Although the Ground Truthing of the shapefile which was sent to us by AAAS was done in three days (read more here and here), fixing the shapefile itself took a bit longer. In the process, we created three shapefiles.
The main shapefile contained the closest resemblance to the situation on the ground. Our teams have checked and corrected on the ground the shapes of most of the buildings, written down the types of the buildings, and classified them. From this exercise, 4 attributes were added:
a) Type means the type of building, which is either Brick, Corrugated Iron Sheet, or Wood Stalls
b) Name is name of the building (if it has a name)
Type of buildings
c) Designated is the designated use of the building, describing what the building is used for. It can be many things, including: school, house, business (like bar, cyber cafe, garage, hardware shop, market place, etc.), church, toilet, etc.
Designated use of the buildings
d) Action is what kind of action was carried out on the shape of the building – there are two options: 1) Added if the building was missing and was added and 2) Modified if the building was either moved, merged, or in any other was modified
Corrugated iron sheet buildings on top of brick buildings
The third shapefile contains deleted shapes (buildings) because they are either not there, are incorrect (there are many shapes representing one building), or don’t represent permanent structures (like temporary tents in the Chief’s camp).
Deleted objects
Our teams have collected around 750 points in the first run of data collection and are now it the second phase of detailed Water and Sanitation data collection. The idea is to eventually attach the points they collect to building extraction for the whole of Mathare.
Our teams have started with comprehensive thematic mapping of Water and Sanitation. Most of the things that we set out to map, such as water points and toilets, were pretty straightforward, but there were also some unknowns – like open defecation areas.
What is an open defecation area (ODA)? This is an area which is used by people to relieve themselves where there aren’t enough toilets for all or where people can’t afford to pay to use the toilet (more about it here). These areas are usually also dumping sites for “flying toilets†and other garbage, but mostly for excrement. People use them either early in the morning or late at night so others can’t see them.
Open defecation area
We didn’t realize that this is such a big problem until we saw it with our own eyes. They are a huge health risk because they are usually situated in the middle of a very populated area and it is not an uncommon sight to see children playing near or even on top of them. They are also an indicator that something is terribly wrong with sanitation (especially toilets) in the slum.
So how do we map these areas? The first idea was to stand in the middle of the area and collect a point. We dismissed the idea as soon as we saw the expanse and the state of these areas. Most of our mappers come in flip flops and aren’t well equipped to walk there. So we decided we’re going to take a point near the ODAs, later search for the point with the help of satellite imagery and digitize the area. This way we’ll learn different techniques in mapping, get the exact area (in square meters) of all of the ODAs and therefore the whole area in Mathare which is covered by them.
This is a fairly short and quick update on video in Mathare and even shorter in Kibera.
One of our ideas at the beginning of the video program in Mathare was that video guys would go on the field with mappers and collect what they are doing. We thought this would be important for several reasons:
it would create harmony between different groups (mappers and video)
this way we would document every step of the process and thus create awareness of the project which could later be used for attracting funders, etc.
with public screenings, we could show the community what we’re up to
We then decided that mappers and video teams together would present too big of a group walking around Mathare and would raise too much attention so we dropped the case. Now that the community is aware of our presence, this is again something we can think about.
From the start we always presented all the programs as one and the same thing – getting the info about Mathare out there, with all means possible. When talking about video and unity, the current situation in Mathare is that we have a group of around 20 video guys, many of them also community bloggers and a part of our mapping program, and who want to be involved with Voice as well, because they see all three programs as one.
How we conduct the trainings in Mathare:
In Mathare we’ve partnered with Nathaniel Canuel who has created a very interesting training program with which he is trying to inspire the group to explore their individual talents. For example, to stir their imagination he created a collage of videos from some of the world’s most famous films (Apocalypse Now, The Godfather, etc) – the theme was, “the marriage of picture and sound.” He also showed them several videos which were made in Kenya and some of his own work. After and during they had discussions about different camera angles, sounds, effects, etc.
My understanding from the meetings and trainings is that the participants in the video program want to explore the potential of video. They want to use it to showcase the stories from Mathare, the stories of their friends, relatives, the way of living, etc., and they want to do it in an interesting way.
The trainings usually go on like this:
Nathaniel shocks them with all different artsy stuff
They hold discussions about things they’ve just seen
They discuss different issues in Mathare and how much work a certain issue would need
They pick issues and talk in detail about how they will go about it (Nathaniel is guiding them and asking them a lot of hard questions)
They take footage and edit
To stir their imagination and make video interesting to the participants and the people watching it, we decided (together with the participants) to do a game or a competition, where very abstract titles will be chosen and then the group will make videos to go along with those titles (this will be a fun addition to the “serious” work they are doing). The videos will be presented at public screenings where the community will decide the winner. We figured people will want to see these videos, and it’s also a way to have some fun. If I quote Jeff: “People here are tired of all the bad and depressing stories, it’s about time we do something different!”
These are just some of the quick updates on how things are going. You can see the first videos from Mathare here and also Kibera News Network is back on track with new videos here.
Oh… The first story which came out of “let’s have some fun†is: Welcome to a Dog’s World by Joe Gatecha from Kibera News Network.
