On Sunday we started our bumpy and jumpy ride to Rongo University, with planned visit to a primary school in the village of Loundi.

My experiance at Kingsway Prepatory School is one that will be hard to forget. On arrival we were greatly welcomed by both staff and students who all joined in in singing welcoming songs. These songs continued, everytime we entered a different classroom the room was filled with voices. The idea behind the trip here was to film and photograph areas of the school in order to create a promotional video to make people aware of the fact that the school are in need of electricity to supply the school. Whilst there the director gave us a tour of the school and its grounds, we were shown a well that was in the process of being constructed, it is vital that this well gets finished as at present school children are still having to walk up to 3km in order to collect water to provide the school. This results in the students missing part of their education, vital for them to have in order for them to fulfill their life aspirations.

After this visit will all jumped back on the Rongo bus to continue onto Rongo University College. When we arrived we were greatly received by staff members. After the long journey it was nice to finally arrive there!

I only have a few moments before we leave this morning for Rongo and I’d like to post this as I’m not sure how much internet access we’ll have over the next few days.

The Capacity Building through Community Media workshop was a big success….2 really impressive short videos produced from concept to premier in 2 days plus a fun behind the scenes and a process video were produced. The podcast group, which had worked so well the day before ran into a bit of a technical disaster but Angela & Emily worked through it and were able to get it finished and posted on here……the group participants have agreed to produce their own version. If that happens we will post it here also.

The workshop wrapped up with everyone from students to NGO and community participants alike agreeing this needs to be developed further and so it’s on to Rongo University College and the next stage of the trip….see you soon.

Today was our last day at hill park hotel for the community media capacity building workshop which is a participatory workshop teaching audio and video skills. After we finished editing for our entrepreneurship video early in the morning, we spent the following hours parodying a kenyan dating show where we staged the show and pretended to be a the characters. Whilst this was amusing as it was happening once the footage was edited and taken out of context I realised it really wasn’t that funny, for me anyway, and I was making a tit of myself which is under normal circumstances isn’t a problem, however in edited video format is just embarrassing. After being ridden with paranoia that this video would go viral and I would be a Kenyan youtube sensation I learnt something ; don’t let anyone film you when your hungover, think over what your doing and how this can be taken out of context and also bear in mind that Kenyans, unlike Europeans are less acquainted with little silly videos and thus get a little over excited, especially on a video production workshop. After being reassured that this video was really not that funny and probably not given any attention my mind is at rest now. The end of the workshop was very nice as we watched all the videos we made and and then listened to great input from Willice on the video which highlighted the importance of the issues portrayed within Kenyan culture. It was really great seeing the differences in both the subjects of the and also the production approaches. All in all again today was another successful day, the whole workshop was enjoyable and educative for both parties and it’s nice to have Kenyan acquaintances which we can even contact should we ever come back.

Sir Roderick, ( later named lord of the dears), Maddy, Emily, Jen and myself awoke very early to meet our Kenyan partners Suji, Dekker and David at Nairobi university to film b-roll and interview the aspiring entrepreneur. The university ground was big and very well kept which worked out great for the voxpop we as the background was diverse. After we aided filming organisation, Rod and myself went off to film some additional b-roll as our time on campus was limited. After shooting barely anything we were approached by a campus security officer who told us we would need permission to film on campus. He wouldn’t leave so we had to call David to help us out. Once he arrived and they both him and the security officer disappeared, Rod and I realised that this was our first ever opportunity to bribe someone. After David returned we hastily left the campus to embark on journey on a matutu to hill park hotel to meet the others. Because we had finished all our filming we got to start with the editing process on Vegas where Dekker was actually significantly more advanced than us and we got taught how to use the programme. His editing skills are generally quiet sophisticated, the main input and guidance about compositioning including cutting out unnecessary interview footage, appropriate transitioning and soundtrack placing. It was actually really useful for us too because Vegas has been introduced and we learned the basics. What was even more interesting the fact that we had the opportunity to ask David Suji and Dekker about tribal culture and what this background actually means to them. What was especially interesting was the fact that their affiliation with their tribes is actually not particularly strong and that it was often mainly only politics that are fuelling the continuous conflict. The fact that we could ask an insiders opinion and not the media’s was really interesting especially as they are from different tribes. All in all a very successful second day filled with laughter information and a grand selection of hotel food.

Today has been a harder day than I had originally imagined.. things went wrong at the beginning of the day that were easily overcome, such as lack of equiptment (projector ect), but we made good use of our time after the first half an hour faff and began our a-roll filming. We spent quite a long time deciding on shots as the participants were a little/a lot picky on where they would like to be interviewed.. we suggested a number of suitable locations but they had a specific view in mind of how they would like the documentary to look so insisted on finding the perfect location; this was a slight waste of time but I feel it was nessecary in order for them to learn about shots and camera angles so in my personal opinion time was not completely wasted. Time was wasted however after the interviews had been filmed as we had a number of technical issues, that due to lack of editing ability on our part meant we had to leave the participants at some what of a loose end while we collectively tried to figure out why the footage was not being recognised on angelas/peters computer. Technical issues have been a proverbial pain in the arse today as they have slowed down the overall process of editing; angelas computer wasnt HD ready so couldnt recognize the camera and for some unknown reason the cameras had been mixed up during the night, resulting in two days worth of footage spead over the two groups cameras. I felt embarrassed for a time while these issues were being solved (thank you maddy for coming to the rescue you beautiful lady, you saved our metaphorical bacon) because as a group of 3rd year media students, who have travelled half way accross the world to teach people media skills to then turn around and say to the people who are meant to be benefitting from our skills ‘im sorry, I dont understand why this is happening’ felt incredably unproffessional and I couldnt help feeling as though my university experience hadnt actually taught me a great deal (in terms of editing……). After a bit of a fluster on my part and a cigarette we knucked down, asked for help from someone who knew more about premiere and put our footage in order according to our storyboard; due to the nearing home time-time we decided (after being asked by all of the participants) that we would edit when we got home so tomorrow would be a little easier for all parties and we could get everything done.

We got back to the camp after stopping off for a bottle or three of wine and realised that, as we had agreed to almost finalize the documentary, we had quite a lot of work to do so set off in a quiet room editing. It is now 11 o’clock and evryone is intoxicated on the delicious wine apart from us and I am writing this blog. Actually quite ironically as I wrote that last sentence I was challenged to down my full glass of wine as we had missed out a little on the communal drinking.

All tired whinging aside I actually thoughrally enjoyed today as it made me assess my own personal skills; I realised that while I dont actually know that much about editing or video production I knew a considerable amount more than the people we were teaching. I also realised that teaching is an incredibly hard thing to do and I have discovered a new found respect for every teacher. Ever. I have made new rafiki’s here and my time here has proved actually an incredibly valuable and eye opening experience. I am now going to catch up on the wine I have missed out on and prepare myself for tomorrows challenging yet surprisingly enjoyable tasks. Kenya is grand and right now peter is givong a speach that I must film so good night and god bless!!

Today has been a day filled with new words, new people and new skills; I have learnt more in the past two days about editing than I have in my 5 years doing media studies… which shocked me for a number of obvious reasons. While I have tried throughout my education to pick up softwares such as final cut and premiere pro it has always been a struggle to hold onto what I have learnt… much like card games I learn something new and when it comes to putting into practice what I learnt, the next time its as if I had never learnt it in the first place; this has in the past left me feeling unmotivated and actually quite stupid. This time however I seemed to have held onto the information I learnt (I hope….) and this is possibly due to the fact that other people were counting on me to teach them what I knew. Last night we had to edit for a while in a quiet room in order for us to get our work done, this was tedious and annoying but I learnt a surprising amount from trial and error and watching maddy save the day (thank you again maddy you saaaaved our lives).

We got to the hotel early to find that only dennis was there, we toyed with he thought of waiting for the others so they could add their opinions on what we had produced over a coffee and biscuit then came to the conclusion that to wait for them would be an incredible waste of time so decided to crack on with fiddly and time consuming issues such as audio syncing, titles, backfround music and transitions. Everyone else in the group arrived 2 hours later than they had originally said they were going to, which actually, although rather annoying at the time, allowed us to have a more focused view point of the end product and allowed us a little unstressed time for tweaking.

We finished the documentary in what I would happily say was record time but again, encountered a number of technical issues which pushed our finish time back at least 2 hours. The first problem we faced was that for some unknown reason the material from the flip cam worked but as soon as we unplugged it, one of those pop up warning boxes that everyone loves popped up telling us that the files were pending; we decided to do as the ostrich do in this instance and stick our head in the metaphorical sand until maddy came to the rescue, cape and all! We then encountered sound issues as the soundtrack the participants wanted was quite loud and davids VO was quite quiet; here we spent a considerable amount of time playing with audio levels and track highlights until the footage made audible sense. Exporting then took up a large chunk of the day because none of us actually knew how to, again maddy came over to save the day along with sir roderick and collectively we managed to export it and uploadit to YouTube… Wrong might I add which then resulted in a blurry end product and a black border around the on screen image. All in all I have been incredibly impressed with the amount of work everyone has done on both sides, we all pulled together as a community to help eachother and had fun in the process; we have made new rafiki’s during our three short but packed days and.im proud of what we have achieved.

After my first post about communication I think it’s apt to return the same point again, after our visit to the UN HQ for the first workshop of the trip.  The day kicked off with a couple of introductory speeches in a conference room that we’d be using for the remainder of the day.  It came as a bit of a shock to us (the students) that the figures who were making speeches were in fact our participants to train.  This mostly because most of the students/trainers who were meant to be there, were not – due to work commitments. We had assumed a typical make up of students; young, casual and probably for most of them – unlikely having much experience in the workplace. We were faced with an older crowd, in suits and for most of them – in a professional workplace. However, students and trainers can cover many demographics and backgrounds and it was our job to face this challenge and just get on with it.  Which we did.  I must express my thanks now to a fantastic group I was working with – the girls conquered on despite what we were faced with.  Still, there were challenges ahead of us…

Even after a quick ‘warm-up’ game between all participants (before splitting in to two groups) there after followed some awkwardness.  We started with mind mapping.  Had we defined  – in detail – what a mind map was and why it was important for prompting ideas and brainstorming, we wouldn’t have been left looking at blank faces and body language that seemed to suggest discomfort. Nonetheless, things began to slowly progress.  Storyboarding didn’t come without its own challenge, although was a little easier.

Again today, as I have done before, I found myself making misjudged assumptions about the people around me and in this case our participants.  I felt at times amateurish in the limited knowledge that I had and that our participants would be critically assessing this incompetence.  However in fact, they could not have been more engaging and committed to the video project.