Angel | Community Media 4 Kenya

I woke up at exactly 5:20 am by my trap phone alarm for the morning prayers. I then had to do some washing as some of my clothes were dirty and I could not keep them anymore up to weekend since I am not sure if I will be available for cleaning. At around 8:00 am I was at the school waiting for my colleagues to join me. They walked in one after another ready for the day until 9:30 am when the Brighton University guys arrived.

Being the seventh day of the project, we were to edit the two day work that we had captured on Monday and Tuesday. The University of Brighton students joined us after they had their breakfast but unfortunately Hafsah didn’t make it with them because of illness; I felt my day wouldn’t be complete without a joke and strong exchange of words from my ‘customer’ Hafsah. Quick recovery dear. Back to the business of the day, in my video group, though we didn’t do much of editing but Angelica collected the establishment shots of the places we visited and opted to compile them by the use of iMovie on her laptop.

It was a nice experience to learn the basics of iMovie since it was my first time to work with it though I didn’t find it the best software for editing but may be it’s because I am used to Premier Pro. The work wasn’t done and we expect to complete it tomorrow with the seriousness and commitment it deserves.

I attended a lecture by madam Millicent Atieno at 2:00 pm as guys went for lunch. One will ask what the lecture has to do with this, relax and read my blog up to the end. The course unit is CMM 404, Development Communication and today’s lecture was basically on why the mass media is not appropriate for effective communication. It depends on ones understanding about mass media in this case. Mass media is controlled by elites and it’s commercialized, unlike the rural media that is liberating, indigenous and egalitarian. Some of the features of this rural media that made me see the lecture as a coincidence to what I am doing in the community are; Participatory, Gives a sense of belonging and develops and support cultural identity. A good example of rural media is a community radio station. Now tell me, is what I am doing in this project different from what I learnt today?

We had a short discussion on religion with Sam and Angelica; why do we exist? Sam argued on how he feels it is through evolution that we exist and that there is no Supreme Being that controls everything as my faith and Angel’s tells us. Katie seemed not happy with the topic that he requested us to either shut our mouths up or find another topic of discussion.

Our delicious dinner was served few minutes past 6:00 pm as we experienced a heavy rainfall that none of us expected.

Kassim Mohammed.

We have decided as a group to do joint blogs for the first two days whilst we are doing the same activities.

We began our journey by meeting at Gatwick Airport at 4pm (UK time). Our first flight was at 8:25pm to Dubai which took roughly 7 hours the plane was a huge double decker seating over 500 passengers. Luckily there were loads of films to keep us all entertained. We then arrived in Dubai where we had a 2 hour stopover. The smoking room was a new experience for us. We flew to Nairobi, which took 5 hours. The plane was slightly smaller this time and even though we were full of food and coffee we were really starting to lose energy.

Once we got to Nairobi there was a slight panic after we got through the visa control as the time on our phones hadn’t yet up updated from Dubai time. We rushed though the airports running with our cases because we thought we had 10 minutes to check our bags in, but in fact we still had over an hour… thanks Sam. The flight from Nairobi to Kisumu was only 30 minutes for which Katie slept through the whole flight. Once we arrived it was great to be greeted by Halima, Mercie, Charluf and Eve. They picked us up in the mini bus and drove us to Rongo University which was 4 hours away we finally arrived here at 9:30pm (Kenyan time). It was fascinating looking out the window and seeing the sun setting over Kenya and watching them going about their lives. Once we got into the Uni we had a great dinner and then drove back to our accommodation and crashed into bed.

This morning we drove to Kisi in a small 15-seater van and were all glued to the windows as we watched the amazing difference in culture and lifestyles pass us by. Once we were there, we bought SIM cards, withdrew some money from the bank, and bought some snacks and supplies from the supermarket. Including Toblerone ice creams!

Had a lovely lunch back at the university before doing ice breaking activities. First, we played concentration, it was clear that the Kenyans had played it before and we hadn’t! After we played What’s the Time Mr Wolf and then we played bulldog which was great fun but it left us very sweaty. Afterwards we all sat down and chatted, mostly about Katie dressing up her dog, which amazed our new Kenyan rafiki’s.

Lastly, we had dinner before saying lala salama and heading off to the accommodation.

P.S. Pete said we had to keep rude and vulgar postings to a minimum so … Bowel movements are still regular, for now.