Today was full of interesting, challenging and engaging issues. Despite the fact that the quote above was taken from the UN Volunteers programme leader, for the most part we focused on the opposite of volunteering. A ‘partnership’ was formed between those from Brighton and our Kenyan partners. Note I’m avoiding the word leaders here to describe us, as I feel it is unfitting due to the mutual exchange of cultures, ideas and skills that today presented. Although we did lead the technical side of the training, what I found interesting was the unexpected amount I learnt from our partners. For example the formality of the day’s introductory speeches, alongside William’s comment that they “dress smartly because [they] recognise the occasion”, suggested not only how formal the Kenyan culture seems to be, and how important this training is for self development, but also towards developing their country’s engagement with social media at large. Therefore referring back to Dimitri’s idea that suggests the importance of presenting and sharing information coherently with and across nations. This ability to express one’s self through social media is, he implies, the basis for growth and development in many different aspects of Kenyan life.

This evening, after a very stressful and drawn out process of trial and error, myself and Angela cracked audacity! Fading audio and and back out again was something that was extremely challenging, after reading many audacity manuals and watching countless YouTube clips we got there. This is a sigh of relief as I feel less apprehensive about training participants in the workshops tomorrow.

the evening was spent calming myself down with South African white wine alongside sir Roderick in anticipation of tomorrow’s speech which I was going to hold in the UN African headquarters. The UN was a truly wonderful place and we were so honoured to be there and I was even more honoured to introduce us there to our Kenyan partners. The day started with inspirational speeches where in one the director of the UN volunteer programme told us that if we ‘if you can manage information you can rule the world’ which left me feeling hopeful about my future and inspired to improve my organisational skills. Once we were placed in groups with our Kenyan partners the initial hour was slightly awkward as both parties were apprehensive of one another, however after the plan for the day progressed and we actually grew really fond of one another. The programme went to plan and we actually got more than anticipated done which allows our group to visit Nairobi university to help interview our groups subject tomorrow morning. All in all a very successful day which left me believing in myself and my and my public speaking skills. Thanks to the UN’s HIV/aids awareness programme which is helping the prevention of these diseases amongst Kenyan communities we acquired a goody from a UN toilet dispensers which was the cherry on top of this fantastic day.

Today we went to the UN to begin our video production training… it was ACE. They had giraffe bushes and loads of flags. The day kicked off with informative speeches from Willice, Demetry, Kevin and Sonja (who did a fab job and was the best by far). After those it was down to us to get started on the workshop. This was a bit daunting but we did a successful ice breaker and got ourselves into two groups. Everyone was really quiet initially and not responding to our questions. To get over the challenge of engaging them and encouraging discussion we gave them examples of our own ideas and asked their opinions on them. This gave them an idea of what approach to take and soon revealed that they are very passionate and proud to be Kenyan and led to a mind map full of great points… they responded well to praise and I think this made them more confident in voicing their ideas so much so that we had to narrow our ideas down as they had too much to wanted to raise awareness about. When we started training them to the equipment it was really fun and they got to grips with it quickly… the filming of sarahs tribal marriage was a highlight. Another highlight was finding out about their background and culture and all of us discussing and comparing life in England and Kenya. Aside from the engagement challenge, another difficultly we had was that we were often talking over each other as we all had a lot to say and weren’t used to the dynamics of teaching in a group but that is something we have learnt from 🙂 overall, the training was productive and effective and I am looking forward to seeing the documentary develop tomorrow! (it is about peace, marriage and cultural diversity)

After the workshop we went to the massai market which was really cool but also a bit scary… people grab you and pull you over and someone wanted to buy my playsuit off me so I panicked and ended up getting ripped off for a kaftan that looks like its made from a potato sack.

I am now really tired but enjoying sitting in the garden with it still being warm 🙂 also, we the saw the first monkey of the trip in the garden during brekkie today. Ooh ah ah.

After a night of supporting the local Economy of Kenya by buying a bottle or three of South African wine with sonja I awoke to breakfast featuring a cameo by the local monkeys. After breakfast we headed to the UN ( or as Sarah Boardmans would call it the NU) to start day one of our workshop, peter forgot all the of equipment so it was lucky I remembered to bring my camera with me. We arrived to conference room 9 where there were less then expected participants which threw a spanner in the works. Though luckily we solved the problem with haste, sonja was one of the stars today with one of the most motivational speeches I have ever heard almost reducing a grown man to tears. The CM4K gang split up into groups of 5 and each took 4 of the participants to teach them how to make videos to help them go into communities and pass on the skills to help those who are in less fortunate situations gain employability skills. One of the hardest situations of the day was the start of the group trying to get them all to get involved as some were more quiet than others. After a little while people started coming out of their shells and when we got to filming everyone was really interested in it. During the our talks with with our group; Dekker, Suji and Dave we learnt a lot about the kenyan tribes and their politics showing how community based learning worked with each other teaching them new things. The most difficult part of my day was the stomach bug forcing me to make three hasty trips to the UN toilets. After the first day of workshops we went to the Masai markets where I got to experience my first bout of bargaining resulting in a half price passport cover. Afterwards we were invited to one of Peters famous coffee dates. All in all a fab day.

Today was our first day participating in and facilitating workshops for youth development.Waking up to an early start was a challenge. But there were many more challenges we faced throughout the day which we had to overcome. The aim of the workshops was to encourage volunteers to engage in skill training focussed on enhancing their own personal development and how to then use those skills for addressing community needs. After the introductory speeches from the Kenyan youth representatives we integrated ourselves amongst the volunteers. Firstly we had to think on our feet (as Peter warned we may have to do) there ended up being a lot less volunteers than we expected and many of us! We dealt with this by sorting ourselves into groups of mixed skills and dividing participants in to two groups. During the workshop i initially felt quite confident about teaching video as i have a good knowledge and understanding of it. To start we stuck to our plan for planning and development their ideas but we found it didn’t work as well as expected and we struggled to get an idea. I was a little thrown back because i felt i couldn’t help with the idea generating as much as i would have liked, my knowledge around entrepreneurship was not too strong. However when we got to the practical teaching they seemed to cooperate really well and engage with the equiptment. There were some language barriers but it was easier as the day went on! I found they were really eager to better their education and appreciative of our time. Whilst i felt they already had video skills they seemed to learn more technical terms and skills. We conducted test interviews and planned our storyboard. They also had a play with going and filming some b roll with the framing skills they learnt. As the day finished we concluded that we would travel to Nairobi university to do a vox pop and interview within the university.
Today was certainly a challenge i didn’t know what to expect and we were all a bit out of our comfort zones. Although i think we will be able to run smoother workshops from now on and in Rongo as we have had the experience.

Last night was excellent in many ways as we laughed and drank and drank some more.. we had entertainment from sonja and rod while they drank a little more than the rest of us and watched as chaz taught/showed rod the correct way to dance to tina turner. There was much hilarity while we enjoyed our second day in sunny kenya.
Today began in one of the worst ways imaginable with about 30 different alarms before 12 o’clock; a slight exaggeration but a fair comment, it was however was made considerably better by the delicious appearance of morning sausages… sausages always un-grump the morning! After our breakfast in the sun we made our way to the UN to start our facilitating workshops where we encountered a number of obstacles that could have made the day a write off but we pulled together as a group and made the most of the situation; and it all turned out well in the end! The first obstacle we faced was the lack of equipment, while it was nice and safe on peters bed it was no use to us there and we were all a little disheartened to learn that our yesterday plans had all been for nothing… again another exaggeration but at the time in the tired and daunting heat thats how it felt. We did however overcome this issue by a simple re-jig of the schedule and the world was not over, if anything it was a welcomed challenge that we all faced with optimism and enthusiasm! The next obstacle we faced was that the lovely willis had not told us the part when he found out that only half of the people meant to turn up to the workshops were going to be there; probably an innocent mistake but it would have been helpful for us to know as again we had planned for atleast double the turn out. This was however another potential blessing in disguise as it allowed for smaller and more focused groups with 5 participants and 5 supposed experts in each group.

After what seemed like a lifetime of mind mapping, our indecisive group chose the subject of cultural diversity in relation to marriage to focus on and we decided that we would highlight the effects intercultural marriage has on peace in Kenya. This idea was then taken off the cards as willis had specific topics in mind for us to cover; thankfully we managed to keep our original chosen topic as willis wanted us to focus on interfaith, which was then changed to intercultural differences as none of the group could quite grasp the importance of making a film to raise awareness of a subject area such as interfaith as there are more important issues to tackle. After some more mind map faffing we introduced the equipment to the participants and asked them to show us what they had leant from us; this went better than I had originally expected as they took in all of the information really quickly (which was quite a lot might I add) and were enthusiastic about learning what we had to give. After some really effective storyboarding where the participants had some really good suggestions about what to include in the video it was almost time to leave so we thought we would introduce b-roll to them before we parted ways and have a go at filming what they thought would be visually engaging and relevant to the topic.

We said our goodbyes after our jam packed day of community based learning and headed off to the market for some relaxing shopping….. that actually made me laugh as I wrote it! The massai market was quite literally a dream come true for my magpie self with all the colours and shiney things for me to look at, and im pretty sure I could have spent the entire trip there if it wasnt for the understandably needy sales people. There were people everywhere all ‘up in my grill’ trying to sell me their pretty things for actually a reasonable price but with a lack of funds and sleepy eyes it was time to escape to frozen yoghurt and a long ride back to base camp!

Now its time to wait for a beverage that im pretty sure isnt going to turn up, but im ok with it because im in kenya!!

‘Inspiration in action’ is the UN volunteer tagline. The purpose is to encourage youth volunteers to learn skills that will be useful for employability in the future. Volunteering is a loose term- by collaborating with community groups in Kenya, volunteering is more about engaging in partnerships, developing relationships between each other in order to adhere to a civil society and social inclusions. Community based learning like the workshops we took part in today is a process of ‘service learning’, it’s about learning, reflecting and knowledge development.

My skill set doesn’t really include video production but along with the group I worked alongside with today I have gained a new skill. The workshops weren’t an easy process, although we had a well- thought out agenda it went out of the window when firstly the majority of the group wanted to do video (audio was omitted) and there were more of Brighton uni volunteers than Kenyan participants. The engagement process was difficult, we had to do a lot of prompting to get ideas flowing, things starting looking up when we gave visual demonstrations of the equipment. All participants were excited by drafting up the storyboard for the documentary on entrepreneurship, I think they couldn’t wait to get started in filming! We had mock interviews to practice for the real thing tomorrow. Shooting b-role was a lot of fun, we got to engage with each other a lot more and find out more about people’s skills and interests.

Today’s workshop was slow to get off the ground but then we progressed quickly. Engagement is a challenge, a lot harder than I ever imagined. All though we will face this again in Rongo I think we will find better ways to get over the icy- ness. The workshop was successful other than the hiccups!