At nearly 5am Nairobi time, the day after the vote. Like in Kibera, Mathare polling stations saw long lines and equipment malfunctions. The situation was reported as being more tense, following some isolated incidents of violent attacks and conflict (not clearly related to the election), but overall the polls operated without major problems.
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ngei ward,voters started visiting the A.I.P.C.A. n LIONS clinic poling stations as early as 3.30a.m.some even decided to wake up the resdnts by vuvuzelas,whistles n also screaming.
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The response was marvelous as compared with the previous general elections, which indicate that Kenyans were really out for a change. The multitude was witnessed by large stretch of queues all over the poling stations within mathare constituency. The government ensured tight security with regular police, provincial administration, GSU, Kenyan prison, and NYS.there was also aerial surveillance with regular rounds of police chopper which indicated that security was beefed up. There were no serious matter reported from either sides or any group which was reported to have chaos of any nature.
Soon, mechanical problems and long lines, led to frustrations.
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Voters are stranded at Utalii ward drive inn polling station the machine has some problem whereby the machine is not displaying names of the voter
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Voters at hospital ward are angry with the IEBC staff as they are not organized and some voters are not going to vote due slowness of the staff
One person was murdered, two robberies were reported, and there was some conflict between landlords and tenants. Unfortunately, not unusual for Mathare. The incidents didn’t spread into a larger conflict.
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One person has been confirmed be stabbed several times this morning and he is in a critical condition. The incidence has just happened in the same same place where the other incidence happened.One person who did not want his name to be disclosed said it is politically motivated.
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landlords and tenants conflict is rising up again in some parts of mathare,kiamaiko,mabatini n huruma wardds. some landlords are hiking rent,others are asking tenants out claiming they want to renovate the houses.other landlords are askng for I.D.number of the tenants.some tenants are also sayng that if it continues they wont pay rent.this is creating tension in residential areas.
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Two robberies experiencing at polling stations in Mathare this morning. A woman and a girl were robbed in broad daylight at Kiboro primary school and St. Theresa girls secondary respectively. Passengers at Albadir petrol station are asked to be cautious as they pass that route
Long queues formed as early as 4am, and while polls were due to open at 6am, some polls were ready, some were not.
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Traffic at olympic is enormous; 12 long lines all of which have stretched outside the gate with thousands of voters already queuing to vote yet its only 5 am 1 hour to voting time! “We have to vote by all means, this will ensure that we get in the credible leaders we have always wanted to elect.”
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The turnout of voters at Holy Trinity polling station is great and the queue is moving steadily as everyone awaits a chance to make his/her voice heard as to the leaders to elect. Voters came as early as 4am.
Queues remained long in some places throughout most of the day, due to some malfunction with the Biometric Voter Registration (BKR) kits, and mismatches with backup paper registrations. Also, the complexity of the new voting process (with president, senators, mps, etc etc) caused some confusion and delay.
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At Dc grounds polling station, voters are being pulled out of the line simply because there names are not in the registers but available in the IEBC system
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The Situation at Mashimoni squatters is well though the queues are long upto the bridge( around Gogo boys)but is moving slowly and no one is complaining so far.
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At DC grounds voters who turned out in large numbers,are complaining that given the six Elective positions to vote for,its time consuming and are many.
Kenyans, initially are not used to voting to such positions as provided in the new constitution.
The positions include: The Presidential,The senate,county Representative,the women representative and that for the Member of Parliament.
Many voters have resorted to voting only for one elective position as they check out.
The fire which started at around 9.30am has gutted about 30 houses at the border between Soweto east and Silanga. Property of unknown value has been destroyed.
Residents left the long queues and rushed to rescue their properties.
Map Kibera has distributed election maps in Kibera and Mathare, after months of hard work planning, meeting, surveying, editing, producing, and printing. Here are the maps, linked to larger versions for download/printing if you like.
These maps are in the hands of community networks, peace building organizations, monitors, and security services. This culminated yesterday with Inspector General Kimaiyo receiving a map; essentially the top police officer in the country.
@mapkibera Big audience with all the key security officers in Kenya in Kibera. The Inspector General now has a copy of our map!
The process began almost 6 months ago, with mappers discussing what kind of data should be collected for the election. They settled on constituency and ward boundaries, which had changed following the adoption of the new Constitution, and details on every polling place in the slums. The IEBC had officially made available descriptions and rough, non-geo-referenced images of the new boundaries, and lists of the polling places. Helpful, but since these weren’t released as geospatial data, everything needed surveying by the team. The local IEBC officials were supportive of the mapping process.
(The IEBC inadvertently made some data available, which was scrapable. But it only covered to the constituency level, and almost half of the polling places in the slums were not located at all.)
Beyond the location, mappers collected details on the facility, contact information, numbers of staff, numbers of registered voters, accessibility, and closest services. They produced this form, and these JOSM presets. All of this is stored in OpenStreetMap. It’s not immediately visible on osm.org, but peak behind at the data, for example Lindi Mosque.
The next step, extracting and producing Shapefiles for use in GIS, was the only point where I was substantially involved. Every other step was led by the mappers, who after three years are fully professional in their practice. The shapefiles were produced, and are available for download here and here.
Zack took the lead on map production. We’ve benefited from the support of ESRI East Africa, including Zack’s attendance at the last user conference. He used those skills to produce two maps, then sent to the printer over the past couple weeks, and distributed throughout the community. The reaction has been wonderful.
