Post by: Adrian Mallory My favourite thing about the above image is that there is no evidence that Vladimir Lenin ever said this. Trying to find the original source only drags you down into a rabbit hole of right-wing vitriol. But it goes to show that eventually once something has been repeated enough people come to believe it, and the origin of the story becomes lost. My life goal is now to get this re-attributed to Lil Wayne. The French philosopher Lil Wayne (fine, Jean Baudrillard), wrote a book about this phenomenon where in fact most of what we deal with is a copy of a copy of a copy and the original is lost: simulacra and simulation [1]. It can seem quite an abstract concept, but can have dangerous ramifications when we accept a repeated lie (or untruth, to be generous) as gospel. One of the most pertinent examples is where, by repetition and media coverage, intelligence that was suspected to have been copied from a Nicholas Cage movie turned into a ‘Credible source’ with ‘Silver-bullet intelligence’ about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq [2]. But what does this mean for WASH researchers? How often when we are looking at statistics or information do we think about the original form of data and how it was collected? To answer this question we’ll go to Kibera, Nairobi where I’m currently researching. First we look at one of the most effective abstractions that has changed modern life: Google maps. Google maps has explored and mapped the world to such an effective extent that now when I use it in Kenya and find a dead end where there shouldn’t be, I’m angry at the road for not being where my phone told me it was. My phone isn’t wrong, the road is! Yet for so long this densely populated (more on this later) slum was a blank space in Google maps. It didn’t exist. This speaks to the political reality of the lack of recognition and attention paid to such areas. From its very inception, colonial town planning was specifically designed to ensure that Nairobi was not a place for Kenyans (they used the word 'native' but it makes me queasy) and ‘workers housing’ areas were only to allow the temporary supply of labour. To this day there is still little legal recognition − it is classed as government land, and the lack of acknowledgement of the inhabitants can be mirrored in the lack of visibility on maps. Figure 1: Satellite Imagery of Kibera, Nairobi (© Google 2018 Image © 2019 Maxar Technologies)
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