Weekly Group Report | No 6
Kisenyi 2
This week we are confronted with slum issues in the different viewpoint which produced different images for us, we have focused on scaling up both impacts and sizes. Briefly, we tried to understand how we can add values to the projects in the long term considering the changes, which may happen in our process. But for the first step we should identify the issues, problems and causes and then expand the solutions to the big scale which means more people should be involved and participate, and therefore more resources and investments should be taken into account. However all of these steps referred to understanding of our responsibilities and role in the planning, which is vital to good development practice and consequently, we got familiar to the meaning of PEAS, which implies the services we should Provide to Enable the community and the capacity we should have in order to be Adaptable in changing conditions in order to have a Sustainability, which needs another services to be Provided and therefore this cycle is continuing. In addition constrains show themselves in the process and to deal with them, we should define the ideas and activities of responsible practice.
Finally, we divided in different groups and tried to focus on scaling up concept based on what we have done until now and as a result it became more tangible and understandable for us.
In our opinion, Mr. Hamdi is eminently sophisticated, erudite, gregarious, and energetic, and having workshop with him is certainly something to be proud of.
Kisenyi 3
On the first day of the recent week, we strived to prepare a presentation to Prof. Nabeel Hamdi, – the emeritus professor of Housing and Urban Development at Oxford Brookes University - which comprised what we have done so far, the process, what we have learnt from the “dream house” workshop we held, various land sharing models we came up with as well as land use and infrastructures of the land sharing area we designed.
On Tuesday, we got familiar with the concept of “Scaling up” and some other fundamental issues through the lecture given by Prof. Nabeel Hamdi in Makerere University.
Over the two following days, a greatly useful workshop was held. Various practices had been designed to clarify the meaning of some key subjects such as participation, partnership, etc. as well as the main topic namely “Scaling up in terms of Size and Impact”. We worked in different groups and tried to discover the new aspects of land sharing project which we haven’t considered yet.
Moreover, we had an appropriate opportunity to get familiar with a variety of new important headings to continue our study later.
Eventually, we were given several tasks in order to advance our project and to enhance our knowledge about “Scaling up”.
Weekly Group Reports | No 5
Kisenyi 2
Documentation and proposal writing
We started our week conducting a presentation to UN habitat-Nairobi representative on what we have been doing so far, what we have learnt, what our findings are and what constraints and setbacks we have found working in the field. The whole week most of us were dealing with the information we have gathered before. Especially after the lecture on logical framework approach (LFA) our group has focused on how to structure a concise resettlement proposal. With the comments we had from our advisors we have tried to link the rapid urbanization and spiraling population growth with the needs of mass housing, infrastructure and issues of climate change.
We also have arranged a workshop with the community leaders for the week end aiming at:
-Enhance the proposal the proposal with the feed backs from them
-Creating common consensus within the representatives
-Create sense of awareness and a sense of ownership for the project so that even when we are
leaving they will finalise it.
Kisenyi 3
In a recap of this week’s events we conducted a “dream house” workshop with the community staged on Saturday but continued up to Monday. It was interesting to understand what the communities think about the difference between a house and home. Together with the community models of their dream house were modeled with two aspirations i.e. sharing common facilities and individual owning of facilities. In the due course of the week Thursday 27th the Kisenyi III team had a meeting with the Ministry of Lands, Housing and Urban Development officials at the Ministry in dialogue session about the underlying issues in relation to land sharing initiative and policy related matters on land sharing. It was a successful session where by the Ministry pledged full support of the initiative. On the same day, other team members had a meeting with Mr. Haasan Kiberu the chairman of Uganda Slum Dwellers Federation (USDF) upon his visit with the Minister of Lands, Housing and Urban Development to India. Quite a lot of information was shared in relation to templates / scenarios of land sharing how best the community can understand the basics of this new concept in Africa, Uganda and in particular to Kisenyi community. Within our subsequent bulletins, we promise to take you to the concept of land sharing context. It is an ideal atmosphere that everyone both the community and UEP students are eager to know how this will happen but to make this happen there is a lot of negotiations that will have to take place between various stake holders.
Weekly Group Reports | No 4
Kisenyi 2
The title of this week has been “Informing and being informed.” For the past few weeks, we have been faced with informal information flow. As a result of lots of rumors and unreliable, misleading information, we have not been able to fully understand the situations we have come across.
To get a clearer picture of what is going on in Kisenyi II, we attended a saving scheme group meeting in Kasaato zone. Meeting these groups is important in order to find out what they are saving for, and what they know of the resettlement plan. However, different from our expectation, they expressed critical view of saving for long term goals like resettlement. It made us somewhat confused. So during this week, we discussed how to attract more people into seeing resettlement as an option. Therefore, we decided to start writing a proposal for resettlement. KCCA has authority of budget (200m Ush) execution for resettlement, and we are expecting that this proposal could help Kisenyi II to get this support. Finding the form and exact contents of the proposal has taken a lot of time, and is something we still need to discuss further.
Second, we decided to establish reliable information source. To encourage the public participation, information flow is highly important. However, we could realize that Kisenyi II has suffered from quite serious lack of information. Although local representatives of SDF are charged with information, they do not pass it on to their sub-members. It has therefore been important for us to map out who knows what, and where the information flow in the federation stops. The way forward is now to get participation on the proposal from the people in Kisenyi, and gain a broader understanding of the information issue, and its possible solutions.
Kisenyi 3
After careful planning and mapping out the programme for the week, it started with Jinja trip to visit the low cost housing project. we found out many weaknesses in the construction and planning of this project so we feel that we should reflect to SDI about the facts in this project. Then Monday starts with a lot of momentum for the group members of Kisenyi III. All of us are armed to the teeth ready to get as much information as possible until the unexpected but expected happened. Four of our members were threatened with death in the land sharing area by one of the structure owners, a hiccup that forced us to put foot on the break peddle. We were then relegated to Bativa and eventually forced to de-plan our plan. Apparently, we had agreed in the workshop not to inform the community of what had transpired before we had had a second workshop to ensure that all the leaders were reading the same script on land sharing, but to our dismay some of them passed on half-baked information. There have been numerous attempts and meetings aimed at the resumption of our fieldwork with less light at the end of the tunnel until Thursday when Hassan diffused the situation. We are set to resume work on Saturday. Meanwhile in Bativa, we delved more into low cost housing and housing materials, success and failure of similar land sharing projects elsewhere especially Cambodia and Bangkok and prepared for a community dream-house workshop scheduled for Saturday among other things.
Weekly Group Reports | No 3
Kisenyi 2 Group Report
Taking resettlement as an alternative solution to combat unpredictable eviction is one option which can possibly compliment the idea of land sharing. Our group’s approach is a kind of community mobilization through information dissemination. We have followed the idea of community participation for a more structured outcome. We first have conducted a meeting with the community representatives, ACTogether and government officials from ministry of land and housing on the agenda “Issues and Ideas on Resettlement to Kyengera, the new land”. In the meeting we formed a committee which will be working with us and get involved in the job so that it will not stop functioning even when we are leaving.Apart from community meeting what was done in this week is visiting the land and seeing its feasibility, checking and tracking the community saving schemes and finding out how many of them are still operational and planning the way forward with the new committee. Some of us have gone to KCCA (Kampala Capital City Authority) to find out possibilities of getting government fund to buy this land. This actually took our attention because the former KCC (Kampala City Council) central division had promised these community members 200million Ush before it got replaced by KCCA. But in the budget plan of the current authority that money is not there instead they need to write and submit a new proposal.
Kisenyi 3 Group Report
In this week, four members of our group and two members from Kisenyi II group worked together with ACTogether, an NGO and Architects came from South Africa, who were invited by Slum Dwellers International (SDI) to work in land sharing project in Kisenyi III. Mainly we collected housing information i.e. structure owner, tenants, usage of the structure, and carried out mapping of available facilities and infrastructure within the land sharing area.Remaining group members talked with people of surrounding area of land sharing project and tried to explore the relationship between Katwe I and Sapoba with Kisenyi III . At the same time, we read some of the articles about land sharing in order to understand more about land sharing and came up with discussion among group members and probable different approaches and models of land sharing and potential problems. We also strived to make more clear ideas which may be relevant in our context. The specific focus in the last workshop was on the relationship amongst the landowner, the developer and the community including tenants and structure owners, which needs to be continued for coming up with a couple of feasible proposals to the Federation to implement.
Weekly Group Report | NO 2
GROUP 1
This week we have concurred the issue of Land tenure systems, land rights, ownership issues, tenure rights and not at least the issue of eviction in Kisenyi II. We tackled the issue from all different perspectives, Ida, Salmah and Sheng Han talked to previously evicted people in the Kasato zone. We got their live stories, their plans for the future and a deep insight in their frustrations and life issues. Another part of our group went to seek the most information possible from the different land offices, KCCA, the office in Entebbe. This was Shin and Kule, they managed to get hold of maps showing the land tenure systems, as well as each individual plot-number in Kisenyi II. Gizaw and Einar have been tackling the GIS issues, and they have managed to produce and collect valuable pictures and files representing the area. The satellite images given to us from Actogether have been very useful for the groups that worked “on the ground” while acquiring data. Bijay and to some extent Sheng Han have been to the Makerere University to research information, previous master thesis` etc. about land issues in K2, this with varying degrees of success. The last group, Vilde, Musa and Savis have tracked down the relevant LCs in K2 and different Landlords in the area. We have had meetings with most of them and have gotten an insight into the picture and threat of the eviction in K2. We also identified all the areas (and these are big) where people have already been evicted and where the threat remains really strong of eviction and redevelopment, in the future.
We have now decided that our working topic is “research on the possibilities of securing land and people from eviction, in the near future”. Our next move will be to investigate the feasibilities and probabilities for a good resettlement to an area which is fully owned by the tenants, outside of Kisenyi II.
GROUP 2
As the week started we were given a new project to work on in Kisenyi III ; “Land Sharing” . This project is going to be implemented on a piece of land owned by a Muslim man who people call “HAJI”. As we started our investigations we found out that many people live on this area of land sharing and some of them has even born there and been living there so far. But as the plan being implemented people get evicted from their houses and in most cases they have no place to go.
We did lots of interviews with chairmans of different zones in Kisenyi III and found out very good information about the structure of land ownership and its odd regulations. We also talked to people who were evicted from the house they were living in. We believe that the land issue is a very crucial case in Kampala and now in Kisenyi, so we need to concentrate on ways to help people survive this tragedy in their lives. We also gather some information from governmental organizations and offices and made maps out of all the information we had. We also did the mapping of the area, now we know the land sharing area borders and we have defined the places that eviction is going to happen and places that have already faced eviction as well.
By the end of this week we have all the information we need to come up with new ideas about land sharing project and possible solutions to the problems exist within.
GROUP 3
Our main occupation this week has been to gather information on the issue of eviction and land ownership. In order to catch the whole picture we divided in groups, each searching knowledge in different channels. Some was climbing the peaks of the system, questioning KCCA and other offices for information on landowners, maps and regulations. Other divisions have looked for articles and books on the subject, collected the information and mapped it. Two groups have been walking the ground in Kisenyi. One meeting chiefs and chairmen, the other talking with inhabitants, gathering their stories on eviction and life in general.
We have been able to locate several interesting cases and heard breathtaking reports from the daily life in fear of eviction. Another experience is the complexity of land ownership, and the clash between government and kingdoms. At the end of the week, the main discussion evolved around two scenarios:
-Preventing eviction by working with possibilities to secure pieces of land within Kisenyi.
-Investigate further the possibilities of creating a vital livelihood on the plot of land outside of town where the federation wants to move.
As for now, we have decided to look into the resettlement issue, hoping to highlight important aspects on probable solutions for people living in fear of eviction.
GROUP 4
Over the last week, the lectures regarding the planning history of Uganda, especially Kampala were given as the introduction for us to know more about the planning issues here. After then our group worked together with Group 2 in Kisenyi 3 area, continued our work on investigation and exploration of this site. After some interviews with the chairmen there, we had the general view of land eviction situations in Kisenyi. The interviews with the victims suffered a lot from land eviction emerging the conflicts and problems also left us with a very deep impression. Some useful information also got after meetings with land board and other intuitions here. While mapping the site, the exact boundaries of different zones and the areas already been demolished or going to be demolished have been identified clearly. That’s a good beginning of next phase work. The land sharing project work would be the focus area.
Weekly Group Reports | No1
These first introductory weeks, we have concentrated on getting to know Kampala, figuring out our lives at the hotel, adapting to the heavy portions of “food”, and making friends with our new classmates. We have had a series of different lectures, concerning the major issues we are trying to acquire knowledge about. We have had some serious walks around the city, and we have also been introduced to Kisenyi, the popular settlement where we are going to work. The meeting with Kisenyi II was overwhelming! We perceived the area as huge, not only in scale, but in the diversity of people, communities, industries, commercial activities and not least, neighbourhoods inside this area. Kisenyi II is comprised of 10(+/- ?) villages! Inside every village there is a magnitude of life at stage. We were also surprised by the diversity of economic resources and prosperity on the inside of Kisenyi. “We are learning on the ground” and we feel the dust entering from the outside-in. Our impressions of Kampala; The city is a pool of many activities flattering like bees on transit. Where can a new person access health tips? How about the location of key areas like a national library? Where are the public toilets in Kampala, where all people are in transit! Where are the public leisure parks? And then, what about the pollution and poor drainage? All in the mercy of God like the country motto goes, “for God and my Country”.
GROUP 2
The first week was about getting a general impression about the place Uganda, Kampala and Kisenyi, the place where we are going to work for the next two months. We started our stay with a city tour to one of the slum areas in the neighbourhood Kivulu. The study process can be categorised into the following headings: We were introduced to the ACTogether, and how they work with SDI. Shuaib from Makerere University introduced us to the land issues in Uganda as well as the infrastructure and problems in further developing. In the lecture from Peter we were introduced to political affairs and the legacy of colonialism concerning values, politics and daily life in Uganda. The lecture ended up with a massive discussion about the African kingdoms and land rights. During our first visit to the fields, we were introduced to leaders from SDI and the community. Then we went to the fields two days in a row to observe the place and get an idea about the geographical features and making contacts to develop network for study purpose. Our group works in Kesenyi III with large scale. During the second visit we were accompanied with a local coordinator, Julius.We also had a Garden Workshop with Hans Skotte, where we had a brainstorming session on various features in Kampala that we observed in the first week and down to its structural ideas. We also had a workshop on climate change- adaptation and mitigation, with reference to Kisenyi with other PhD students and officials from Ministry of Land, Housing and Urban Development. We had a group discussion with the other Kisenyi group working with small scale.
Group 3
It’s been days of organizing ourselves in the new African environment. Coming from the quite, formalized and silent city of Trondheim, we found ourselves lost among the crowd of people, boda boda and matatos. The landscape was totally new for us with sunshine and the unpredictable crazy rainfall. Slum communities dominate the city. There are some glimpses of so-called urban development with towering and flamboyant structures but that does not represent the city at all. In spite of social disparity, the people and the city has not lost its smile and patience. With the wonderful flavor of rice, “Matoke”(boiled banana), and other delicious food, we also get to know the evening life full of fun and music. Being called as “Muzungo”(White People), the people see us with hope and sometimes even with hatred as if we are confiscating their land. We also get to know land structure of Kampala with the help of lectures of Suhaib Lwasa on “Land and Infrastructure in Uganda” and the lecture by Peter Kasaiju on “Political Affairs and the Legacy of Colonisation on values, Politics and Daily Life” help us to understand the historical background of Uganda. Also interaction with ACT together has helped to understand scenario of slum areas in kampala and other parts of Uganda. The workshop on “Cliamatic Change and Urban Resilience “ also helps us to find out some adaptations and mitigations in case of Kiseny among us. So far, the days have been wonderful and full of surprises with trying to orient and adapt in Kampala.
GROUP 4
After almost two weeks in Kampala we have mostly used our time to get to know the city, its history and developing plans through city tours and lectures. We have also used a lot of time in Kisenyi which is a slum settlement close to the city centre were we are going to work. Together with group 2 (Daniel, Reeta, Emilie, Tom and Ayda) will we, group 4 (Haining, Udhab, Meysam, Ronald and Ingrid) work in Kisenyi III which is a parish of Kisenyi. Viki and Julias are to members of the community and they will in these two months help us orientating in the area as well as speaking with its residents. The thing that made the biggest impact on us in our visits was the energy in Kisenyi. There are a lot of activities going on seemingly everywhere! Handicrafts, metal works, commercial businesses of all kinds, cooking, reparations of everything from cars to cell phones, waste collecting and re-using of the waste, etc. Another issue was the empty areas where people had been evicted by their landlords and their houses demolished or the people that had gotten an eviction note and was facing a very uncertain future. This happen much because of Kisenyi III’s proximity to the city centre which results in a rising value of the land and a thereby a will to invest and develop from the rich which take little or no regard to those already living there.
