Today was similar to yesterday in regards to lack of organisation.. gerry doesnt seem to have mastered the art of communication and once again lugged us along with the rongo students three hours away to a rural community on the edge of lake victoria. Similar to yesterday there had been some sort of mix up and as it was market day noone had turned up.. this was rectified by a member of the community going to the nearby school to round up the troops to make it look as though there hadn’t been an attendance issue. In my (and not only mine, peters and the rest of the brighton students) opinion the trip was somewhat confusing and rude to begin with anyway as none apart from gerry knew what our plans were; we didnt know who we were visiting or why and therefore our very appearance in our masses could have been seen as a intrusion.

All of our work there with the community would have been fueled by assumptions and would have been a pointless experience for both parts because 1: there needs were not established prior to our visit meaning we were not prepared for what was to come and 2: the sheer amount of students that turned up with no material prepared could have been/probably was seen as an intrusion which defeats the whole object of partnering with others and contradicts community work as it does not allow the recipient’s to feel comfortable with sharing what their needs are which results in us generating their needs for them in a sense.

We did however eat some delicious fish from lake victoria and got a chance to edit the footage we hadnt had time to finish in Rongo; this spare time we had allowed us to reflect on our experience in Kenya so far and gave us a little bit of time to organise the aspects of editing that we hadn’t finalized.

You see africa on the television in heart breaking charity adverts and you feel a sudden urge to help others thats often quicky taken away by an advert for KFC or something along those lines and the moments gone; its not until you experience poverty first hand such as today does it actually sink in that these people need help. Today visiting the londiani boarding school was an eye opening experience; we met so many children who quite literally are living off the basics and their lack of food, clean water and parents tugged at my heart strings, yet they were possibly the happiest bunch of little faces I think ive seen. Their innocent smiles filled me with happiness followed by an overwhelming sense of guilt because it highlighted the fact that, to quote my mummas band, ‘there is no longer any valid excuse for mass poverty’ (Fat Life. 2000) and it made me feel guilty for how lucky I have been.

Their sense of community is one ive never experienced before as they pull together as a family to make the most of what they have. They are so incredibly resourceful, using everything they can to their advantage; from growing their own food/owning their own cows to reduce milk costs to mixed, overcrowded classes with understaffed teachers. All feelings of guilt and confusion aside today was a happy experience for both sides I feel and we got some good footage to use in the video. The children seemed happy and thats all that matters, electricity and clean water are things that will come with time but I am confident that they will get what they deserve; after all they are a highly rated school that more and more people want their children to attend so hopefully with the help of others they can achieve a better quality of life. Today posed a number of those life questions that I cannot answer and I think thats why I felt the way I did…. why do these people have nothing while others bathe in metaphorical gold? How is that fair? ‘it is the birth right of every man woman and child on this planet to share in the abundance of life and to be spared unnessecary suffering. We were given the garden in order that we may grow the fruit, pick the fruit and share the fruit.’ (Fat Life. 2000) so why are people still without? It nakes no sense to me. These are questions I do not have the answer to but today has urged me to help in any way I can to make the less fortunate a little less-less fortunate in any way I can and when I get back to brighton I am going to put this into practice and make use of the many volunteer programmes I have been looking at but never followed through.

As we left the lovely school and the equally as lovely and curious children we faced a lonnngggg journey ahead of us that again shocked me. I was aware we were going to be travelling along a dirt track for a lot of the journey to rongo because the road was under construction and was prepared for this; I dont get travel sick so hakuna matata….. until the coach quite literally almost tipped on its side into a ditch on several occassions. I was on the edge of my seat for a good half an hour/hour
and trying not panic! Eratic driving scares me as it is.. add some heat and a scarily close drop to the mix and youve got yourself a bag o’nerves. I reminded myself that the driver obviously must have driven that way before and therefore knew the route; this helped a lot but I still stuck to my ostrich ways and stuck my head in the sand and pretended all was fine; which it was, just nerve racking. We are still on the coach at the moment and about 45 minutes away from where were going my earwigging is correct. I am sleepy, peckish and my bums gone numb so I hope our end destination will arrive in the near future.

Today we took a trip to Ndhiwa on Lake Victoria. The journey was very long and we had a meeting with the principle when we got there. The people from the village who came along got into two groups and started talking about ways in which their partnership with Rongo University College and better media communications. Chaz and I both stayed behind to film what was relayed back (however there were issues with hearing the audio without being too invasive).

And then this was for lunch…

Today we woke up early again and waited around for the day to get going. All of the students and the lecturers travelled to Migori for a meeting with the Governor (which ended up being with the deputy Govener) about the prospect of sending students from Rongo University to the University of Brighton for a few weeks. That was interesting and I enjoyed seeing a lot of Migori.

When we got back, it was lunchtime and I managed to eat too much food again. Our photography group only had a few issues with the video to sort out and the final changes to perfect. We talked through what need to be done and sorted it out before adding it to YouTube and Facebook. Under the name of ‘A Gold Mining Paradox: Faces of Rural Poverty’

We started this day with another very big breakfast. After breakfast both University of Brighton and Rongo University College students got the bus to one of the local villages where they were Gold mining. We did a lot of technique practice on portrait photography and their photographs came out amazing. When we all got back to the university, we started importing the pictures into Moviemaker to begin making it into a photographic video story. After a few technology issues when Moviemaker was not compatible with the photographs we had taken we had to change our plan.

We introduced the students to Photoshop and taught them a few of the major functions in editing a photograph. They had a bit of time to experiment with it themselves and see how they could mutilate the original images they had taken. We managed to get Moviemaker to work and started editing the video whilst teaching them Movie Maker basics.

THEN THERE WAS A HUGE PROBLEM WITH THE SOUND…

We called it a night a said we would return to it the next day when we had a clear mind. Often little things like that need you to stand back for a bit for you to be able to realize the issue is something quite easily fixed.

We left our hotel at 8 o’clock and drove into Rongo University. This is where we had an amazing breakfast where my eyes were too big for my belly. We had introductions to the Dean of Media Communications and all of the other professors, including the students. Then we separated into four groups; two video, one audio and one photography. (I was happy that I got a chance to do some photography with the students, as I was clueless when it came to the video production workshops in Nairobi). We started mind mapping with groups, talking about what topics they wanted to discuss and raise awareness. They wanted to concentrate on marriages, – after a discussion with Peter, we thought that it would be difficult to photograph (unless we were to convieniently stumble across a Kenyan marriage). We managed to come up with another idea, “Faces of Rural Poverty”.

–          What are the health implications of poverty?

–          How can we raise awareness?

–          How can you photograph poverty?

After lunch we started doing photography tutorials..

–          Framing

–          Landscape and portrait

–          Rule of thirds

–          Camera angles

–          Close ups

–          Putting up tripods

–          Storyboarding

–          Using the camera to focus

–          Blurring different objects in and out

Getting up early for the safari was pretty exciting until the bus was late (surprisingly) but we got there in the end. Seeing the herd of elephants was definitely the highlight of the first part of my day, as we managed to get up close to see them with their young.

From probably the best day of the trip things changed with the news of the oil leak. As always we kept our spirits high and made light of the situation. Having been discussing how to defend ourselves under lion attack, when the van that was passing offered to tow us back to the gate I think I’m right in saying we were relieved. |f it hadn’t been for the late exit from the mara we wouldn’t have seen the two male lions which was another highlight of the day.

Continuing to keep our spirits high we played cards until Peter told us we would be staying at the camp. Arriving in the dark we hadn’t seen the tents and expected the worst, especially as the only facilities we had seen were the loos (holes in the ground) which were filled with cockroaches. However being taken to our tents was the third highlight of the day as we realised we were glamping! Squeals of excitement filled our tent until we realised how tired we were from the day’s ups and downs and fell asleep.

So many positives came from the breakdown. Some of us lived the dream in the luxury jeep with the honeymooners, we got to see some more hippos, we saw the male lions for the first time and experienced a night on the Mara glamping which meant we were there also for the beautiful sunrise.

When we arrived at the gold mine the teachers established a rapport with the locals before we got off the bus. This meant that the community were more willings to allow us to film and interview them. However it was only our group that had based our film around gold mining, so arguably the presence of the other groups and arrive on a coach was unnecessary.

Our group of trainers made a point of asking only the crucial roles (the interviewer, camera man, and one trainer) to be there during the interview so we didn’t crowd our interviewee. We felt this would allow the interviewee to give more honest answers, without being distracted. Despite this our groups and members of other groups didn’t really pay much attention to this suggestion. We thought their ignorance of this maybe something to do with the cross over of cultures that being crowded in this way would shy a prudish Briton, but not so a Kenyan.

When we got back to the university we faced a number of technical difficulties and for a time we really struggled to keep momentum and engagement. The other group had similar issues with editing so we combined groups and talked through the editing process as a whole. Accessing the community needs but also working with limited internet access was often challenging and frustrating. Having one computer controlling 4 desktops is cost effective but rather impossible when it came to trying to edit because it meant everything was very slow. Sometimes it felt like nothing was going to come together therefore when we managed to get the film finished it was quite an accomplishment, as I’m sure the other video, photography, and audio groups would agree.

Both at the gold mine and during editing we did our best to work on community inclusion. This was not quite the case when we made the 3 hour trip to Lake Victoria. Unfortunately the community wasn’t really expecting us which we have come to expect as part of the Kenyan way of doing things. This meant that even excluding us (the University of Brighton students), the discussions consisted of 1 community member to every 5 participants from Rongo University, and in the other group even more. In addition the academics from Rongo dictated and directed most of the discussions. Therefore what was meant to be community engagement turned into total community invasion. One of the students from Rongo even congratulated a community member on attending the meeting. I thought this a little patronising, especially as the community group had only been quickly been pulled together after our arrival so they probably didn’t have much choice.

The trip to Lake Victoria didn’t actually need the presence of the University of Brighton at all as we did nothing to contribute, except allow Jerry to present us like show ponies. Much like the meeting with the governor yesterday, I felt it was time wasted talking about what we are trying to develop here rather than actually making these things happen. However eating fresh fish and ugali with our hands was quite the Kenyan experience.

Everyone decided to go to bed rather early after we had packed up our stuff in the hostel. I woke up this morning at six for my third freezing cold shower of the trip and started getting ready. We left a little late, however that seemed like the norm for Kenyan time, as they are all very chilled out. Our first part of the journey took about 3 hours, it was incredible to see a lot more of Kenya through the coach window and I could not sleep, as I did not want to miss anything. We spotted some zebras and baboons on the way too.

We arrived at the school at around 2pm and walked up the gates. As we entered the school, the kids were singing us a welcome song, which was incredible, and we walked through the middle of them as we were on the red carpet. After lunch as a quick tour around the school, we visited the different classrooms to talk to the kids about what they were learning and they were so interesting in us. Asking about our clothes, jewelry and about England. Everyone wanted to shake hands (even the tinny kids). Sadly we could not stay too long after we finished filming an interview and B-roll for a promotional video to build a new well for them, but we said our goodbyes and left. I am now writing this blog on a coach we have all been on for a very long time on our way to Rongo University, very apprehensive about what our accommodation will be like.

Our first day at Rongo University was a little tricky. Once we had got the housekeeping out of the way (and had about 3 meals by about 10am) we set ourselves up in groups. As less participants wanted to do photography, I quickly adapted and moved to the video production team.  When discussing the fact that I have far less editing knowledge than Maddy and Chaz, we came to the conclusion that this was in fact a help to our group. I was able to almost translate when Maddy and Chaz were explaining something that to them is second nature, I could put it into simpler more visual ways in order to communicate.  The tricky part of today was unlike Nairobi, out participants didn’t seem as keen, or seem to see the importance of the planning stages of the film. This was unfortunate because the planning and story boarding is extremely crucial, but we found keeping them focused and attentive was challenging. When filming though the group came into their own. They took their roles very seriously making sure they did everything that was required of that specific role.  In hindsight perhaps the planning stages would have been easier if we had done some kind of ice breaker, like the one in Nairobi.