Mapping complete in Jinja and Mbale!!!

By Hellen Nyamweru: As i write this,i am filled with enthusiasm and pride for the Uganda slum dwellers federation and in this particular case Jinja and Mbale slum dwellers because all the slums identified in Jinja and  Mbale  have been fully mapped by the slum dwellers themselves!The mapping in Jinja and Mbale is part of a larger City Alliance program of promoting cities without slums in Uganda and in other nations supported by organizations and federations of the urban poor. All the identified settlements have been mapped by the community themselves with minimal supervision from ACTogether Uganda.The excerscise took place in a period of two weeks in which community members were fully involved.The mapping teams were prior trained by community support officers from ACTogether Uganda and other SDI affiliates who had visited Uganda to facilitate the process between 1st-7th of May.

Mapping is aimed at promoting land management and tenure tools for poverty alleviation.This is why it is done with a degree of accuracy and detail needed for slum upgrading and promoting secure tenure.The community updated the maps by filling in the missing structures and sites that have come up since the last maps were drawn.The mapping data is been entered at the moment and is aimed at coming up with up to date maps for all the settlements in these two regions.This will be achieved by filling in the gaps realized by the difference between the digitized map and the mapping data.It will then be linked to the house number and household data collected during the social mapping excerscise ( profiling and enumeration) prior done to come up with detailed inventory of all these particular settlements such as the demographic change,service gap among others.All these is aimed at transforming settlements of the urban poor,to aid the Government of Uganda/municipalities in planning for these areas that have been in the past neglected and lack quite a number of services.

The mapping team in Mbale displaying the Bujoloto map,building it up from several strips before mapping.

With time,slum dwellers have realized that they should combat myths and prejudices surrounding slums and slum dwellers and in their place replace them with facts,figures (profiling and enumeration) and maps (spatial data)to assist them in lobbying and negotiating for services lacking in their settlements,secure tenure and proper housing too.The community is now  skilled on laying out the maps and identifying their own settlements as well as doing the actual mapping

Jinja slum dwellers mapping Rimasi settlement

Slum dwellers face a number of challenges because of residing in areas that have never been formally mapped meaning that actual present maps do not recognize their existence.This means that they can easily be evicted or pushed out of areas while their residence is sold to the highest bidder.It also means that the slum dwellers may construct houses on areas reserved for roads or other public service utilities unbeknown of the fact that the place is reserved.To avoid all this,slum dwellers appreciated this excerscise on mapping because it would guard against such incidences in the near future.It would also add weight to successfully reach their audiences or achieve their targets of change.It is a known fact that governments,corporations and rich investors prove hard opposition to the less powerful and with the information space.This is therefore one way in which slum dwellers have  found artful ways to increase the power of their information and leverage resources to create maximum impact.

Displayed strips of Masese I map in Jinja from the digitized map .

Based on the experience in Jinja and Mbale,the community was able to map on their own with minimal support from the ACTogether team.The excerscise has left them feeling like skilled cartographers/surveyors and much enlightened.Mbale slum dwellers for instance are so proud to update a map that was drawn in 1963 since that was the only available map,48 years later!. Slum dwellers have realized that it is not a herculean task to map their own settlements.They are very proud of what they have achieved and  sharing in crafting change and development in their own settlements!