Day 12 in the wilderness. Lack of contact with the outside world and leaking toilets is starting to get to me. But on the plus side its safari day in the Masai mara! We got up to an early start at 4 am and left by five to ensure we got to the Masai mara on time and had enough time to get back. Which typically all fell through when we broke down… However the day started with an exciting pace, we had some nice breakfast and lunch packed by the lovely staff at Rongo university. Once we arrived, following a bumpy ride into the Masai we soon saw an array of wildlife! I luckily ticked off all the ones i was desperate to see, lions, elephants, giraffes, and monkeys. We also came across hippos, Ostriches, rhinos, crocodiles, a multi coloured lizard!, zebras, many deer, birds, buffalo and a tortuous! Once the day started to get late we started to drive out of the Masai mara, unfortunately our van started leaking oil and we broke down. Soon someone passed and towed us out to help, but if it wasn’t for the van breaking down we wouldn’t of come across two male lions which we got extremely close to! Once the people our driver rang arrived they took over as the other car couldn’t support the van. Me, rod and emily had to stay in the van whilst the others ditched us and enjoyed a luxurious ride and got to spot some hippos! Clear now who aren’t the team players ey! Anyway after being towed out of dangerous lion territory we stopped at a camp to wait for the van to be fixed at the garage. After a long wait it was clear it was too dangerous for the driver to get us to Nairobi in the dark, so instead we stayed the night in a scary bug tent! I am sure this will all be funny in the morning.

Today we got to Rogo university a bit earlier so we could have time to drive to Lake Victoria. After breakfast we set off on the coach to visit the community next to Lake Victoria. After another bumpy three hours we parked up by the community centre to meet the people of the local communities. Coming as a big group of people was probably a bit intimidating to the group of people so after the speeches from Jerry, Willis and Peter we got the students of Rongo to organise the community members into two groups. Getting the Rongo students to interact with them was a better way to help communicate with them. Once they set up two groups we set up two cameras to film the meetings. We didn’t want to be shoving cameras in peoples faces so chaz, sarah and jen stood back and filmed discretely. (I was very impressed by the video skills jen and sarah learnt!). The visit to the lunch hall was interesting.. But the river was beautiful! After a long journey back we made it back for dinner and got some good sleep for the trip to the safari tomorrow.

Today we headed off on full bellies for the next part of our journey. After finishing work in Nairobi we set off for Rongo. Stopping off for a visit at a boarding school named. In only a short amount of time on the coach driving out of the city felt like i had experienced so much more of Kenya. We luckily saw some zebras, baboons and spring boks! Which made me even more excited for the safari! It soon became apparent the amount of poverty there was and how underdeveloped Kenya is. There was some beautiful views but it was also pretty sad. The stop at the school was brilliant. All the children were so excited to greet us and we had an amazing welcome into the school with singing from the students. These children were very fortunate to be in one of the best schools within the district, yet it was shocking that even though this was one of the best schools it still lacked facilities such as electricity and toilets they also had a lot of problems with water and the students had to share beds. The school had two wells 25 feet deep. But unfortunate they had to stop developing them, meaning they are in need of funding to continue work. In order to help raise awareness of this we filmed the head teacher and director of the school to make a promotional video for the school. Me, Rod and Lucy filmed the interview whilst they others got some b-roll of the children. Once we had finished we said our goodbyes and thank you’s to the staff and children. We then set of to our hotel, the road constructions caused a very bumpy ride! Which set us back a bit. Once we arrived we were pleasantly surprised with our accommodation and we soon got some z’d to recharge for our first day in Rongo.

Today i woke up with a sense of relief knowing that we had got all our editing done, we just had a few minor tweaks left to make and export and upload the video. As we only had one computer with the programme for cs6 that edited quickly we decided to let the other group do their editing and then we could finish ours at a later date. After breakfast we set of for a trip to meet the governor to explain and demonstrate the activities Rongo university had been involved in. When we arrived there was a bit of waiting around while Peter went inside. It turned out that the governor was not actually in Rongo but Nairobi! In consequence we drove to the deputy governors quarters to continue the meeting there. After a lot of introductions, Peter and jerry discussed what we had been doing and raised the point about hoping to take two Rongo university students to brighton for an exchange. The deputy was more than pleased by the work we had been doing and said he welcomed this sort of activity. Once we got back to the university it had gotten a bit late so the other groups continued working hard on getting their editing done, which meant we had the chance to let some of our group to play around with the cameras and practice some photography we also worked on some stop motion.

I was excited to visit the local communities this morning, we had the chance to interact with the people who work in mining. We took this opportunity to document our interviews and b roll for our video. I was unsure what to expect before we arrived and i was definitely touched by the situation. Although these people produce gold for a living they were living in poverty. There was also the issue of child labour which was sad to see. No child should have to work in those conditions, but they have no other choice. Having the interview with the woman went well although we couldn’t understand the language it got translated to us back in the classroom. This produced some problems as it took a while to translate and choose the footage. But we sent two people away to write out what they were saying on camera whilst we edited the rest. This made it a lot quicker and more productive in the editing process. As the day went on we powered through the editing and we managed to end up with just under five minutes of footage! Now we just have a few tweaks left to make and we can export and upload our video to youtube. Overall i think we worked really well today as a team and have produced a meaningful product.

We were a bit late this morning because of problems with the water and partially because we chased a mosquito across the room! Which unluckily disappeared. Anyhow we set off for our first trip to Rongo university on the coach. We were a bit apprehensive about how the day would plan out because of the uncertainty of how many people would be there. When we arrived we had a warm welcoming from the staff, we met with the principle then the deans and professors for a meeting and photograph. We then moved back to the classroom and began to divide the groups up. We had about 18 students which was a bit of a relief as we didn’t have too many in each group we decided to have two groups of video, one for photography and one for audio. We then let the students choose which they wanted to do. In mine Chaz’s and Jen’s group we had five students to work with. It was a lot easier to start this workshop having the previous experience of the workshops in Niarobi. However it was a lot harder to get the students to engage and be passionate about the documentary. They did enjoy using the equipment and seemed to take full advantage of the opportunity, they also picked up the skills we taught them quite quickly. We mind mapped some ideas and came up with issues surrounding gold mining. We decided to focus on poverty in gold mining and how it is ironic that the miners who dig gold for money are poor. We then drew up the Storyboard and began to film. We were going to have two interviews one with a female miner and the students lecturer. We filmed some b roll around the university and one of their lecturers. After some direction they started to understand concepts of b roll and framing. We then chose to get some footage of local poverty in rongo, we walked just outside of the university and filmed some of the village. Once we came back we started to wrap up our work writing the scripts and finalising the questions for preparation for the trip to the mines tomorrow.

Due to the issues that we had with the car the night before we weren’t able to go and help Fred set up stories from our cities on the Monday so we all just chilled out when we got home and had a few drinks and played a few games. The morning of the Tuesday that we were flying out, we went into Nairobi town to find the Barclays building. We got very lost and drove around for a while. When we found the building, we went up to the exhibition, which had not been set up yet. Peter and I were simply gutted that our images did not make the cut in the exhibition with our photographs.

Oh well, we helped frame and put up the work whilst dancing around with two very sweet little girls and then we left. We drove around to try to find a Maasai market where I could find the PERFECT giraffe. Unfortunately, we could not find any that were open to we headed back to pack. Peter went off for a nap and that is where it began…

As I lay down to take a quick nap before we had to leave for the airport at nine as asked Jen to give me a makeover. What she did to me, started the entire camp to get make overs, even Roderick. We all looked rather interesting…. And that is how we spent our last day in Kenya.

What an amazing day!!! We left very early to head to the Safari and in true Kenyan style the bus was an hour late. Meaning that we could have all got an extra hour in bed but oh well. The bumpy road to the Massai Mara was tough as we were squeezed in like sardines and our bums were numb. In the Safari we saw 4 of the big five which was exciting; lions, elephants, buffalo and a rhino. We also saw hippos, crocs, warthogs and monkeys.

The most exciting part of the day was getting really close to giraffes, we saw loads of giraffes, which I got excited about. :):):)

As we were leaving the park, we unfortunately broke down due to an oil leak. So we were towed out of the park (whilst some went in another van to watch some hippos). As we were leaving the park, we saw two male lions who were injured. Our poor little van was towed to a local hostel where we stayed the night. The texts that we stayed in were amazing it was as if we were glamping, and our tent was called giraffes. This just proves that many good things came out of something that could have ended so disastrous. 

Lions (giraffes, wilderbeest, elephants ect) and (lack of) tigers and bears oh no! Safari has been 100% excellent and considering all the mishaps and what-nots I think its gone as well as it possibly could have. The day started later and took longer than originally planned but we arrived at the massai mara safe and sound and saw what beauty the world has to offer all in one peaceful place.. we saw the big 5, minus the cheetah so technically the big 4 and witnessed the most amazing majestic animals in their natural habitat; it made me think of the world differently and I saw it through different eyes.. the massai as a community preserve the land for these animals and protect them from as much harm as they possibly can, its been amazing to see how the world works together with eachother in harmony for the benefit of all and the experience has left me feeling inspired to help and in awe of how ‘the other half’ live.

The van then developed a minor hole with major consequenses that again made me admire everyones sense of community. We faced a long wait amongst the lions at their feeding time in an overcrowded van full of sleepy and hungry women but everyone was optimistic and aside from the many getting eaten by lions jokes and light hearted moaning everyone actually pulled together quite well in my opinion and avoided unnessecary arguments and tension… I think… some people were quite rightly stressed but we all were quite fully aware that the whole situation was noones fault and there was nothing to do other than look on the bright side of things!