Rachel Brown, Sisi ni Amani Project Director, Digital Democracy

I’m really excited about how well the project is moving along. For a more comprehensive overview of the project work we’ve been doing – meeting with a lot of very exciting people and an excellent start to the peace photography workshops – check out my blog entry on the main blog, A Great Start. I also really suggest looking at the photographs the Hot Sun Foundation kids have taken. So far we have had three workshops with them, and photos from the first two workshops are up (check them out!). In the third workshop (late afternoon yesterday), we had the group practice taking pictures of people by taking portraits of each other, and they took some really incredible portraits that will be up shortly. We’ve also been getting some wonderful help from Evans Kamau, whose story the movie Togetherness Supreme is based on. He works with the group every Saturday, and has been helping us with the workshops and even coming in at extra times after school so that we can fit more workshops in.

So far, one of the most interesting things for me to realize is how important human relationships are in this projects. It’s something I expected to a degree, but the more time we spend here and speak with people around us, the more evident it is to me that the success of our project really rests on the human relationships that we create – on stopping and talking with people throughout the day, explaining the work that we do, and getting people excited to participate. As far as I can see, the most effective outreach that we could have in order to get people to text in is really explaining to people what the map is, where the information is going, how it works, and who we are. This is very exciting for me because part of what I love about being in new places is interacting with new and interesting people – it looks more and more like this is what is the required work of our project as we continue to plan our outreach and follow-up strategies. So far, just by being friendly and talking with people without having outreach strategy on our minds, we’ve met so many people who are eager to help out, spread the word, and even volunteer for mapping.

It’s also very inspiring to meet with a lot of the organizations here, and I’m looking forward to the possibility of collaborating with local organizations to strengthen our work and provide them additional resources. We have a few more exciting meetings scheduled this week, and will hopefully be able to really move on to next steps after this week is over. We are also starting to figure out how to recruit volunteers, and beginning with planning and first steps for that aspect of the project.

In other news, Tegan and I filmed Solo 7 (a peace graffiti artist in Kibera) for Ridley Scott’s Life in a Day film last Saturday, and made a new friend – we went to town to buy paint with him and Evans and are going to paint in Masai Mbili, the studio that Solo shares with ten other artists. I’m really happy to have such a great creative outlet while I’m here!

(Monday, July 12, 2010)

On the way to Kenya, Cody and I had a 12-hour layover in London, so we left the airport, and met up with our friend Adam White, who works at Frontline SMS and is overall one of the most brilliant and insightful people I know, especially when it comes to thinking of, implementing, and constructively analyzing socially oriented projects. In addition to a great day walking around London, seeing the big landmarks (I’ve never been before) and all the picnickers and sunbathers, we had a long brunch at Hyde Park and discussed our project. We specifically talked about both the power of crowdsourcing and mapping information, and also the need to continue to research in order to figure out how it can have the most power. Ultimately, it is not just the map, but the process of creating it and the response it generates (the interaction surrounding the map) that is most important. Specifically about our project, we talked about what our assumptions are about the production of a map (it can show people that peace exists in their country, give them the resources needed to figure out how they can become involved in peace promotion activities, give peace leaders the resources to connect with each other, and more), and the need to test these assumptions as we work, to see if these are really the effects and how to make the map and surrounding activities such that they are locally accessible and have the greatest effect possible. Since peace mapping is so new, I think that our continued and open analysis of these questions is one of the biggest contributions we can make – analyzing and shaping a new tool to understand what works and doesn’t, what about these answers to these questions seem to be based on local contexts, and what information that we gather can be used to generally inform future peace mapping projects in other countries and regions of the world.  Cody has written a great post about this on our main blog.

Cody and I arrived Sunday morning at about 7:30am and had a fun ride to Amalia and Eugenia’s place to pick up Tegan singing songs with our cab driver. We got settled in to our apartment a bit and then Tegan and I went to Yaya, a nice shopping center, to pick up a couple of things. Later, we went to Nakumatt (a big grocery store) to get lunch and then to a soccer game in Langata (in Kibera) that was organized by Shining Hope for Communities (Shofco), an incredible group started by a Wesleyan student who grew up in Kibera with a large group of volunteers from Wesleyan and Brown, many of them former SIT students. They were are really wonderful and we discussed working with their kids on our photography workshops, and are going to meet them in their school tomorrow to discuss logistics. They do amazing things, and have just started a girls school – check it out! So what we thought was just going to a fun soccer game ended up with us making some great friends and a wonderful new partnership with a great group of kids to participate in the photo workshops and awesome volunteers who can help, meaning we can possibly even do more than we thought! We’ll see when we visit them tomorrow exactly how this will work!

Last night we went to a nearby Ethiopian restaurant and bar for dinner and the world cup with the Shofco team, and fought our jetlag to stay up the whole game (though Tegan and I may have closed our eyes for very short periods of time…).

Today we got settled in – worked out paying for the rent (unfortunately that took all morning), walked around where we lived, checked in officially to our apartment, and then worked on the curriculum and planning for the photo workshops as well as general scheduling and meetings with people. After taking care of a few more things – grocery shopping, etc., we went to my old host mother’s house. We walked to Yaya Center then took a matatu there, and it was a great first matatu ride for Cody and Tegan with loud music, lots of people, and lots of different scenes to watch as we drove into Kibera. I’ve been surprised at how much being here feels like coming back to school or home – like a place I know very well – even though I was only here for four months before. Driving back to Ayany for the first time since I’ve been back was so interesting, and looking around there was so much that has been built or rebuilt since the last time I was here. It was exciting to see so much change and also to remember why I love Ayany and that area of Kibera (I didn’t get to explore too far away from my homestay the last time I was here) so much – there are lots of wonderful things, lots of difficult things, but it just has so much personality as a place. Walking up the main road in Ayany to visit the family we stopped in a gym inside a corrugated tin and cement building that I’d seen a lot when I was there but that I hadn’t ever been inside, and Cody (who has really been wanting to work out) did some bench presses with the guys there which was a fun little detour.

Abdullah's Photo of Mama Halima and Farida

Hanging out at my host mother, Mama Halima’s house was wonderful – Halima, who I shared a room with when I was last here, was unfortunately away at boarding school, but she will be back in August and we planned to surprise her when she gets back. The other kids were all around and were so shy at first, barely even talking (though Imran was giggling and running around a lot), but they got used to me being back and to Tegan and Cody pretty quickly, especially when the cameras came out. Selma started playing with the little point and shoot camera that we’ve been playing with to get ready for the photo workshops, and then they started taking pictures and opening up a bit more – this was great to see as we prepare for the photography workshops. They took some great pictures, and Abdullah took a couple of really incredible shots – we decided we want to keep going back and giving him the opportunity to take more pictures – he really likes it and the pictures he took were incredible for having no photography experience.

Imran Studying Before Dinner (my photo)

We ended up having dinner and hanging out there for the whole night and having dinner and a wonderful time. I always find it so interesting to visit kids after long periods of time because they change so much so quickly – it’s daunting in a way to say goodbye to kids for a long time for that same reason – how they see you, play with you, etc. can change a lot. They are definitely all more grown up, but still so much fun.

One of Abdullah's Photos of Itzhak

Working with Tegan and Cody so far has been so great – we all really energize each other and enjoy what we are doing as well as exploring the area, having new experiences, and meeting new people – I feel so lucky to be working two such amazing people. It has been a great day & a great start to the project and I keep getting more excited about the project and about being in Kenya for a year!