Jan 24 2018

Wednesday 24/2018:

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.

Jan 19 2018

19/01/2018: Meeting the Community for the first time!!

Once again, I am going to start this blog by talking about my evening yesterday. After dinner, we went home via the Treat House Hotel to pick up some beers. They were only 200 shillings a bottle (£1.40), a right bargain! Luca showed us all up by buying a couple of beers for our driver, Bituk – so I will have to find a way to one-up him in the future! Once we got home, I showered and changed before tucking in to a nice cold bottle of Tusker – delicious! Unfortunately, it was still warm out so the rest of the beers were not as refreshing, but they still hit the spot.

This morning I woke at 8am, my head thankfully feeling okay. I washed and dressed before reading my book The Social Contract (Jean-Jacques Rousseau). I was interrupted by Luca crashing out of his room and, very gracefully I must say, falling over. Thankfully he is okay! We left for the university at 8:45am and was greeted, as per usual, with a delicious breakfast. Afterwards, I followed the other guys as they tried feeding the dogs (Ludo and Mama) some mandazi, but ultimately the dogs were too scared.

Our lecture started at 10am today and I was reintroduced to the members of the community. I took some pictures whilst Peter was giving an introductory lecture, it proved to be difficult as the windows to the side of the room backlit almost every single picture. We were then split back into our groups from yesterday, we were joined by four of the community members, the rest split off into the other groups. We discussed four questions with the community groups:

What does geography mean to you?
What are maps and how can we use them to plan and operate a community radio station?
What are community assets?
How do communities communicate with each other?

We learnt some very important information during this exercise, most notably that the communities have weekly meetings with each other to discuss their problems, the chiefs then relayed this information to the government, who provide the solutions. I also learnt how they use schools and churches to distribute the information in their communities.

I found the communication between myself and the community members quite challenging as they spoke Swahili and I, obviously, do not! Thankfully, Halima and Mercie translated for me and explained everything the community members were talking about.

After lunch, we unfortunately had technical issues with the geo-mapping on Google maps. Therefore, the lecture was cut short and the community members left. Eve asked me to help teach her some basics on Adobe Premiere Pro, so I sat down with her for an hour and showed her how to cut using the in/out method.

I’m finishing this blog as we wait for dinner and after completion, we are going to head down to the little shop on campus to buy a drink.

Sam 🙂

P(oo).S. My bowel is still happy and in full working order.

Jan 18 2018

Days 1 & 2

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.