Day 7, our first official day of fieldwork! Before I dive in, I best explain what we’re contributing towards during our time here in Kenya for the CM4K project. In simple terms, we’re adding locations onto Google Maps, which is called Asset Mapping. Asset mapping can provide information about community strengths and resources that can help uncover solutions. One example of how the maps can be useful is, for instance, if say a community needed knowledge about poultry farming, they could access the map and identify local poultry farms – this knowledge can then be shared, to help the community grow. It can also be used to address community needs, and build on exisiting assets. Though it sounds simple, in turn it will become incredibly beneficial when the Community Radio Station starts to run. Currently, the maps for Cham gi Wadu has incredibly limited information, though we plan on working together to change that!

So, without further ado, here are the four places we visited today! The first was the Cham gi Wadu’s Chiefs Office which is where the Community Radio Station itself will run. Prior to this, we had all organised ourselves into groups, the first photography, the second video, and finally audio. I was a part of the photography group, and our groups responsibility was to take photographs of the location(s). You know when you select a location on Google Maps, you can see photographs of the buildings and what is around – that’s what we were doing, taking these photos! We also spent some time teaching community members how to use the cameras. The video group were responsible for taking short videos that consisted of interviews and Vox Pops which when you select a location, there will be additional visual information – the audio group worked with both the photography and video group. So, for each location, we were gathering a variety of visual and audible content, and the longitude and latitude of locations to ensure we can fill the map correctly.

The second place we visited was a primary school, alongside gathering the content, we spent some time with the children at the school. They were truly fascinated with us, especially those of us with tattoos. I couldn’t even begin to count how many children were rubbing my tattoos to see if I’d drawn them on! It was very sweet. The third place we visited was a secondary school – it was here that we went slightly astray from our original plan where we ended up speaking to a large group of students who were interested in communications media. After an introduction, we spend some time teaching the students how to use the equipment which they all thoroughly enjoyed. These children will have the opportunity to create content for the radio station, so the lesson on how to use equipment will fingers crossed help them with this! Finally, we visited another primary school – once again, like the first the children were fascinated with us and our tattoos! We did have some problems with time management, and what we aimed to be around two hours took around 4-5 so unfortunately, we did not have a chance to edit our content that we gathered, hopefully when it does come to editing we won’t be too overwhelmed.

After this visit we went back to the university and ate some well-deserved food! When we got back to the accommodation, we spend some time discussing what went well today, and things that could be improved – so tomorrow in our second day of fieldwork, we will be far more prepared! All in all, it was an incredibly busy day. Because we were out in rural areas, we all ended up absolutely covered in dust, so we were excited to get back and hop into the shower. I’m looking forward to editing our content and getting it uploaded, so check this space for updates!

Luca. 😊