KNN Diary: Living With The Risk of Mudslide In Kibera

by: May 17th, 2012 comments: 0

Living With The Risk of Mudslide In Kibera

Mudslides are not new in Kibera, we have had several cases and some still continue to happen not just in Kibera but throughout the country,  but what we always fail to understand is that no one always seems to learn a lesson from the previous pandemics,

In October 2010, KNN did a story of a Man who lost his life along the railway line after mud slid to cover him and his house.   http://youtu.be/RgNgUboKUhQ

We have had several cases there after but walking around Kibera, one is still able to see the large number of houses still at risk, with their occupants oblivious of the situation they are in.

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While walking with Joe Gathecha, a fellow Kibera News Network member, we came across a house that had been carried away after a mudslide, but what caught our attention was the still occupied next door.

“I’m just waiting for my house to fall too, I don’t have anywhere else to go to, our Landlord has also refused to repair the houses for us,”

“Don’t you think the house will fall on you someday, may be at night and leave you with injuries?” Joe asks her.

“ but where can I go now? What can I do? Do you want to help me? Go ahead then… get me a house and I’ll move.” She tells Joe.

This and so many other unreported cases just exposes the risk that many Kibera residents face, most of who blame it on local leaders reluctance to take action and have them secure. But who exactly is to blame, especially after the time bombs have exploded and we have casualties.

“ Most of these residents don’t pay house rents as required, so the house owners are reluctant to renovate the houses for them, they just let it be in the hope the dangers and risks will drive the occupants away, or the incidents, that is when they finally occur.” Says one such house owner when we interviewed Him.

As we covered this story, we could see many other houses standing at a very risky places, it is only a matter of time before they all come tumbling down. but who exactly is to blame?

Perhaps the government should come in and forcefully evict them from danger prone areas.

 

— Steve Banner

Originally published at: http://stevebanner32.wordpress.com/2012/05/17/living-with-the-risk-of-mudslide-in-kibera/

The Nairobi Declaration Recognizes Map Kibera’s Approach to Research

by: April 18th, 2012 comments: 0

Last month, mapper Mildred represented Map Kibera at the Youth 21 Global Youth Leadership Forum. The result of the Forum is the Nairobi Declaration, recommendations from youth to make global governance process inclusive and accountable to young people. The section on research emphasizes the importance of youth led, resident led, community based information, and highlights Map Kibera.

Research is a disciplined form of investigating what happens in communities and with the people who live there, including young people. Research may marginalize certain groups, especially the vulnerable or excluded. But, research also has the potential to give voice to the voiceless and make visible the
invisible.

A good example of youth research is the mapping exercise by youth living in the slum of Kibera who used modern technology to conduct research about their community. Through their research, they identified medical clinics and other resources in their community. Their research has made their
community visible and showed it as a place of many assets and not just challenges. Building on the local strengths identified, this research can be used to negotiate resources, advocate for their needs, and generate their own strategies for change.

For Mildred, the experience exposed her to the challenges on possibilities of youth, on a global scale.

We also had discussion on challenges to youth livelihoods which came out to be a stabstantial number of young people reside in areas in which poverty constitutes a major challenge .Another defining factor was that youth are very often concentrated in urban areas with limited access to basic social services. It also came to my notice that Employment was also one of the problems that bring challenges in life of young people.

After all this discussion it came to my notice that youth have particularly been the vulnerable group for a long time in the society. They at the same time, hold the potential for the future because young people are not as mired in the prejudice and are better at moving ahead in terms of confronting vices such as corruption, which the elderly on the other hand may consider inevitable. Further young people have ideas and vision and it is from their name that the leaders and politicians of tomorrow will step forward. However poverty and inequality have remained a major hindrance for the youth to unleash their potential.

Out of the UN general secretary youth engagement report will be of help to the young people and it will give them hope towards there vision and ambition. It will also give them courage to unleash their potential if only it happens. It was a nice experience to me as a youth in the community of Kibera. Being that my desire is to impact the community it will really be of help.

Map Kibera is a youth-led organization. The energy and willingness to experiment with the new and unknown are key to our work. We appreciate the opportunity to represent at this forum, and we hope Map Kibera can continue to participate in the global dialogue on the position and potential of youth.

KNN Diary: Video Contest

by: April 5th, 2012 comments: 0

“Hello!

Thank you for sending in the link on time and tagging it correctly. I just watched the video – love the narration and the background music. However the music and the sound suddenly goes off in the middle, and as per the submission guidelines the video cannot be longer than 10 mins . Please cut down on the video length, other participants also asked me if they can make a 13-15 minute video – and I had to say no.

Simply edit those segments, looking forward to your updated video by tomorrow night.

Nilofar.

 

This is a message we get from Nilofar after hurriedly submitting our video “From Wild To Digital World ” for the Digital Natives video contest.

The message was referred to John Musila, one of the KNN members that we had suggested to be the contact person during this contest. The message was demoralizing as time was not on our side.

We had one month to work on the video but were still busy doing some other things, though we registered in time. The contest required us to first write a proposal elaborating on what our video will be all about after reading and choosing a topic from one of the four books available online. We did all that and later got an email that our proposal was approved so we qualified and could go ahead and make a video that would be enrolled for competition.

It was only two days left to the deadline of submission of the videos, we had hardly started working on it, the previous two days we were very busy filming the Butterfly Works Project, so we were done and were now ready to work on this DN video before the deadline ends, only to realize that the footage we had saved on the hard disk for the video could not be used anymore, the hard drive had crashed, so we were stuck.

How will we start filming everything again and edit within the short time remaining? we thought, at some point we were stranded, but we could not afford to let this chance go, come on, we must do something, we all had the same spirit.

“Call Kepha, the Director, to help us fix the hard disk” someone suggested, yes I called Kepha, but this would take sometime before it is fixed and we will miss out the chance.

Still standing there inside Map Kibera Trust Office, looking at each other in a confused mode,

“Hey guys lets go and get new footage, we can’t sit here and wait for Kepha”  I said, then we quickly divided ourselves, Joe and Eddie were going to get footage of the Ngong forest and some shots of schools and hospitals, while Jacob and I were taking Mildred out to the field for mapping interviews and some more cutaways, Steve and John would remain back for editing, and off we went.

Back to the office we noticed that we needed an interview from a member of Voice of Kibera to make our story complete, luckily enough Sande appeared then we quickly set him up for an interview which was successful. The program was so tight that we had to do everything the same day, because the following day was the deadline, we then took Steve down to the railway line to let him talk about KNN, the tripod was so disappointing but we managed with it then rushed back to the office, now I was to go outside with Jacob to do the narration as Steve was previewing the shots we had taken so far, as we wait the shots from Joe and Eddie.

Time check 2pm Joe and Eddie brought the footage and editing started, by 8pm Steve was done, the video was ready for consumption, so we left it uploading overnight. Coming to the office very early the following morning, to check if our video was uploaded, I met a big message on the  screen,  “sorry the upload was interrupted due to internet interruption” I had to start afresh. The uploading process also became a nightmare, it could get up to 82% then stops there, but after trying three times without success, we almost gave up, then we decided to use a different computer which finally worked.

We were happy after sending the link to the DN, little did we know that we still had a lot to correct, the message in the first paragraph surprised us, we went back to the time line corrected the video and resent it, then quickly got a response from Nilofar that it was better now and that he loved it.

We were now relieved, I personally felt as if I had just walked out from a prison cell, I was a free man again after a very busy working week.

Before we submitted the video we called Kepha to view it and comment, “this is a winning stuff” is all he said, we were happy considering how hurriedly we worked on it, we had high hopes of winning, we mobilized our friends on Facebook and Twitter to vote for our video which they cooperatively did, the votes from the public alone were not going to determine the winner, there was a panel of judges to also watch and decide the top two winners.

Am happily writing this blog after the announcement that we were the top position, with over 10000 votes, followed closely by Marie a lady from USA with 9000 votes.

We have won a prize of 500 EUROS, I must say thanks a lot to everyone that helped us make it through, those who voted, those we interviewed the Digital Natives Staff, the Jury, all KNN members for a wonderful cooperation and Map Kibera Trust at large for the this great platform to exercise our skills.

By  Joshua Ogure,

KNN Coordinator

 

 

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