DAY 1: (19th)

My flight arrived 2hours after the group (8.30pm), on arrival, I went through quarantine (Ebola check) then proceed to immigration, paid for my visa, claimed my bags, then departed the airport.

I then got a lift to the accommodation, an apartment, which is very nice. I met the group at the bar next door, we had drinks and caught up on each other’s trips.

DAY 2: (20th)

In the morning I walked around to the shopping mall, around the corner from the apartment. I brought some water and snacks for the day. After a really nice home cooked breakfast, made by a cook that comes in every morning, we all went round to the shopping mall to get tea/coffee, lunch and local sim cards.

We then had a few hours to chill, go for walks, beers etc before doing some planning for tomorrow’s workshops. In the late afternoon, Willis (Kenyan partner) and his friend came over to our apartment and we planned our 2-week trip.

We talked about our group workshops, photography, video and audio and how we will use the workshops over the next 3 days at Kenyatta university.

This evening we are having a cooked meal at home and will probably go over to the bar for a relaxing drink before our early start tomorrow.

Thoughts so far;

– Apartment – for the price, really nice – good location, 24hr guard, clean rooms, great cook

– Location – shopping mall around the corner, all shops one would need.

– Bar – really friendly staff, good cheap beers/drinks and food… (we ate at 11pm/12pm (they stay open till the last customer).

– Nairobi/Kenya – if one thing stands out it the friendliness of the Kenyan people. There is an atmosphere of success, it seems that Kenya is really trying to grow, fast! My first opinion on Kenya is that it is bound for a successful future.

– Spencer

Karibu CM4K fieldtip 2015…..I understand you guys have snow today. It is warm but fairly overcast in Nairobi today.

We arrived at our accommodation in Nairobi, after a hassle free journey only to find that the handover hadn’t occurred and the previous tennants were still there……just leaving but still there! One of them, an unpleasant US Citizen was determined to make his leaving as slow as possible and seemed to think it was our fault for having the temerity to turn up on time. Anyway…..he left and the handover took place. Most of the cleaning was done this morning.

Today has been spent generally relaxing and shopping at the local shopping centre. We are just about to start discussing tomorrow where we will spend the first of a 3 day community media capacity building & training workshop introducing participants to the equipment and planning/story boarding the content generation for the following day in Ngong – where we hope to establish a community media centre.

That’s it for today….more tomorrow.

Peter

Firstly by some miracle non of our suitcases were over the limit, which is something everyone should be impressed about.

The journey to Nairobi was hassle free, very long. But made shorter and much more fun courtesy of unlimited FREE alcohol on the plane. For future reference if anyone thinks getting drunk on the plane is a good idea, it is not.

We arrived safely, no one died 🙂 that much is obvious… statistics say that 99.9% of people who are clinically dead can not actively engage in communication, that includes blogs and posting selfies at every opportune moment. Authorities casually carry giant AK47s around, as tempted as I was to ask if I could have a go, I resisted.

The rest of the night passed without incident, , played pool, ate some French Fries and chicken nuggets (really getting stuck into traditional African Cuisine with that one) and then went to bed.

Tomorrow we are heading to Kenyetta university for our first workshop 🙂 so there should be lots more to say’1

CM4K QUOTE OF THE DAY

“We’re in Switzerland, look at that. Oh switzerland.” (Angastinioitis, M. 2015)

We all arrived home safely to our mum’s waiting for us, I really enjoyed the trip and think as well as teaching a lot I learnt a lot from them and I learnt more about editing in a few days then i knew before which will help me with my dissertation. I am so proud of all of us 🙂 Miss you already

On our last day we went to the second day of Stories from our Cities photography exhibition, because we had broken down at the Massi Mara due to timing we couldn’t get there the day before to help. However when we got there not alot had been done, so we began to help put things up and get things ready for the opening, after we had put a wall of photos up Fred came and told us we had done it wrong so we had to start again, with little time and few resources to get things stuck up we had to work quickly, by the time of the opening it was finished and due to our schedule we had to leave after pictures. I think this turned put really well and it was really nice seeing the different pictures of Brighton and Kenyan people. 

The Safari was amazing, we got to see four of the BIG 5 and we got so close. It was an amazing experience I shall never forgot i loved it and I am going to add lots of pictures, especially of elephants. We then broke down in the middle of the park just as it was about to close, which was terrifying but I’ll be telling that story until I am an old lady and looking back it was hillaroius. On this trip i think we were all faced with some ups and downs and I am so proud of all of us for handling them all so well. Good job team!!

We went to meet the Governor but he was in Nairobi that day so we ended up having a meeting with the Deputy Governor which was interesting and we told him what we were doing and how we were helping. 

When we came back to the school we had little to do as we had finished our film and the other group had the computer, the night before we had a discussion on what to do the following day an our idea was to swap the video and photography groups around so they could teach each other the skills they learnt, however by this point the photography team were not finished yet so we had to improvise, Jen decided we would teach our group stop motion some wanted to learn this others did not, so we just carried on with the ones who did teaching them the basic skills of stop motion, after we played around we uploaded them so they could see what they had done.

The following day we all went to a community near Lake Victoria, we got off to a shaky start as there weren’t many people there due to a lack of communication however they went to find people in order for our time travelling there to be put to some use. After they found people we began our meeting, we filmed it during the speeches, as everyone discussed how we could all help. After this the people split into two groups and as we were there just to observe, we filmed what the were talking about. This was interesting to watch, as we had come to teach and engage with them and we got to see what they had learnt from us not just media skills but communication as well.

We then went down to Lake victoria and as i had a tummy upset and didn’t want to make it even worse i dipped my toe in! After this is was our last night in Rongo which was sad but we will all stay in touch through facebook.

On day 2 at Rongo University we were waiting for everyone to be ready so myself, Maddy and Jen decided instead of wasting time to begin setting up the editing software we would be using, as we knew we would be pressed for time to do it later. However due to technical difficulty we were unable to set it up and later resulted in using Peters laptop to edit.

We then travelled to the Gold mines, which was really interesting I didn’t know the process of it and after going there and hearing peoples stories I feel making our group documentary on it was worth while. As we were pushed for time we began filming B-roll and then did an interview with a lady who worked there, as she was working to making the viewers who might not know the process see it first hand. As she didn’t speak English we agreed to add subtilise during the editing. After we had done this we began the presenting of the introduction and conclusion, I feel this all went well and according to schedule however towards the end we suggested what they could do to help speed up the process and they didn’t listen but we decided to let them get on as it was their documentary not ours. We then came back and uploaded all our footage to Peters computer and began editing whilst showing them what we were going to do and asking them what they wanted us to do. Due to time constraints we couldn’t do a editing tutorial on the projector like we first planned however due to the other group having technically difficulty they joined ours and it became a editing tutorial, which worked out well for them as they would be editing the next day and then new what to do. After cutting it, putting it in order, adding transitions, music, ect, we all watched it back and liked it. Although due to technically difficulty again the music didnt import properly but now we are home we can fix it and export to youtube after doing this we will send them the link. In the future we should take more laptops with the correct editing software on it, but it all worked out in the end.