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Day One in Busia: The Citizen Archivist Project is More Welcomed than Ever
July 28, 2010 - 11:55am — intern1
As told by Sean Hewens:
A Busia local
Trucks along the road
The first things that strike me as we roll into town are the trucks. There are hundreds and hundreds of them, all lined up on the left side of the road and waiting to cross the border into Uganda. 80% are petroleum trucks stamped with “transport goods” on the side of their tanks. As we move slowly through town, dodging hundreds and hundreds of bicycle taxis streaming in both directions, the line of trucks keeps going for, we are later told, 5 kilometers on an average day. At the hotel we dump our bags and head off to meet Jimmy at his Internet shop. He’s friendly and very dapperly dressed. We eat at a local Kenyan place. I receive a “get out of jail” free card due to my vegetarian status and have chapatti and greens. The rest of team Smallbean samples both liver and intestines, which don’t seem to go down very smooth (Jimmy has no such problems). After lunch, Jimmy shows us the site of the new library, right now just an empty field, but apparently owing to a series of land disputes and typical Kenyan paperwork, just to obtain a title on the land has taken several years and is definitely a victory. The new library will break ground later this year and are all very excited.
We return to the hotel and are surprised by the arrival of Lies and Maruca, two Belgian friends of mine from back in the day. Lies and I were coworkers at the United Nations in late 2008 and Maruca is a teacher, both of whom I traveled with for about 10 days at the tail end of a previous trip to Africa. They are in Uganda randomly for the month and have traveled to Busia to assist in teaching the MobileCAP. And just after their arrival, Maria arrives to welcome us. She is sixty and a retired government employee of some sort. She now operates a banana farm with her husband, who is a very young 87 years of age and is a retired economist who held high positions both in Kenya and the East African Union. Maria is a barrel of energy. She is shortly joined by Geoffrey, the secretary of the library association. We sit down to a very nice dinner on the Blue York veranda, a location where we will spend many of our evenings over the coming days. It’s very clear from the outset that Maria and Geoffrey have done their homework on the Citizen Archivist Project. Both are full of scores of ideas about who should be interviewed and how the project should go about documenting Busia. Maria is very firm that such a project will definitely take longer than the five weeks of the scheduled pilot. With a broad smile, I explain that this is absolutely OK and that we very much hope that the Citizen Archivist Project in Busia extends well beyond just five weeks and becomes a permanent feature in the new library. Dinner moves along and the evening comes to an end, with all of us exhausted after waking at 5:00am to reach Busia.
Group shot outside the Busia Municipal Building
We awake rested and ready for class. We walk to what appears to be the Busia municipal building where Maria has reserved a conference room for the training. We arrive at 10:00am. The rest of the class is rather slow in arriving, with the first coming through the door at approximately 10:30 and most folks arriving by 11:00. The class is very full! Unlike our other sites which were exclusively students under the age of 30, Busia has a total of approximately 15 students ranging in age from Maria and the meze, both of whom are 60 older, down to Joseph, Edna and Esther, the librarians who appear to be in their early or mid-20’s. Originally, the setup in Busia had been for a handful of Citizen Archivists and students to participate in the class, perhaps 6 at the most. As the training drew closer, and the enthusiasm in Busia grew, the class acquired “observers,” folks affiliated with the library project in Busia who would attend the class to learn, but not to participate. As expected, the observers are very enthusiastic and keen on participating in the class as well. Luckily we have five volunteers and a hodgepodge of cameras and recorders to supplement the MobileCAP training materials (which were intended for a much smaller class size). The Busia enthusiasm is amazing, but it’s also a little exhausting from a logistical perspective!
Our diverse array of volunteers and participants
A couple of differences from the other two sites quickly become apparent in Busia. In EWaus we had George and Leboo, the Nairobi University students home for the summer whom were quite proficient at computers and more than happy to teach the others in the class. In Kibera we had Ray and Steve, both of whom served the same purpose. In both sites, we were certain, that, if all else failed, these four individuals knew enough about computers to ensure that data was being uploaded, processed and stored properly on the computers. It was a great feeling and made our job much easier. In Busia, it’s a bit more of a challenge. Although we have Jimmy and his friend Wycliffe (a computer science major!) attending portions of the training, they are much more involved as personal support and not as intimately involved in the Citizen Archivist Project. Likewise, we have Carson, an American living in Busia for two years who will serve as the long-term volunteer for the site. Unfortunately, she’s traveling for the week of the training here in Busia. As a result, we have a room full of enormously excited and enthusiastic Citizen Archivists, but it’s absolutely imperative that we get down to brass tacks and make sure that these 15 wonderful students understand the basics of the computer by the end of the training. If the Busia class can be criticized (and let me just say that I love these guys!) it’s that they have thought about the project so thoroughly and are so enthusiastic that they sometimes get lost in the details of who to interview and what questions to ask etc., that they lose sight of the absolute importance of learning the basic computer skills that will make for a successful Citizen Archivist Project in Busia. I am confident these skills will come in time.
Practice interviews
After teaching the basic camera and interviewing skills in the morning and early afternoon of the first day of training, it’s time to brainstorm questions for the scavenger hunt. Let me just say that this exercise took approximately 20 to 30 minutes at both EWaus and Kibera. Again, the purpose is to choose 10 relatively simple but representative people / sites / customs / traditions / places from the town and document them using both the camera and the recorders. Upon returning to the classroom, it provides the students with their first chance to jump into the computers and practice the uploading and organization of data themselves. But, before any of this can happen, we have to come up with the scavenger hunt clues. In Busia, this results in a wildly entertaining back and forth discussion that takes close to two hours. Suggestions for clues include, locating someone smuggling goods across the Kenya - Uganda border. Or, finding a corrupt government official that allegedly works at an office nearby and asking him some questions about his job. Or, walking to a local recording studio that just opened in town (the first of its kind) and interviewing the owner and recording some live performances. The list goes on and it’s clear that everyone in the group is swinging for the fences. What a funny group. So ambitious and so enthusiastic to truly record what it means to live in Busia in 2010. Eventually we whittle down the clues to what can reasonably be accomplished tomorrow morning and get ready to call it a day.
"Yes" voters in their green shirts
One last note, tomorrow there is a political rally in town. As some of you might know, there is a hugely important constitutional referendum in Kenya on August 4th. The vote is very simple. “Yes” or “ No” for the new constitution. So far, almost everyone we’ve met has been very pro-“Yes” for the new constitution, but that doesn’t mean that there aren’t strong “No” voters around the country. After the violence that followed the election violence in 2007, many people are wary that some of the same violence will occur this time around. Tomorrow, there will be a “Yes” rally in Busia and, much like the Masai market day in EWaus, this will be a fabulous opportunity for the students to use their new skills as Citizen Archivists to document a very cool event in town. We make plans accordingly and somehow manage to get everyone out of the conference room and the training ended by 6:30pm. Have I mentioned that I love Busia but it’s absolutely exhausting?
Last Day in Kibera
July 27, 2010 - 4:14pm — intern1As 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.
Kibera- Day Two
July 27, 2010 - 2:22pm — intern1As told by Sean Hewens:
Citizen Archivists in front of SIDAREC Community Center
Day 2 in Kibera starts much like day 1 in Kibera, with the SIDERAC shuttle arriving at 10:30 instead of 9:00. We are a bit wiser to the trick this time, however, and manage to plan our morning accordingly. Arriving at the SIDERAC community center in Kibera, we have added a new student to the mix, bringing the class to six people, which is where it will remain for the remainder of the training. The first training activity of the day is the Scavenger Hunt. We brainstorm ten photo and interview opportunities from the surrounding neighborhood and then the students are off, as Team Smallbean remains behind.
Kibera Movie Theater
When the students return, it’s much of the same conversation from the day before about how many folks in the neighborhood were less than cooperative, and how in a couple of instances, the students were forced to put away the cameras to avoid having them taken or smashed by unhappy residents. But what is also evident, however, is that our students are fine Citizen Archivists, even in slightly adverse conditions. Their photos are well composed, the brief interviews they conduct as part of the scavenger hunt are numerous and diverse. And best of all, what begins to emerge from the photos and interviews is another side of Kibera. Not the hostile “we don’t want you taking our photo” side, but a functioning and vibrant economy in the midst of Kibera, a side that isn’t so much hidden, but often lost in the chaos (at least to my neophyte eyes). The students conduct interviews of the man who runs the local movie theatre, which is a large TV in front of a small auditorium, with wooden benches as seats, expertly slanting upward toward the back of the auditorium. The movies are recent DVDs and cost either 10 Schillings or 20 Schillings to watch. The students also return with photos and a brief interview of the local barber, the baker, the fishmonger, and many others. The photos are really cool and make me confident that the Citizen Archivist Project can be successful in Kibera for five weeks and beyond.
Oral history interview of a local barber
The students work to upload their photos, video and audio footage to the computer. Similar to EWaus, a divide emerges in the class, with Steve and Ray having already mastered the fickle art of electronic organization of the data, even taking the lead in merging all of the various data we collect.
Interview at a fish stand
In the afternoon we begin preparing questions for tomorrow’s final oral history interviews. Unlike in EWaus, where the students essentially wandered into the Masai market and chose folks to interview largely at random (because just about everyone was that cooperative), the Kibera students are very careful and methodical in who they will interview on day three. Additionally, it becomes clear that Albanus (the SIDERAC coordinator participating in the training) thinks of the Citizen Archivist Project as a journalistic enterprise, encouraging students to choose interview subjects and then develop angles for their questioning that will make the interview compelling.
A young interviewee looks skeptical
Another interesting point that comes out during the interview prep is the issue of questions relating to tribes. Thus far my experience in Tanzania and Kenya has been that almost everyone you meet is both proud and happy to talk about the tribe from which they come. Additionally, the tribal dialect spoken by different Kenyans in different areas of the country shares the name of the tribe that speaks the language. So the Masai speak Masai, or Ki Ma as it’s called. The Luo (Barack Obama’s father’s tribe) tribe speaks Luo. The Luya speak Luya, etc. As everyone reading this blog hopefully knows, a huge part of the Citizen Archivist Project in Kenya is to collect oral history interviews in the various tribal dialects present at the sites where we are conducting the MobileCAP. Smallbean spent a lot of time before we left learning about the 42 tribes currently present in Kenya, where they are generally located in the country, and which of the tribal dialects are more endangered than others. So questions about the tribal background of interview subjects are both part of the core framework of Kenyan society and darn important for the MobileCAP initiative.
Getting back to Kibera- the seat of much of the worst post-election violence that occurred in 2007, and the location where almost all of the youth population (defined as anyone under the age of 35 or so) speak Shang (a mix of mostly Swahili, with lesser amounts of English and other tribal dialects thrown in), questions about tribe affiliation can be a bit stickier. It’s not so much that people are sensitive about the tribe that they belong to, but questions along the line of “what makes your tribe distinct from other tribes”, or “can you provide the history of your tribe”, or even, “can you talk about some of the traditions and celebrations that are unique to your tribe”, could be taken the wrong way. Finally, it’s worth noting that with the August 4th Constitutional referendum quickly approaching in Kenya, and with bits of the 2007 post-election violence potentially anticipated in places like Kibera, everyone agrees that too many questions on the issues of tribal affiliation could be a bad idea. We don’t come to any clear resolution on the issue except that the students will take the questioning on a case-by-case basis, depending on the interview subject and the situation.
Railroad Market
We’re shuttled back out of Kibera without incident and no large boulders blocking the road at the end of Day 2. Before boarding the bus, we walk approximately 30 minutes through the neighborhood, including a fascinating market along the railroad tracks. All of the stalls are pushed either right up against or actually on top of the railroad tracks. Shoppers walk down the middle of the tracks while browsing seller’s wares. What this means of course is that any time a train happens to come along, the market must be disassembled and pulled back from the tracks with lightning speed. The use of every square foot of potential real estate in Kibera is really amazing.
Day 1 in Kibera Brings New Ideas to Consider
July 23, 2010 - 4:15pm — intern1As told by Sean Hewens:
Back in Nairobi, our second CAP site is in Kibera, a slum located on the west side of Nairobi. We’ll be working with SIDAREC (Slums Information Development and Resource), a Kenyan based organization that operates community centers and libraries at three locations in Nairobi. In the weeks leading up to the Nairobi CAP, there has been much back and forth between Smallbean, Maria’s Libraries and SIDAREC regarding the project. Although all parties are excited for the project, SIDAREC has been voicing some genuine concerns regarding ownership of the data collected by the Citizen Archivist Project. In the end, we all sign a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) with all three parties obtaining rights to the data for noncommercial purposes. More on this later, but after three days on the ground in Kibera, I definitely begin to understand why SIDAREC is a bit difficult on the issue of intellectual property rights.
We are due to be picked up by SIDAREC from our campsite at 9:00AM. In fact, we are picked up much closer to 10:30. We meet Christine and Albanus (two SIDAREC employees who will be facilitating the training), and Ray and Steve, two students in the class (both are connected to SIDAREC, although it never becomes clear to me if they are employees or volunteers; either way, they are both very adept with computers and will become the stars of the class in terms of computer proficiency). The van is rolling and we are off for Kibera, located perhaps 20 minutes from our campsite and worlds away.
A horizon of overlapping metal roofs
Pictures do a better job of describing the neighborhood than words, but as we drive deeper into the neighborhood, I keep thinking that our van is going to become thoroughly wedged between two buildings or perhaps two guys with wheelbarrows or two ladies selling fish or a mass of children streaming everywhere or mostly anything else in the organized chaos streaming past inches or millimeters from the van. The neighborhood is amazingly dense, with metal shack built on top of metal shack, the entire effect magnified by the fact that Kibera is quite hilly, so coming over a rise, one sees metal siding and dust brown roofs slanting away for as far as the eye can see (which, in truth, is never very far, because generally another hill rises and blocks the horizon).
Cloudy Kibera
We arrive at the SIDAREC center, which is reached via a narrow walkway that cuts between two buildings and is lined by an open sewer on both sides, women cooking fish carcasses, and lots and lots of children in their ubiquitous and almost always brightly colored (although extremely dusty) uniforms. Inside the center, it’s cold and dark. They haven’t had electricity for several weeks owing to a dispute with a local gangster / entrepreneur who has apparently seized the neighborhood’s electricity and refuses to release it until some sort of bribe is paid. I don’t quite understand it, but we’ll be working on battery power in Kibera with our computers and recording equipment charged back at the campsite in the evenings. I arrived in Kibera unsure about whether it would be suitable for a Smallbean solar power system. After just a couple of minutes at the center, it’s clear that solar is not a viable option. This area of Nairobi is often cloudy. Additionally, there just isn’t anywhere to place the panels where they’ll be reasonably secure. The risks far outweigh the rewards. We are also told by Albanus and Christine that they are in the process of negotiating with a new electricity company and that they expect light in the next few days at the center. This sounds a bit like the booster tower in EWuas in terms of a couple of days stretching into a couple of weeks or months, but there isn’t much we can do about it. In the meantime after our training ends and the five-week project begins, SIDAREC will charge the electronic items at their headquarters (located in a different area of Nairobi with consistent electricity) in the evenings and bring the equipment fully charged each morning for the Citizen Archivists and librarians to use. I hope this system works. It’s certainly doable (as we establish during the three days of training), but takes a bit of planning ahead and dedication to sharing the devices in the evenings that I sincerely hope the administrators at SIDAREC follow through on.
We head upstairs to a classroom with decent light when we open the windows. The view is of the rooftops spreading into the distance. There is also thick metal fencing across the windows and I feel a bit like I’m in a cage. This feeling will spread a bit during the training, as I’ll explain. The room contains six old school computers donated by the US Embassy, which SIDAREC has been using to teach Microsoft Word, Excel and PowerPoint classes in the neighborhood. Unfortunately, ever since the power was turned off, the computer classes have also been on hold.
The Kibera CAP students
Our class in Kibera consists of six students-- Ray and Steve who we’ve already met, along with Chelsea, Dennis, Dickson, and Samuel. As things get started, the students are definitely much quieter than those in EWaus. Perhaps it’s the poor lighting in the room or the big city sophistication of the Nairobi folks, but they take a bit more time to warm up to us on the first morning of the training. Things lighten up as we take the cameras and recorders for a spin. Like the class in EWaus, they are quick learners with the cameras, grasping the rule of thirds, perspective and other aspects of our “How to Take a Photo Like a Professional” training darn quickly.
One of the students tests out a camera
Working through the lunch hour, the students are ready to take the cameras out into Kibera for a test run. Team Smallbean is left behind. As we quickly learn when the students return, the population in Kibera is reacting much differently to the Citizen Archivist Project than EWaus or Kwala or Brighton. It is explained that the population in the neighborhood has seen many NGOs active in the area, and most community members have the opinion that these NGOs take their pictures, exploit the glumness of the landscape for photo and fundraising opportunities, and then depart the scene. The class understands (both from our earlier discussion and the great lead up work done by Maria’s Libraries and SIDAREC) that the point of the Citizen Archivist Project is not to snap photos, collect oral histories, and run, but to set up a 21st Century library in the new SIDAREC community center which will collect and preserve the stories so obviously present in Kibera for future generations. Apparently our students have explained the Citizen Archivist Project to many of their potential subjects, and the answer is often, “But what’s in it for me? “. This obviously isn’t the whole neighborhood and we discover over the next three days that there are lots of people excited to tell their stories and participate in the project, but that Kibera is definitely a different environment than we had experienced previously.
One of Kibera's youngest residents
The initial student photos are quite good, although many are taken at sideways angles and with walls and doors popping up in the middle of the frame. It is explained that the students have resorted to some surreptitious methods for snapping photos, so as to avoid annoying the less enthusiastic members of the community. Not for the first time in the next three days, we are very happy with the first photo results from the Kibera CAP, but a little disappointed that we can’t be out in the neighborhood with the students. Kibera is safe enough to walk around during the day (which we do on the second day of the training), but throwing “wazungu” in with students taking pictures and conducting oral history interviews is apparently not a good idea. So, we remain in the SIDAREC center, behind the fenced windows. We also learn from the students that another issue in Kibera is permission forms. We aren’t talking oral history permission forms (which is another issue and something we’ve already thought about quite a bit at Smallbean) but, for example, waivers even to photograph students in the primary or secondary schools. One of our CAP students explains that he attempted to photograph a teacher in a classroom at the primary school next door and was first told he had to talk to the head teacher and then the headmaster. He was then told that he couldn’t photograph the teacher because he would likely capture some of the students, and before he could do that he needed permission slips from the parents of all 60 students in the class (A logistical nightmare and sort of silly in certain ways). After a discussion with Albanus from SIDAREC, it’s clear that issues like this can be avoided by conducting the project a bit more on the down low and working with those who are cooperative and avoiding those who aren’t, but again, wow, Kibera is a whole different ballgame from what we have experienced in other locations.
Day 1 comes to a close with a discussion of open and closed interview questions just like in EWaus. The students formulate questions and practice using the recorders as they interview each other. The class is definitely warming up and seems to be enjoying themselves (or at least outwardly showing it) more than they were in the morning. The day ends with a very late lunch, brought over from a local bakery that works with SIDAREC. The food is very good and we load back into the SIDAREC van with full stomachs. The road out of Kibera is a challenge, with our path blocked by literal sea of foot-high rocks covering the entire road. There are men with hammers wading amongst the boulders banging here and there and turning the very large rocks into pebbles. This seems like a task that will take days or weeks and, meanwhile, our path out of Kibera is blocked. Which shows what little I know, as our driver grabs a bit of momentum and launches us up and onto the field of boulders. Somehow we cross the rocky field without breaking an axel and emerge from Kibera some minutes later. We’re dropped off back at our campsite with promises from SIDAREC that they will be on time to pick us up the next morning. We trail back to our rooms, happy to have completed a day of teaching at the new location, but all a bit apprehensive about how the rest of the project will succeed in a neighborhood that isn’t as receptive to the Citizen Archivist Project idea.
Market Day In Elangata Wuas- Site 1 of Oral History Interviews
July 23, 2010 - 12:51pm — intern1
Unice Market
Masai herdsmen with their cattle
We head back to town from the borehole and the students split up into groups to do their first oral history interviews. We’ve discussed the matter of written consent with the class and left a stack of signed consents for interview subjects to sign. However, we’ve also discussed that in many cases a signed consent for a Masai person that can’t read nor write could be rather silly. In other cases, there are cultural differences that make the written consent not always workable. After a discussion with the class in which I explained that there could a chance that, down the line, some universities might not accept the oral histories into their archives without a signed consent from each subject, we decide that a recorded oral consent (along with a detailed explanation of the project, also on tape) will suffice in most cases. However, the final call will be up to the student interviewers.
Oral history interview of a Masai Herdsman
After a whirlwind tour of the Masai market, we return with approximately ten to twelve interviews. The students are learning and most of the interviews are brief, perhaps five to eight minutes in length on average. All of the interviews are in Ki Ma, the language spoken by the Masai. On the way back to the library, we stop for a tour of the village medical clinic. Priyanka, who is about to start medical school, gets the star tour from Leboo and several of the doctors and nurses at the clinic. Because it’s market day and so many folks have descended upon the town from the surrounding area, the clinic is mobbed. The doctor tells us that the clinic does ten times more business on Saturday market days than it does on weekdays. Conscious of the long lines and the sick people who need attention, we make our departure and head back to the library. It’s now the students’ turn to do the hard work, taking over the uploading and processing of the oral history interviews they’ve just completed. Definitely Leboo and George, and to a lesser extent the rest of the class, have grasped the use of iTunes and Windows as the means for organizing what we hope will be the large amounts of data collected in EWuas over the next five weeks.
Masai Woman
As the day winds down, Priyanka conducts exit interviews of the students so that we can see what they learned during the class. Unfortunately (and not surprisingly) the giant booster tower in town has not turned on during our days in EWaus, and we leave with promises to send along a modem toward the end of the month when the booster, fingers crossed, becomes operational. For now, we’ll have to rely on the stream of AfricaSOMA volunteers going back and forth from Nairobi to provide us with news. The class ends and we walk back to Mile 46 to catch a cab back to the hotel. First, there is a detour in the bar owned by George’s dad. It is full of Masai men drinking Tusker and talking loudly. Quite a scene. We all have Cokes and attempt to make conversation with a very enthusiastic Masai warrior who, through a complicated chain of hand gestures, makes it clear that he wants my name and phone number. I comply, although not holding my breath about when I might hear from my new bar friend.
We roll out of Mile 46 in the back of a pick-up truck loaded with approximately 25 people, no exaggeration. Somehow we make it back to Kudu Hills with no one falling off or under the truck. The evening passes uneventfully, marked by an extended lecture from Caro of AfricaSOMA on the history of the Masai, including such highlights as male circumcision and how the Masai fooled the British back in the day by sending only their least promising students into the world to be “educated”. Of course, we also hear lots more horrendous snake stories, including the one about the giant green snake in the tree above our heads that fell onto someone brushing their teeth in the very spot where we brush our teeth just a week or so earlier. Somehow we fall asleep.
Our cabdriver Sammy arrives only an hour late on Sunday morning and we’re heading back to Nairobi without too much difficulty. We pass a herd of camels and their Somali handlers on the way to the main road. This is quite unusual in cow-loving Masai territory and prompts an interesting and not always PC discussion between our cab driver and another Masai passenger (in English for our benefit) which reflects some pretty deep-seated animosity between the Kenyans in this area of the country and the Somalis, many of whom have come to Kenya to flee the now decades-long war. Back in Nairobi, we return to the Upper Hill campsite and then go to the mall to stock up on supplies and eat burritos. Kenya is a funny place.
More pictures from Unice Market:
A Masai woman
Oral history interview on the tracks
Belts anyone?
Oral history interview with a Masai herdsman
Up close and personal
Masai warrior with his Piki Piki
Elangata Wuas-- Day Two: As Told by Sean Hewens
July 21, 2010 - 2:01pm — intern1
Students and staff checking out one of the computers
The day begins with a brisk 7- kilometer walk from our hotel to the library. We are led by Nixon and John, two Masais from the community who know the paths we’re walking along, which is a good thing because Team Smallbean would have been very very lost after the first 500 meters. We arrive just a few minutes late for the start of the 9:30 class. All but one of the students have already arrived and are talking quietly in the library. It is always an excellent sign of a class’ enthusiasm if Kenyans are arriving early to anything. While Carrie and Priyanka work with the class to develop scavenger hunt clues to help our students practice their interviewing and photography skills, I get the solar system set up. I’m a little apprehensive in that if it fails, there are no second chances here in EWuas. There is no electricity for miles and miles around.
It’s go time for the solar system I’ve been tinkering with for the last two months. And....it works! Like a charm. I LOVE THE AFRICAN SUN! This is totally nerdy, but after spending months and months testing solar systems in Boston (in June and July mind you, definitely the best time to be testing anything solar in Boston) it is amazing to get the panels to Kenya and watch how well they work with the equatorial sun in the house! I arrange the panels outside the back of the library, with approximately 15 feet of wire extending inside the library through a window and connecting to the charge controller. I connect up a laptop and, bam, things are charging and we are ready to go. Again, I apologize for the nerdiness, but one can only test things so many times in Boston. It’s all about how it responds in the field and the initial results are very positive.
Computer set-up
Meanwhile, Priyanka and Carrie have finished with the scavenger hunt prep and the students are finally out exploring the world with their cameras and audio recorders. The library is suddenly quiet and Team Smallbean has a chance to catch its breath for a bit. The students begin trickling back after an hour or so and begin the uploading process to the computer. As I mentioned before, they are all very smart and, a couple of them have some excellent basic computer skills. Even better, they are happy to teach each other.
Smallbean's Photo-Tagging Software
After uploading the photos from the scavenger hunt, we turn to the Smallbean Photo-tagging software for the first time. For those who haven’t been following this blog, Smallbean worked with four amazing coders from the New England area to develop software that allows the participants in the CAP to visually tag the photos they take. Think Facebook, but in any language and offline in the middle of Masai Land with neither cell phone reception nor internet for miles around (I should add here, that a giant cell phone booster tower has been constructed in the exact center of Mile 46, the closest village to the library. The tower is very large and imposing and so far, not operating. Folks in the village expect it to be turned on “any day now”, but apparently this has been the case for the last month or so). The most popular feature of the Photo-tagging software is the audio feature to accompany the visual tags, which was added in the last week before we left Boston by Noah, our coder extraordinaire. So, take a picture of an older Masai woman cooking. Label the woman with a box and provide her name. Label the pot and call it “mandazi”. And then, using the audio-tagging software, provide the spoken pronunciation for the terms. It’s very cool and, best of all, the students have really taken to it.
Students trying out one of the cameras
The rest of the class trickles back from the scavenger hunt. For the most part, Team Smallbean sits back and lets them do their thing, uploading and teaching each other. What we’re really trying to emphasize is that the computer is very much like the library we’re working in, and the goal of the CAP is to ensure that the data we collect is organized on the computer in the same way that books are organized on shelves in a library. 5000 photos and 25 interviews in Ki Ma are pretty worthless to everyone if we can’t tell where one interview ends and another begins. The students seems to grasp this and are surprisingly excited to learn the sometimes hard-to-grasp intricacies of the Windows file system. And just a small shout-out here to Windows 7: As someone who switched to Mac a few years back, I must say that using Windows 7 for the first time with the Citizen Archivist Project has been very smooth (once I stripped the computers of most of the annoying programs that were creating incessant pop-ups which have a bad habit of scaring the bejesus out of first or second time computer users).
As the last activity of the day, we talk about tomorrow’s first oral history interviews. This conversation with the students goes really well and is made easier thanks to the guidance we’ve received from Professor Carpenter, a linguistics professor at Wellesley College who met with Team Smallbean prior to our departure. She advised us on the types of questions that we should be asking if we’re concerned with recording endangered languages that might not be around in another generation. Not only did she tell us really cool stuff to be thinking about in the questioning (perceptions of time; types of herbal and medicinal remedies used in the village, methods for describing colors), but she also provided suggestions to get people to use certain constructions of speech (ex: to get people to talk in the future tense, ask them to describe their hopes and dreams for their grandchildren; to get them to talk in the present tense, have them describe a terrifying experience). All of this research meshes really well with the data provided by the students in the class regarding the specifics of who in the village absolutely has to be interviewed to tell the full story that is EWuas. The day ends with plans to conduct our first live oral history interviews at the Saturday market held in Mile 46 every, you guessed it, Saturday. Apparently people come from miles around for the market, including large numbers of folks from the surrounding tiny settlements whom we might not otherwise get to speak with. Amazing timing.
We head home on Piki Pikis. For the second day in a row, we get a flat tire and end up walking at least part of the way home. Back at Kudu Hills hotel, Carrie is unfortunately a bit under the weather and checks into bed for the night around 6pm. Priyanka and I head down for dinner from our stone house on the hill, only to be sent bolting back up the path by a very large snake slithering just in front of our toes. We attempt a second descent and are again turned back by the same stubborn snake who now sits in a bush shaking about menacingly. We retreat again to the porch and each have a glass of white wine from the box of wine left for us by the still awesome Caro of AfricaSOMA. Finally, on our third attempt and after 30 minutes or so of waiting out the snake, we descend safely to dinner. Thank goodness there are no additional signs of snakes on this particular day.
Day One of the Kenya MobileCAP Initiative is a Surprising Success!
July 20, 2010 - 3:36pm — intern1
"Day 1- Elangata Wuas" by Sean Hewens
We arrived in EWaus via a taxi from Nairobi. The night before we met up with Carrie, the third Smallbean volunteer from St. Paul, MN. She arrived a day before us and was a bit less jetlagged. We’d also met Ariel, the wonderful Maria’s Libraries co-director who has been in Kenya for the last month setting up our MobileCAP program at each of the four library sites around the country. Ariel is a bundle of energy and is traveling out to Elangata Wuas (EWuas) with us for the first day of training. Unfortunately, she’ll have to bolt back to Nairobi early next month to catch a plane home to Texas where she will be resuming her doctoral studies.
Getting out of Nairobi was of course a challenge—Sammy, our taxi driver arrived TIA Africa style, an hour late (7:30am instead of 6:30am). We were delayed just enough to get us thoroughly stuck in a Nairobi “jam” behind belching matatus and street vendors selling newspapers and phone cards. Shortly after escaping Nairobi we sprung a flat tire, Sammy shrugged his shoulders like this was nothing out of the ordinary and had us rolling again in under 20 minutes. We headed south and then west from Nairobi, turning off the main paved road onto a rough road, with 27 kilometers of bumps, rocks and ravines to roll over before arriving in Elangata Wuas and Kudu Hills, our “hotel” on the outskirts of town. We met Caro for the first time, the amazing first lady of AfricaSOMA, our partner organization on the ground in EWaus. She had some bad news, informing us that although there were no bugs to speak of in EWaus (for my first time in Africa outside of the Holiday Inn in Dar es Salaam I won’t be sleeping with a mosquito net), there are tons and tons of snakes. If I had been informed of this before choosing our library sites, this might have been a game-changer. Have I mentioned I hate snakes? Our accommodations are at the top of what seems to be a giant rock boulder in the “Kudu House.” There’s no electricity or plumbing, but with a lovely view and front porch, I really, really hope, we don’t see snakes.
The beautiful Elangata Wuas Resource Center
We dump our bags and hop back inside Sammy’s taxi (along with 6 other people -- Who says 9 people are too many for a taxi? Not in Kenya!), late to start the first day of training. Seven kilometers later we arrive at the new library. It’s beautiful and largely empty, save for our students and maybe a thousand books, arranged in categories on the floor delineated by chalk writing on the cement. We are told that the shelves are due to arrive next week, just in time for the grand opening of the library on July 30th. Through a stroke of luck, we are teaching the MobileCAP in EWaus at the perfect moment. The library has just been completed and three librarians have been chosen from the town -- Catherine, Joyce and the very tall and somewhat mysterious William.
The first two are present upon our arrival, along with the two Citizen Archivists (Leboo and Eunice), the long-term volunteer (George), and an assortment of other enthusiastic Kenyans and Canadians, who we learn are university students on summer break or volunteers for AfricaSOMA living in EWaus for the summer. Everyone greets each other and we jump right into the training.
From the outset, there are several noticeable differences from our experiences in Tanzania in February. First, the average age of our students is perhaps 23, as opposed to the high school kids we taught in Tanzania. Second, everyone’s English is quite good. Rather quickly, we are moving into some fabulous discussions about what it means to be a Citizen Archivist and how everyone is going to go about documenting life in EWaus over the next five weeks.
Third, the level of computer and photography knowledge in the room is a bit more advanced than in Tanzania. Particularly George and Leboo (who we later learn are both in their last year of university in Nairobi) know their way around a computer reasonably well.
Fourth, I’m happy to say that Smallbean Team is a bit more organized than it was in February, particularly with the addition of our Citizen Archivist Project Handbook. We’ve spent the last month creating both the fabulous layout and graphics with help from our graphic design intern back in Boston (go Amy Hufnagle), and the wisdom, sweat and tears from the last two iterations of the Citizen Archivist Project in Tanzania and Brighton. In short, it makes life much easier to have a wonderful guide that the students can learn from, and that I, along with Priyanka and Carrie, can be working from, as we are teaching class. And finally, and this is much more similar than it is different from the great work that Newton-Tanzania Collaborative did in Kwala in February, but Maria’s Libraries and AfricaSOMA have done a fabulous job priming the pump, so to speak, for our arrival in EWaus.
The students are all very excited and, even better, extremely well informed about the Citizen Archivist Project. They’ve clearly thought about what they want to document and how they will go about telling the story that is the community of EWaus over the next five weeks. I should also mention Leslie, the Masai warrior ascari (security guard) who lingers at the edges of things, who often pops up in pictures and is always curious about the computers and cameras. He also keeps the computers and solar panels safe at night with his stick and very large knife. The only English word he appears to speak (at least in my presence) is “solar”. A Masai warrior from my own heart!
Students checking out a computer with Leslie peering curiously behind them
Sean Hewens explaining the Citizen Archivist Project
Teaching goes very well on the first day. After the introduction and the overview of the project, we move onto the basics of photography and interviewing, teaching both the functionality of the cameras and the digital recorders, along with much cooler concepts like perspective, the rule of thirds, and open and closed questions. The students are smart and enthusiastic and are picking things up very quickly. At the end of the day, we spend a bit of time on the computers themselves, mostly getting our feet wet with the basics of uploading some of the practice photos and interviews we’ve done. We end the day discussing the agenda for tomorrow, our scavenger hunt and first foray out into the village to document community life in the heart of Masai land. One negative for the day, it’s cloudy for the entirety of the afternoon and there’s no real chance to test out the solar system. What happened to that African sun I have been talking about so much for the last three months? Tomorrow it better be sunny! We head back to Kudu Hills on two piki pikis (motorcycles), Carrie and Priyanka on the first, me and a Dutch AfricaSoma volunteer on the second. About halfway home, our Piki Piki catches Priyanka and Carrie pulled to the side of the road -- a flat tire, our second of a very long day. Thirty minutes later the flat tire is fixed, but they’ve lost a key part that seals the valve to the tire. We all search in the dust unsuccessfully, the end result-- us walking the last 3 kilometers on foot, arriving back home just before sunset. Day 1 of teaching the MobileCAP is a success, flat tires or no flat tires.
And So the Kenyan Travel Journal Begins: Excerpts From the Flight Over
July 20, 2010 - 12:16pm — intern1"Getting There" by Sean Hewens:
The journey to Kenya began with an Amtrak ride and two red eyes. Since the other two volunteers were departing from Chicago and St Paul, respectively, I was left to pack the materials for three computer labs in my luggage. (The fourth MobileCAP bag is being brought along in a couple days by our fourth volunteer, Kavitha, who is from Boston, but is arriving a week later for the expedition. She’ll be transporting the MobileCAP for our fourth site, Lamu). The larger suitcase weighed just under 80 pounds, the smaller a shade under 50, plus a carry-on.
The Amtrak to Penn Station and the subway to JFK was a challenge. Yet there was good news at the airport as a new Virgin employee at the check-in desk accidentally let me onto the plane with no overweight fees for my absurdly heavy cargo. After a two hour delay on the runway, I was off to London, arriving at Heathrow and managing to meet up with Priyanka, Smallbean volunteer who just arrived from Chicago. Priyanka is completing the seven year undergrad / medical school program at Boston University and this is her last summer before the medical school chaos begins. What better way to fill the summer than two weeks participating in the Citizen Archivist Project in Kenya!
We visited the free Tate Museum in London and ducked in for a warm pint of beer at a nearby pub. Back to Heathrow on the Tube in time to catch a 9:00PM plane for Nairobi. Our second red eye strangely contained 54 children, most of them rambunctious, some of them coughing and puking. We arrived in Nairobi mid-morning and held our breath passing through customs as the passengers in front of us had their bags searched thoroughly. It’s not that there’s anything wrong with transporting three MobileCAP units to Kenya in an 80 pound suitcase, but it’s always best to avoid the long arm of developing world customs officials. Our taxi was waiting out front and we were off to the campsite in Nairobi, tired but moving along...
Sean Hewens is Officially in Kenya!
July 16, 2010 - 10:20am — intern1Smallbean Executive Director, Sean Hewens arrived safely in Nairobi, Kenya on July 14th. While the rest of the team back at the Smallbean headquarters in Boston have not yet heard any updates from Hewens, we rest assured that he is fine and eager to start up the Kenya MobileCAP initiative. He spent the bulk of last week preparing the four MobileCAP bags for each of the library sites in Kenya, making sure that all of the solar panels, batteries and netbooks were functioning properly.
Smallbean's first stop on the Kenya initiative is Elangata Wuas- be sure to check back soon for updates!
"Celebrating the Smallbean Citizen Archivist Project" is a Huge Success!
July 6, 2010 - 10:51am — intern1
Smallbean's second annual fundraiser, "Celebrating the Smallbean Citizen Archivist Project" was a smashing success. The event, which took place last Thursday at the Ivy Restaurant's Cava Lounge in Downtown Crossing, had over 60 attendees.
For the first hour or so, guests had the chance to examine a working MobileCAP unit (including the Photo Tagging software created at New England GiveCamp) and view various videos and photographs of the Citizen Archivist Project in action. We also made a point to display our many auction packages, including Anna's homemade Smallbean brownies, to entice our guests for the auction later in the evening.
Smallbean Brownies
Sean Hewens
Midway through the evening’s festivities, Sean gave a speech both thanking the guests and briefly explaining Smallbean's initiatives and future goals. Sean also explained that all proceeds from the evening’s event would be directly supporting the MobileCAP project in Kenya launching in just over a week. Following the speech we announced the raffle winners, and the live auction was off and running!
Tristan Snell
The auction was definitely the highlight of the night. Our auctioneer extraordinaire, Tristan Snell, had the guests hanging on his every word from the moment he opened his mouth. With his artful description of each auction package, Snell skillfully kept us laughing while urging prospective donors to give just a little bit more in support of Smallbean. The auction was a success, thanks both to Tristan’s skill as an auctioneer and the fabulous auction items that Smallbean volunteers were able to acquire from generous and supportive local merchants around the Boston area. The funds we raised will go a long way toward covering the costs of the MobileCAP initiative in Kenya.
Smallbean would like to extend our sincerest gratitude to all who came out to support us at the event. The event's success would not have been possible without you! And now, please stay tuned for updates from Kenya!
Some more pictures from the event:
Jim Hamski at the registration table
Some of the tasty tapas
The attendees were of all ages
Chatting up the Citizen Archivist Project
Guests listening in on Hewens' speech included Smallbean team members Kristly Thomley and Tatiana Bogina
Tristan Snell shows off the Tanzanian Safari and Hotel Stay Package
Smallbean's own Anna Norcross
Smallbean interns Kamilah Welch, Alice Tang, Amy Hufnagle, and Sadye Sagov (not pictured)
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