Nairobi take 2

Well, I'm in Nairobi again, nearly a year after I finished my African Adventure, to do some filming for my dissertation.

I am mainly writing this to keep myself up to date on what I am doing dissertation wise, and keep track of what I've done and what day it is! I'm already on Day 2 of being here and so far I have slept, caught up with people, and slept, and slept. I was very tired. Note to self: Never do a 20 flight again that means you miss out on 2 nights sleep. I'm too old for that shit.

Yesterday I had a meeting with Ambreena, which was very helpful. It would have been great if we could have had this conversation a month ago, but even if we had I would never have had time to do anything about it because of work (which I have now quit - I have one more week of work when I return at the end of July and then I am done! Woop! After only 1 1/2 months there. Ah well)

Ok - so what came out of the meeting:

• Firstly, there are no graduate attachees here at the moment. This is rather frustrating as I thought there were going to be a couple. The Kenyan girl who was absolutely amazing has been offered a job and so finished her attachment early. Luckily she local to Nairobi so I am going to email her and see if she'll come back for an afternoon so I can film her. The other attachee is Carrie who is away at the moment, but Hanna thinks she'll be back before I leave, so fingers crossed for that.
• Instead of a general BIEA film, which was what Matt & I had discussed previously, Ambreena would like a more focussed film on just what services BIEA can provide for archaeologists. This is kind of what I had started wanting to do - a range of short films showcasing different parts of what the BIEA can offer, so I like the idea, and might try and expand it more if I have the time. Possible ideas are talking to Dave A and doing the same thing for anthropology or a brief history of the BIEA which would be fun if I could get old archive material.
• What we do want to do is a film on the facility building - because it's a really nice building etc. So I'm going to have to see what photos there are from before and then find some people to talk about it. So I need to spend the next couple of days really planning on how to film for these two different things in the time I have, and maybe add in a few questions about other stuff I might want to make films in if I have time.
• The film about the archaeology may go nicely with some excavations that will be happening at the Karura forest, a place I've never been but is in Nairobi, so I need to talk to people about what will be happening and when. Also find out what else might be going on, and maybe talk to some people back in the UK who have used BIEA for help with their projects. Talk to Matt about it...
• One of the main things that Ambreena wants is help on the website. What I might have to do is write a report as I'm not here for that long. They are hopefully getting the person who made the website for the British school in Rome (like BIEA but in Rome) which she really likes, but she wants my advice on what they should keep from the old website - what to migrate and what to improve - and what kind of style and photos they should use. Also where the films would go and how that would all work. So I have some major research to do there.

So there we go, the majority of that will probably be of no interest at all to anyone. Except maybe my supervisor. But I'm not telling anyone I'm writing here again so I wonder if anyone will find it.....

Now off to actually start the work instead of just writing about it. (Although this is good practice as I'll need it for the write up at the end!)