We left late again today… sensing a pattern here. We went to go have a lecture but the students weren’t there so we had to wait until after lunch. We sat around and read and talked in the sun and shade.

We met the Vice Chancellor before lunch. He and Peter spoke about the benefits of the community and university partnerships, and how it impacts the students to be able to work together. The chancellor, Samuel Gudu, spoke about how it helps the University of Rongo to have these external partnerships because it helps legitimize them to others, which in turn gets them more funding. Partnerships have so much emotional and educational benefits, and because those are the benefits I glean from the partnership, I forget about the monetary benefits that come with them as well. We brought the suitcase of equipment to open and show the chancellor, but it was locked and we didn’t have the key. Very fitting for the tone of this trip.

The lecture was good, and then we went out and worked with the equipment. We split into groups of audio, video, and photography. I volunteered to do photography because a lot of people choose to do video. It was good, and I worked with Ellie and a student named Hillary. We all swapped information and it felt good. It felt gratifying to collaborate with the students finally because that was something that I was really looking forward to doing. It started raining so we went back inside after about an hour.