By 10am we were off to the University of Rongo, which was a 10-minute journey that was punctuated rather uncomfortably by speed bumps every minute or so, an aspect to traveling in Kenya I was soon to become very used to.

Upon arrival, Jerry, one of the Rongo university professors, and Peter had a meeting to discuss the schedule for the week ahead which gave us the opportunity to explore the campus. The university campus was so green, every building was bordered with grass and greenery and there was a beautiful flowering tree that always caught by eye. Lines of chairs were positioned under an area of trees, creating an outside classroom, something I wish we did in the UK.

After some more exploring to pass the time, we returned to Jerry and Peter where we were told that the Dean had been called to Nairobi for a meeting, so we were not able to have an introduction today.  That meant it was time to meet the students we would be working with on the Community Media 4 Kenya project.

We all went into the media classroom and went around introducing ourselves. Our first priority was getting to know the students, so we went outside to play some icebreaker games. I think everyone was nervous to introduce themselves but after a few rounds of games in the sun, everyone was laughing together, and surprisingly we all got a hang of everyone’s names pretty fast.

We went back inside for a lecture on Community Radio given by Peter. The topics covered were the past project on Modern Day Slavery, how community/community media is defined (or not defined!), what community means to us, and how community radio comes into all of this. We broke off into two groups, Brighton students and Rongo students, to discuss our ideas on these topics, and then we came back together to share. It was interesting to hear another groups point of view and it was agreed that community is ultimately a sense of connection.