Last night was excellent in many ways as we laughed and drank and drank some more.. we had entertainment from sonja and rod while they drank a little more than the rest of us and watched as chaz taught/showed rod the correct way to dance to tina turner. There was much hilarity while we enjoyed our second day in sunny kenya.
Today began in one of the worst ways imaginable with about 30 different alarms before 12 o’clock; a slight exaggeration but a fair comment, it was however was made considerably better by the delicious appearance of morning sausages… sausages always un-grump the morning! After our breakfast in the sun we made our way to the UN to start our facilitating workshops where we encountered a number of obstacles that could have made the day a write off but we pulled together as a group and made the most of the situation; and it all turned out well in the end! The first obstacle we faced was the lack of equipment, while it was nice and safe on peters bed it was no use to us there and we were all a little disheartened to learn that our yesterday plans had all been for nothing… again another exaggeration but at the time in the tired and daunting heat thats how it felt. We did however overcome this issue by a simple re-jig of the schedule and the world was not over, if anything it was a welcomed challenge that we all faced with optimism and enthusiasm! The next obstacle we faced was that the lovely willis had not told us the part when he found out that only half of the people meant to turn up to the workshops were going to be there; probably an innocent mistake but it would have been helpful for us to know as again we had planned for atleast double the turn out. This was however another potential blessing in disguise as it allowed for smaller and more focused groups with 5 participants and 5 supposed experts in each group.

After what seemed like a lifetime of mind mapping, our indecisive group chose the subject of cultural diversity in relation to marriage to focus on and we decided that we would highlight the effects intercultural marriage has on peace in Kenya. This idea was then taken off the cards as willis had specific topics in mind for us to cover; thankfully we managed to keep our original chosen topic as willis wanted us to focus on interfaith, which was then changed to intercultural differences as none of the group could quite grasp the importance of making a film to raise awareness of a subject area such as interfaith as there are more important issues to tackle. After some more mind map faffing we introduced the equipment to the participants and asked them to show us what they had leant from us; this went better than I had originally expected as they took in all of the information really quickly (which was quite a lot might I add) and were enthusiastic about learning what we had to give. After some really effective storyboarding where the participants had some really good suggestions about what to include in the video it was almost time to leave so we thought we would introduce b-roll to them before we parted ways and have a go at filming what they thought would be visually engaging and relevant to the topic.

We said our goodbyes after our jam packed day of community based learning and headed off to the market for some relaxing shopping….. that actually made me laugh as I wrote it! The massai market was quite literally a dream come true for my magpie self with all the colours and shiney things for me to look at, and im pretty sure I could have spent the entire trip there if it wasnt for the understandably needy sales people. There were people everywhere all ‘up in my grill’ trying to sell me their pretty things for actually a reasonable price but with a lack of funds and sleepy eyes it was time to escape to frozen yoghurt and a long ride back to base camp!

Now its time to wait for a beverage that im pretty sure isnt going to turn up, but im ok with it because im in kenya!!