By Brenda Maina
We visited the informal settlement of Alaska 3 times for field work; on the 24th and 26th of July, and the final day on the 2nd of August.
Many of the team members had never been to Mamelodi before, so the experience was a novel one. When we arrived at Alaska, we first visited the Viva Foundation. The school classrooms are made up of stacked shipment containers that were painted with animals and nature. It was great to meet the people we were aiming to help with our project, and to listen to them to understand what we could do to help them.
First we deliberated as a GMT group how we were going to section off the area we had to cover so that each group would get an equal area to work in. We then set off to work. We were tasked with mapping the various hazards that could be found, such as electrical hazards, open pit latrines and loose gravel roads as well any water sources we could find. We became accustomed to the area and to each other fairly quickly and could navigate through the area.
The settlement has a variety of interesting and beautiful sites, such as a dwelling built underground, various flourishing vegetable gardens and creative artwork displayed on or around the dwellings.
It took us about two days to walk through the entirety of our section and capture data. on the third day, the GMT groups went back into the settlement in search of dwellings that matched the house numbers we had of new members of the SAPRI program, to plot their coordinate.
Overall, it was a learning experience in all aspects; we learned about an aspect of the GIS process we had not necessarily had exposure to before such as data capturing, but most importantly, we learned about the lives of people living in South Africa that we may not have had exposure to before.
