{"id":2029,"date":"2018-06-11T14:01:51","date_gmt":"2018-06-11T18:01:51","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/sal\/?p=2029"},"modified":"2019-04-08T16:26:19","modified_gmt":"2019-04-08T20:26:19","slug":"week-2-of-crash-course-preparing-for-kenya","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/sal-sandbox\/2018\/06\/11\/week-2-of-crash-course-preparing-for-kenya\/","title":{"rendered":"Week 2 of Crash Course: Preparing for Kenya"},"content":{"rendered":"

June 11, 2018<\/p>\n

By Meg Carroll ’20\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

Jambo, it\u2019s Meg!<\/p>\n

We\u2019re in the midst of prepping for our trip to Kenya! This week we\u2019ve been holed up in the SAL glued to our desktops while we\u2019ve practiced Swahili, read about African culture, and reviewed\/practiced different GIS tools. Our week has included conversations about office etiquette and we have even researched alternatives to plastic bags due to Kenya\u2019s ban on them. We\u2019ve talked through some of the obstacles we might face and some of the cultural differences that we will come across. It\u2019s been helpful to learn about some of the beliefs that are valued in African culture, such as status, respect, and relationships. Although many cultures have similar beliefs, it\u2019s fascinating to see that cultures have different priorities. For example, in many African countries, relationships are much more important than some American values such as doing business as quickly as possible without a focus on the actual people doing business.<\/p>\n

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Meg and Griffin preparing workflows<\/p><\/div>\n

The majority of our time has been spent focusing on the work we\u2019ll be doing in Kenya. This has included writing up workflow drafts and gathering and preparing the data files that we\u2019ll take with us. First we catalog the maps, then georeference, digitize, edgematch\/combine polygons, add attributes, and then wrap up with metadata. That\u2019s practically nothing, right?! And only<\/em> for 1,340 maps give or take! Easy! Honestly, it\u2019s all a bit daunting and we still feel a little uncertain about how a lot of this will happen. In short, we aren\u2019t sure what to expect. Nonetheless, we\u2019re very excited for this project and eager to meet our colleagues.<\/p>\n

Everything requires an overwhelming level of organization and every step is very detail focused. We\u2019ve run into some amusing obstacles along the way; I think keeping a good sense of humor is of the utmost importance! For example, while cataloging a settlement scheme map, it appeared to have the numbers \u201c5810\u201d on it. Later on, while georeferencing the map, we could not find where it was supposed to be placed. The 5810 made absolutely no sense because the grids aren\u2019t organized into blocks that go up to 5810. Through trial and error we found out that the 8 was an ampersand! Kim pounded her fists on the floor. It was quite the day!<\/p>\n

We\u2019re excited to head to Kenya soon and I think that we will face many obstacles in the office, but as long as we keep a good sense of humor we\u2019ll be all set. I\u2019m pretty sure the saying \u201cpatience is a virtue\u201d will be my mantra.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

June 11, 2018 By Meg Carroll ’20\u00a0 Jambo, it\u2019s Meg! We\u2019re in the midst of prepping for our trip to Kenya! This week we\u2019ve been holed up in the SAL glued to our desktops while we\u2019ve practiced Swahili, read about African culture, and reviewed\/practiced different GIS tools. Our week has included conversations about office etiquette … <\/p>\n

Continue reading<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4955,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2029","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","item-wrap"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6Tv8N-wJ","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/sal-sandbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2029","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/sal-sandbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/sal-sandbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/sal-sandbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4955"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/sal-sandbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2029"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/sal-sandbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2029\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/sal-sandbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2029"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/sal-sandbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2029"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/sal-sandbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2029"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}