{"id":19848,"date":"2018-11-01T03:56:06","date_gmt":"2018-11-01T10:56:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dminlgp\/?p=19848"},"modified":"2018-11-01T03:56:06","modified_gmt":"2018-11-01T10:56:06","slug":"my-physical-visit-made-a-very-big-difference","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/my-physical-visit-made-a-very-big-difference\/","title":{"rendered":"My Physical Visit Made a very Big Difference."},"content":{"rendered":"

Growing up as a child in Nairobi city in a lower middle income neighborhood called Eastleigh did not prepare me adequately for my first visit to Mathare Slums in 1991 when we were on a mission to preach the Gospel from door to door as University students. That visit opened my eyes and heart to a world that I had only heard about and seen in the media but had no clue of its reality. Reading Sarah Pink\u2019s book, Doing Visual ethnography[1]<\/strong><\/a>, <\/em>brings me to a point of dilemma in accepting that images: videos, photographs and internet can adequately help in researching and understanding the culture and needs of a community. I had heard about life in the slums and seen pictures and videos in the media but none of this prepared me for the shock of the nature of poverty and suffering that the people of mathare slums experience daily in their lives.<\/p>\n

Visiting their homes; sitting inside their tiny shanties with barely nothing to call their own; listening to their stories of injustices and suffering; lack of basic amenities; meager incomes from temporary manual jobs that is not even guaranteed; experiencing the smell of open raw sewer running right outside their doors; and heaps of garbage all over their neighborhood, could not have become apparent from the media images I had seen before. I had personally to visit and experience life with them, to fully understand their culture and discern their needs. IT was only then that I was moved and convicted in responding to the call of God to serve in this community in empowering community members using a multi-faceted model of ministry of: spiritual outreach (Redeem); formal education (Educating the next generation); Health programs (Restore); and Business Development services (Economic empowerment), to bring wholistic transformation to individuals in the vulnerable communities. I have heard the testimony of many visitors to the slums make the same observation that media images can never adequately communicate the state of the slums and you have to come personally to get the real picture and understand the needs on the ground.<\/p>\n

I must agree however that we use images to communicate to our existing ministry supporters and potential ministry partners, and there\u2019s always an emotional response to the photos, videos and our social media communication on the internet. I believe that the images add to the narrative reports we give them and solicits that emotional response that moves to partner with us in the work of ministry in these vulnerable communities. As Sarah Pink points out, images forms only as an alternative way of doing research and cannot replace other conventional ethnographic methodologies and invites researchers to consider it if it suits their research context and their research objectives[2]<\/a>. Graphic Images of a place, people or event are easier to remember than the written or spoken report but they require to be supported by an explanation in written or spoken form for clarity and completeness.<\/p>\n

As a follow up of the first mission visit to the mathare slums of Nairobi Kenya, we continued to work in the community but when time came to establish a resident ministry within the community, we needed to do a baseline survey, to understand the community even better. We wanted to give value to the extent of the needs in the community and understand demographics and other cultural aspects of the area. At this point, we had to use photography and videos to help us communicate the results of the survey to our partners and we still continue to do so as we get into new slum communities to replicate our ministry work in these new communities. It is therefore clear that visual ethnography is a key tool of research that adds value to the research work and the communication of the same. Pink cites Jim McGuigan, the cultural studies scholar as asserting that it\u2019s not unusual for good researchers to make up the methods as they go along, stating that \u2018the methods should serve the aims of the research, not the research serve the aims of the method\u2019[3]<\/a> (McGuigan 1997.2). Visual ethnography will no doubt be a great addition to our toolbox as we continue in the doctoral program and in the future.<\/p>\n

[1]<\/a> Sarah Pink, Doing Visual Ethnography, <\/em>2nd<\/sup> edition. (Los Angeles: SAGE Publications Ltd: Kindle Edition, 2013)<\/p>\n

[2]<\/a> Sarah Pink, Doing Visual Ethnography, <\/em>2nd<\/sup> edition. (Los Angeles: SAGE Publications Ltd: Kindle Edition, 2013).10<\/p>\n

[3]<\/a> Ibid\u2026<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Growing up as a child in Nairobi city in a lower middle income neighborhood called Eastleigh did not prepare me adequately for my first visit to Mathare Slums in 1991 when we were on a mission to preach the Gospel from door to door as University students. That visit opened my eyes and heart to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":126,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[493,1321,891],"class_list":["post-19848","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-pink-doingvisualethnography","tag-dminlgp9","tag-sarah-pink","cohort-lgp9"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19848","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/126"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=19848"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19848\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":19849,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19848\/revisions\/19849"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=19848"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=19848"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=19848"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}