a family passion and this time brought 600 kilos of donated items (baby clothes, dress patterns, solar lamps). We watched them unveil a sunflower seed-press for a women’s group, bought from Kickstart in Nairobi. The Woods had also begun to construct a playground at the elementary school, donated baby clothes at the clinic, brought sewing patterns and fabric for a seamstress training project, and were paying scholarships for a few girls to finish high school and college. We had several interesting discussions with them as they debated what would make the most impact and not go to waste, and tried to convince people they were just small-town average folk like themselves. Ronnie Mdawida, a local resident, had been their exchange student in Canada inspiring the founding of their Ronnie Fund. Ronnie is also the reason we are there in Wongonyi thinking about how we can possibly lend our own skills. After founding Kosmos Solutions with an American friend, Ronnie and his wife Sarah have been working hard to improve the village. Challenges here abound: alcoholism and absentee drunkard fathers are common, girls go to school only until their parents decide they’re much more useful collecting firewood and managing the household – usually before the age of 12. There is no electricity, minimal running water, and few medicines at the clinic. The death of a parent can leave 8 children fending for themselves off the food raised by farming on steep terraces, and funerals are frequent due to lack of medical care. HIV has made its way up from the towns. But there is an abundance of less tangible goods: extended family usually lives just down the path, and neighbors support each other in times of need. The stars at night come out suddenly in bright abundance, just after the pink sunset fades over the plains below. Food is cooked in large batches and shared with friends and family. Folks will walk half the day to attend the funeral of someone they were barely acquainted with, bringing small coins or food. They are buried in their own backyards. And the land is incredibly fertile. Taita was largely spared from the drought that recently plagued much of Kenya. Several springs and rivers run down the mountain and provide natural irrigation. From my perspective, too, arriving in Wongonyi was like coming home to a family I never knew I had. Everyone we passed said a bright hello (or, rather, habari yako) and wanted to know what we were doing, maybe have a chat. I also felt the urge to say hello and learn about every person, releasing my cautious and guarded Nairobi attitude.
Mapping and Media in Mwatate
So – what is it we’re planning in this hamlet? Primoz, as mentioned, has already mapped the village. Our partners at SODNET want to extend that to the whole constituency. We want to do some training as we’ve done in Nairobi, with young people who want to map their own villages, and think of other ways that the rural community can hold information locally for policy impact and self-advocacy. With a receptive MP this can be very effective; he complained to us that he simply doesn’t have enough basic facts on the area’s needs. Collecting, sharing, talking, and thinking about community needs might mean starting mobile phone radio or storytelling with the local girls’ club. I think it’s really important not to plan too much from the outside (Nairobi), but to come with ideas and allow the process to develop organically. Certainly, that’s what has worked in Kibera. I’m ready for this process to be much slower than it’s been in Nairobi. Everything is slower in Wongonyi. I certainly don’t mind. Walking and then talking face-to-face is still the primary communication method, although mobile towers allow for decent coverage. Everything is done on a personal level: small projects come and go, each meant to provide income: butterfly farming, biogas collection, etc. What might happen if some of the girls in the girls’ club had the experience of creating short videos or audio recordings about their lives, or about anything at all. Would it be a confidence-builder, could they even participate in the village planning process this way with pride in their special knowledge of a technology that others don’t know? That’s been a boost to our current group, made them feel smart and proud. Or is that simply going too far: after all, the girls in the club lead what we’re told is a tough life of household work, farming, and school, and leaving their chores for even one hour a week can be a tough sell to parents.
Are we the teachers, or the students?
Mikel and I left Wongonyi feeling inspired yet challenged: him pondering the difficulties of life so cut off from anything outside or “modern”, me bemoaning the fact that the world we usually inhabit has lost the communal aspect of life and regard for nature that is simply required for survival in such an environment. Each other human is worthy of time and respect, and is valued if only because of being few humans so dependent on each other. But aren’t we all, in fact, dependent in this way – only we’re able to pretend otherwise? Aren’t we also at nature’s mercy for survival, only we offhandedly destroy it daily? It might be romanticism, but seeing only the poverty and dire challenges confronting these villages is also nearsighted, though that is the typical language found (abject poverty, desperation, disease, hunger). It’s the same language used to characterize Kibera, the image that can hurt more than help. Blanket characterization of any way of life as either piteous or righteous is far too facile. I only hope that our contributions to Wongonyi and Mwatate can help them to plan and advocate for what they want, and as always, to know that their knowledge and views are important and should be shared. If we ever hope to find balance on this planet, it’s their stories even more than ours that needs to be heard. Whose reality counts? Can we offer something useful – whether technology or simply the knowledge that they now count, they are visible, they have this map, or these stories, and they can slowly impact the course of life in Mwatate? It is in such small-scale development work where we encounter what I consider to be the central dilemma of the issue at hand. Here we are, from the outside, doing something we think will “help” someone else. How can we ever know what impact we will have? Are the things we bring from our own culture – like technology – a blessing or a curse here? The only way out of the paradox, is to learn, listen, and to bring your humanity. Is there any other way than to offer something you believe in, while honoring the small ingenuities or qualities you encounter in the other? Otherwise, you either continue dependency cycles or simply are seen as somehow better and wiser simply by merit of your apparent power and wealth. Why do we so often hide the fact under a veneer of “professionalism” that we are interested in benefiting too – that all is not perfect in our world, either, and we are there because we want to enjoy ourselves and learn, not from pity. We are equals, merely sharing skills – we happen to have the ear of the powerful, and some tools that might help bridge the gap. What skills can they share in return? I would love to know how to manage a small farm or even kitchen garden. I’m hoping to get my shamba started as soon as someone can teach me.
It has been an eventful couple of weeks here in Nairobi picking up where we left off with Map Kibera. I think we’ve finally proven that we meant it when we told everyone we’d return – how often have such promises been broken in Kibera? Now, we’re looking more broadly at what it takes to empower people to create, share and use information (maps, data, news reports, personal accounts) about their community to gain greater understanding, spark change and influence policymakers. We’re here for another six months in part to work toward the elusive, coveted goal: sustainability.
A lot has happened since December. We have several different potential partnerships on the horizon – organizations and businesses that want to adopt community mapping in their own programs, and others that want to work directly with the mapping group to collect more data within Kibera. The group has met in our absence and begun to think about how to constitute itself as an organization. This is the outcome we were hoping for.
But, first some plain facts: the mappers needs a lot more support in order to become self-sustaining, in terms of things like organizational know-how, partnership building, avenues for financing, and the most straightforward – improving their skills so they have a strong enough grasp to teach others. This is what we’re ultimately hoping will happen in other slum areas of Nairobi and/or elsewhere in Kenya.
We’re also preparing for a big “push” on community media support, meaning working with a team composed of lead local journalists (some of whom double as mappers) to make full use of the Ushahidi Kibera site, providing technology support (read: getting a website) for their respective publications, and ultimately forming a network of those who wish to collaborate and support each other to produce a truly representative picture of Kibera using new technology. We think that these citizen reporters in combination with the mappers are a formidable team, and at the forefront of new kinds of journalism in Kenya. There’s also room for more creative illustrations of the map including personal videos, stories, and photos. We think the map and related digital media can involve a lot of people in conversations about their vision and hopes for Kibera, and want to spend this time reaching out to as many different people as possible. We think that this way, folks on the ground will be able to influence and share with powerful actors like international organizations and government. This is an evolving vision, and we welcome your comments and thoughts – and always, your help.
We’re also going to work on creating better documentation and analysis of the project for publication and curriculum development, building up the Nairobi social technology and new media community of practice, and various tech projects such as printing the maps (a cartographical challenge).
We’ve also had some interesting visitors. Last week, Ory Okolloh, the Kenyan blogger and one of the founders of Ushahidi, came to Kibera with a Swiss documentary film crew in tow to meet some mappers and also the Kibera journalists who will be working on the Ushahidi site. We realized that she has something (well, probably many things) we lack – the ability to relate to the challenges of being a youth in Kenya: unrepresented by politicians and the media, unemployed, poorly educated, and generally ignored in decision-making, but with the responsibility to build the future of a nation and the strong desire to shape it for the better. Ory grew up near Kibera and started her blog as a way to express some of these frustrations, and she was keenly interested to hear how their encounter with technology had so far inspired the journalists and mappers (I, for one, learned that they were using their phones more often to access the net and particularly the ever-popular Facebook). I wanted her to stay and visit them every week just to inspire them to new visions of how all the work they’re doing can have an impact, and help them break through the barriers they’ve grown up with. It was clear to me that we’re trying to support a new paradigm of citizenship in a country where resignation and cynicism (if not resentment and anger) greets any mention of politics. Ory latched on to one mapper’s shy admission that she enjoyed the “celebrity” of getting attention for this project – such pride can transform into real community leadership and a sense of confidence and possibility. And she is the living example of that.
It’s official: we’re back in Kenya after more than a month visiting family in the US and having meetings and vacation in Europe.
Of course, while we were away, the largest natural disaster since the Asian tsunami took its toll on one small country in the Caribbean. So, as we begin to engage with the next steps of our work here in Kenya, we’re also thinking of the still urgent needs on the other side of the globe.
In fact, OpenStreetMap volunteers around the world have already been quite active making the digital map of Haiti more complete in order to aid relief workers. But now, we have been asked by Ushahidi and Google to consider what it might take to include mapping of Port-au-Prince slums in the response effort. As in Nairobi, these slums are not included in any map that’s been so far made available. Thinking of Map Kibera and our experiences here, how might these efforts be replicated in Port-au-Prince? This could help relief efforts reach into the slums and for the Ushahidi response, would help locate some of the reports and requests for help. It might ensure that slum dwellers are not neglected and have the same access to relief as others. In the long run, such a mapping exercise might bring more local control to the rebuilding process, providing a platform for advocacy for the residents of the informal areas and helping them to assess their own needs.
Of course, Kibera is not Cite Soleil, and we aren’t sure just how much more difficult a mapping exercise might be after a disaster this extreme – or even during normal times. Several years ago, I paid a brief visit to an informal settlement in Port-au-Prince where Haitian staff of the NGO I worked for were afraid to go to work due to insecurity, and the clinic was frequently closed. One thing we are sure of, and that’s the necessity of having local partners who work in the informal settlements and can quickly advise us of the need and feasibility of a mapping activity.
Our questions:
What are the current conditions in the slums? This is something I haven’t found out from the continual stream of media reports on the Haiti situation.
What are the possibilities of carrying out either a brief mapping in those areas highlighting landmarks and road names, for immediate use, or a long-term community mapping similar to Map Kibera?
Now that we’ve finished the initial training and mapping phase of the project, it’s time to look at where we’ll go from here. I have a particular passion for working with community and citizen journalists. Put that together with a map and you have an opportunity to actually locate where stories and events are taking place geographically.
In my view, the map is a way to represent visually the community’s knowledge about itself – it’s both factual and representative of the way this group of 13 wants the rest of the world to see Kibera. Good local journalism is the same, and ultimately we wish to support the kind of empowerment that comes from self-representation and local production of information. When a community becomes engaged in telling the story of who they are and reporting their own facts and their own news, a new kind of communication becomes possible.
If there’s one thing I’ve learned from working in Kibera, it’s that there is A LOT happening in this tightly packed city-within-a-city. As a journalist by nature (and sometimes profession) I get very excited about this. There are a few local organizations that produce community media – print, radio, video – with room for more. Kibera has a population estimated to be as high as one million – larger than many cities in the United States. So we’re now developing a project to put these existing streams of information together in one place on the web.
The entire time we’ve been here (and even before we arrived), I’ve been talking to everyone I can about local media in Kenya. We partnered with two NGOs who happen to work on media in Kibera. Carolina for Kibera (CFK)houses a small volunteer group known as Kibera Worldwide that uses Flip cameras to tell stories about Kibera. Kibera Community Development Agenda (KCODA) publishes the Kibera Journal, a monthly newspaper. We have now trained two journalists from the newspaper and one from local radio station Pamoja FM on mapping. The Flip camera group followed us throughout the mapping process, and I’ve been working most closely with them to create video portraits and interviews around Kibera to bring places on the map and issues of concern to light. They have also picked up some of the mapping skills along the way and produced a short film about the project.
We’ve begun working with Ushahidi to bring these different outlets together along with citizen reporting on events in Kibera. The purpose is not so much to report through the website to Kibera’s residents, who aren’t online most of the time; it’s to link together stories and facts from various community media to allow them to amplify their own coverage to the rest of Nairobi and the world. It’s to provide a shared platform that isn’t owned by any one of them. It’s to offer a way for ordinary residents to SMS reports into a channel that can be accessed by more than just one station or paper when an even occurs, and that can also be seen by authorities and police. It’s also because of a meeting I attended where Kibera’s community leaders met with journalists from Nairobi to discuss what they considered to be poor coverage – none of the positive things that they were doing made the news. The hard work on peace and reconciliation, economic improvement, democracy, health, you name it, went unrecognized. This is a complaint I’ve heard echoed everywhere while working in the community. It became clear that local media in Kibera was missing a link to the mainstream media, but also that they wanted to directly represent themselves – to shout louder.
In fact, sometimes the question about benefit to those who aren’t online misses the point. The digital divide is a fact and needs to be addressed, but when it comes to community information there is also a need for expression outward and collaboration within Kibera. Something like the Kibera Journal or Pamoja FM allows Kibera to talk to itself, while putting facts and stories online allows it to speak to the rest of the world (including wired Nairobi, politicians, national press). Our job, now, is to make sure the world is listening. A place of that size cannot be ignored, but it can and has been spoken on behalf of. This is where I think technology can serve even the poorest and enable them direct access to the eyes and ears of the powerful. It can also project their voices, so that those in power can no longer ignore them. A community with a voice is a community at peace.
We’re now on our second week out mapping Kibera. Our group of intrepid explorers has had two days of training, two days out mapping their neighborhood, and now two days in the computer lab uploading and editing their map data. They have been quite patient and dedicated to the task of learning new computer software, and we’ve pretty much brought the Sodnet offices to maximum computing capacity. Thankfully, we have five technical volunteers who are helping them learn the OpenStreetMap program, upload data, and scan in their paper maps.
We’ve now changed our schedule to accommodate the extra time – and focus — needed in the computer lab – spending one full day in the lab, then one full day in Kibera mapping and discussing our progress.
Here in the lab, we’ve found that computers are funny partners for those who weren’t brought up on Windows, much less Facebook (though we’re proudly starting a Facebook group!). There is the whole problem of click-and-drag, of click versus double-click, of opening and finding something in a web browser as opposed to a folder or flash drive, of typing web addresses precisely and passwords with proper capitalization (common practice is to flick on caps lock instead of shift). The use of a computer is not actually as intuitive as I had come to think. Certainly the keyboard, with its shift and control keys and illogical location of the letters, is not a straightforward tool. A few times, I have been reminded of how I painstakingly studied typing in grade school via a little computer program called Mavis Beacon Teaches Typing. Thanks Mavis! Wish I had a copy for our participants now.
But the fact is, after just three days in the lab and two days in the field, we have quite an impressive amount of marks on the Kibera map. It’s starting to not only resemble other urban areas with churches, schools, and public toilets marked in abundance, but also to reveal the astounding density of the place. After the second day out mapping, we took just five of the villages and had the mappers tally the features they recorded. Here’s the impressive list they made:
I spent Friday morning walking around the village of Raila with Regynnah, one of the mappers, tripping up the dirt pathways alongside trenches filled with running waste water, past small kiosks selling soda and cell phone top-up cards and toddlers chanting in unison “how-are-you!” We stopped at a few pre-primary schools – they seem abundant – and were treated to a little dance and song at one of them.
We toured a toilet facility under construction, and marked an AIDS clinic, chapatti shop, a cobbler. The sheer amount of potential landmarks led me to wonder what everyone had decided was important to map, and we came to a kind of consensus after making that list on the whiteboard. Then underlined features are essential to map, the rest are up to individual discretion.
So the next challenge on our plate is to help build bridges to make use of the information and demonstrate where it fits in to the bigger picture. We’re bringing in various speakers to Kibera to share some of the possibilities for this kind of mapping and introduce the participants to the wider world of technology. So I would say our ambitions are high – it’s a matter of not only teaching computer skills but envisioning the mappers as eventual full participants in the global wired world.
