As told by Sean Hewens:

Citizen Archivist in action

The bus arrives at 10:30 and we aren’t surprised. In fact, it gives us plenty of time to prepare our bags for tomorrow’s departure for western Kenya. Along the way, I ask SIDERAC to stop at the local Nakumat, the chain of giant Kenyan supermarkets, so that I can purchase Safaricom credit for use in the Internet modem that we’re leaving at the SIDERAC site. For those of you who haven’t been to Africa in the last few years, the use of these wireless internet modems have really taken off. They look like a USB flash drive and contain a SIM card just like in a cell phone. At the Nakumat, I’m purchasing prepaid credit (KSH 2000 worth) that can be used either in my cell phone or to browse the Internet on a computer via the USB modem. Credit is entered into either the phone or the modem by scratching off the back of the card (much like a lottery ticket) and entering the 14-digit code into either the phone or computer, respectively. Phone calls end up being pretty cheap either domestically or back to the States. The Internet remains pretty expensive and one has to be very very careful about what exactly you’re downloading as the bandwidth (and your KSH 2000) can get eaten up very fast. The massive aisles of the Nakumat are mostly full of affluent Kenyans on this Wednesday morning and present a fabulous microcosm for the disparity of wealth in this country as, ten minutes later, we find ourselves back in the claustrophobic and bustling alleys of Kibera.

One of our Citizen Archivists poses on a busy street

Day 3 in Kibera is much like the previous two days. Team Smallbean holds the fort as the students head out into the neighborhood to conduct their final interviews. All three groups are enthusiastic and, at least two of the groups are out the door before we have a chance to fully discuss the issue of written vs. oral waivers with them. While they’re gone, I work to download Microsoft Movie Maker, a program that will allow the Kibera students to combine photos, video, and audio files into five or ten minute movie clips, much like Team Smallbean has done to present summaries of the various interviews that we did in Tanzania back in February. SInce Ray and Steve are advanced enough on the basics of uploading and organizing all of the data collected, it makes a lot of sense to get them going on the more advanced aspects of processing and displaying Citizen Archivist Project data. The bad news is that in order to download the free moviemaker from Microsoft, I’m also forced to download a whole suite of others Windows Live programs that I don’t need at all. When dealing with very limited bandwidth and a pricing plan that costs quite a bit for every MB I download, this is definitely annoying. Note to Microsoft, packaging your really cool software with a whole bunch of programs that I don’t need (such as the always annoying Windows Messenger) does not make for a very happy customer in limited bandwidth locations such as Kenya.

The students return from their interviews and we begin the process of winding down the training in Kibera. With no assistance from us, Ray and Steve lead the uploading of interview data to the computers. Other members of the class are catching on more slowly, but I’m confident that we are leaving things in good shape. Albanus will serve as the long-term volunteer for the next five weeks and since he’s at the SIDERAC location each day this seems like a good arrangement. Priyanka conducts her exit interviews of the students just like in EWaus. This is marked by some excitement. As the interviews are occurring, a local resident of Kibera enters the center and asks for money. Apparently he had assisted the SIDERAC van in turning around in the tight alley below (without being asked and with the SIDERAC driver who drives the van to the same location every workday almost certainly not needing any assistance) and now wanted some money for his services. Most of the conversation occurs in Swahili, but no one from SIDERAC is providing him with money. He is eventually asked to leave and refuses. At this time, Sanchez (aka Samuel), one of our Citizen Archivists from Kibera and a pretty big dude, steps in and forcefully escorts the unhappy parking assistant from the center. It’s all somewhat peaceful until the parking assistant attempts to throw a punch at Sanchez, directly behind the location in the hallway where Priyanka is doing her filming. Luckily no one is injured and the man is finally ejected from the building. Sanchez the enforcer returns to SIDERAC just in time to be interviewed by Priyanka.

Kibera class picture

The final activity is the class photo. For the second location in a row, a completely random person arrives for the group photo and steps into the shot. Now for both EWaus and Kibera, we have class photos plus one, which is pretty funny and sure to raise havoc with the official Smallbean historians ten or twenty years from now. We say goodbye to the students and are back in the SIDERAC van for the campsite. One final note- we decided to leave our single Flip video camera with the Kibera site. For those who haven’t seen one, the Flip camera is amazingly compact and records HD video. They also have the benefit of looking more like cell-phones than cameras and are perfect for recording certain urban environments where folks are perhaps not as enthusiastic as they could be about the Citizen Archivist Project. Unfortunately the Smallbean budget simply didn’t allow for a Flip camera at each site, and this Flip was actually purchased to document the Tanzania CAP back in February. We decide to donate the Flip camera to the Kibera CAP and cross our fingers for great results. In fact, that pretty much summarizes the Kibera site in general. More so than any other site, I have no idea what to expect from the Citizen Archivist Project in Kibera when we begin to collect the data in another five weeks. In the near term, we are off to Busia and western Kenya at the crack of dawn tomorrow.