Standard morning really woke up at 8 got the bus at 8:45. Ate breakfast, we haven’t seen Mama in a few days but we met one of her puppies today she’s just as friendly and approachable. People don’t have dogs as pets here and there’s this attitude that you have to be mean to the animals to show them who’s in charge but I find animals respond better to you and are more willing to protect you if you show them kindness. People keep telling us we will get bitten by the dogs but I’ve been here 10 days and I’m yet to have one even growl at me. You just have to be patient and soft and you gain their trust. I find the culture differences difficult to deal with at times but I must try to respect the culture and the community I’m surrounded by.

I’m finding that I’m feeling myself becoming more reserved as an individual. There are some wonderful people here but a lot of loud of characters. I’m a confident person but not particularly loud and I’m not sure if its coming off maybe that I am disinterested in getting to know everyone which is not the case. I will try to make more of an active step in joining in with the different groups and out myself out of my comfort zone a bit more.

Today has been a very academic day. I’ve been mainly reading academic texts and focussing on my CM4K final essay report which will highlight my experiences and findings in a 3000-word report. I’m not sure how I’m going to condense everything I’ve produced into 3000 words as I have already written over 15,000 words so far… we still have another week and a bit left!

The reports I read today were:

1. Community based participatory research from the margin to the mainstream: are researchers prepared? By Carole R Horowitz, Mimsie Robinson and Sarena Seifer. 2009. Published by the American Heart Association.
2. Glasgow centre for population health: Putting asset-based approaches into practice: identification, mobilisation and measurement of assets. By Jennifer McLean. 2012. Available at gcph.co.uk

I also spoke with Peter again today as I was worried about self-plagiarising with my report and my dissertation as they are both based around CM4K. He has agreed to keep an eye on my work so I avoid doing this and will show me how to reference myself in my own work. That seems really weird as I’m not a published theorist but apparently it is something you can do.

Something I have noticed is that even though we discuss the day’s work at the end of the day we do not always speak specifically about what we have all done as individuals. I will bring this up later as I would love to hear what everyone has been up to and working on. There is talk of getting beers from Treat House again tonight which sounds good to me! Can’t wait to just chill out with a cold tusker, hopefully Sam will read us more of his book The White Masai (Corrine Hoffman) and we can find out what happened next to Corrine.