I was talking to a man as I flipped through pictures on my laptop. He noticed a landscape picture all in white and asked me what it was. “Snow,” I said, and he just stared in astonishment. As we flipped through pictures of Switzerland in winter we talked of skiing and sledding and hiking in snow up to your knees. He was amazed. We talked about what cars do in the snow, and how trains were better in snow than cars. I guess Kilifi town doesn’t have winter blizzards…

Today was the first day where I gave full control over to the girls. I have picked two leaders among them, Salma and Grace, and they know what to do. They are responsible and serious about the opportunity to manage open air cinema events for the next couple years. They carry notepads with them and stop frequently to take determined notes. Today I found them kneeling next to the generator sketching out the schema of electrical cords. I had talked to them earlier about the way which we lay the extension cords. We make sure to keep the power for the audio on one circuit, and the projection power on another. Audio can surge and boom, depending on the signal. It can trip circuits because its can be unpredictable. If an audio powerline surges too much and trips the circuit, the projector will not lose electricity, which is bad. Like end of the world bad. Or at least I make it sound that way (projector bulbs are expensive and far away from Kenya). I’ve explained this all to Grace and Salma and they’re doing their best to remember because this weekend there will be a written test about everything under the outdoor cinema sun.

Tonight we moved fields to Bukungu Stadium, in central Killifi. Its a big open soccer field with public bathrooms, which apparently is enough to dub it a Stadium. The girls a doing a great job talking to the audiences. Its fun to hand them the microphone and encourage them to be confidently loud, playful, polite, and professional all at the same time. They speak in their local vernacular. With lots of Karibu’s and Asanti-sanna’s (welcome’s and thank you’s).

I get a good laugh from being corrected by my students; a feel-good-surprised type of laugh. Its a good sign that they are listening, interested, and know something extra about what you are teaching.

It happened today, just after I started the audio/visual training about eight Kenyan girls from the surrounding Kilifi villages. As I was teaching them about audio signals and XLR cables etc. I held up an end of XLR cable and was about to plug it into the loudspeaker. One of the girls informed me that in fact “this end of the audio cable, is the male end, and sends the sound, so actually Mr. Stuart, you plug this one into your speaker,” and handed me the other end of the cable.  I laughed with delight.

It reminds me of another training we conducted in Africa about two years back. I was in Nduta UN Refugee Camp on the border of Burundi and Rwanda and we were training locals how to inflate a giant inflatable screen and how to securely tie and anchor it. A tall Congolese fisherman smiled at me, grabbed the rope from my hand, and tied a sliding clove hitch around the stake with ease.  Everyone here on the coast already know their knots, which makes my job a little bit easier.

The girls were happy with the training. They liked using the audio mixer to blend the music, movie, and microphone sounds.  The touch screen on the iPad was mesmerizing for them and they gathered around it in amazement. They intuitively got the hang of the iPad applications, particularly Google Earth which was obviously their favorite. With a few finger gestures they zoomed around the map of coastal Kenya.

Tomorrow is the inflatable screen training and our first event. The students assured me they would all be there. My expectations aren’t too high though on the first event day. First trainings usually just involve an introduction to the inflatable movie screen, because typically, nobody’s ever even seen one before.

(Follow Stuart’s journey to Kenya on the Open Air Cinema blog)

The Field of Dreams team has landed and all volunteers and staff are now assembling in Kilifi.

This morning is one of those excited mornings. One you wish you had every day. Its the kind of morning where you wake up in an instant and energetically step out your door to explore at 6am. The unusual combination of jetlag combined with the novelty of being in a new place.

Before I headed to the project office, I went out for a walk along the beach looking onto the Kilifi river joining the Indian Ocean. Gold light burst onto the rippling gently moving river. The fisherman were standing in their canoes, quietly throwing their nets into the water. Clouds of tiny fish burst from the surface in every direction, as a larger fish had apparently attacked and stirred everything underneath.

I met Harshad after breakfast and headed to the MTG office. We walked along foot paths and tall grass to a large white two story building surrounded by a fence, security, and various huts.

I was greeted warmly by the staff and employees. I met Cokie, an amazing Dutch woman, who came to Kenya as a volunteer 5 years ago and decided to stay. She introduced me to the staff and volunteers. I met Josephine from Nairobi, a volunteer from Safaricom, a national cell phone company. The national cell phone company. She came for a 3 month stretch to help support MTG. Everyone seems friendly and busy at work running a region-wide soccer program.

The director is not in today. But I’m told she’s British and lives here locally with her family and three children. Harshad’s first wave of volunteers are in the main classroom discussing the hour-by-hour teaching timeline for the next week. They are a talented and devoted crew. All from the BBC. Each has taken their personal time off to help out.

I left them to begin my own timeline for the World Cup screenings. First thing is to sort out the equipment and inspect that all pieces have arrived safely. The day is spent sorting through the Open Air Cinema CineBox system. The next step is basic audio visual training, scheduled for tomorrow.

(Follow Stuart’s journey to Kenya on the Open Air Cinema blog)

I have finally arrived in Africa for a 3 week visit, and have just completed an eight hour drive from Nairobi, Kenya to the coast. I’m told this road, which connects Nairobi to Mombassa, is one of the most accident prone roads in Africa, due to truck laden traffic connecting the port of Mombassa (the largest port in east africa) to Kenya, Uganda, DRCongo, Burundi, Rwanda, etc. It was exhilarating to watch the savvy driver weave back and forth into oncoming traffic, with only moments separating us between life and death. Hand waving, headlight flashes, and adjustments for passing cars are the languages of the road. I’m reminded of a luxury I didn’t appreciate up till now, 4 lane highways… Also, as we passed a pack of baboons standing by the freeway, Nicolas, the driver, looked at me seriously and explained how dangerous they are. He said, like groups of people, a group of baboons can quickly kill if they happen to stage an attack

I’m staying at hotel akin to a colonial resort. It’s a giant plantation-like resort with rooms along the lush green cliffsides, overlooking a river flowing into the Indian Ocean. It has pools, thatched roof huts, open air restaurants, and too many employees. We are surrounded by small villages and vans that reek of pollution. Open Air is delivering a system to a region wide girls soccer organization. I walked through the light morning rain and tall grass to tall white building staffed by locals and a devouted 40 year old Dutch woman who has lived her for 5 years managing a large girls soccer program. She operates an all woman organization and has 20 girls working for her in administration. In dutch fashion, she rides her bike wherever she goes. As she rolled up one of her pant legs before she stepped on her bike, she explained a Dutch person isn’t Dutch without a bike.

On the way this morning to begin work, I walked with Harshad, a scrappy British BBC employee who Google funded to boost her program. He is the one who bought our outdoor cinema system. His brief project will contribute two months of technology classes, health classes, and nighttime world cup soccer entertainment for the girls and community at large. We will be traveling to 6 different locations within 4 hours from here. I will help train the local girls on how to run the outdoor cinema system. They will keep it and use it for years to come.

(Follow Stuart’s journey to Kenya on the Open Air Cinema blog)

It’s been a few years, but Open Air Cinema is going back to Africa!

This time Open Air Cinema legend Stuart Farmer will be taking a full-sized 16′ CineBox Pro with him in coach. Yep, the whole system – speakers and all – is being checked on the plane all the way to Nairobi. It will be a tight squeeze, but the CineBox Pro 16 is portable enough to make it possible.

Stuart and the CineBox system are bound for Kilifi, on Kenya’s eastern coast. There he will join Google and the Field of Dreams project in their effort to screen the FIFA World Cup in local villages. With the help of several Google employees, workshops will be organized to instruct local students in information technologies. Stuart’s role will be to train a handful of female footballers how to set up the open air cinema system. With this young team of OAC-trained technicians in Kenya, the outdoor cinema system will benefit the community for years to come.

Watch this space over the next couple of weeks to follow Stuart on his cinema safari through the wilds of Kenya. Until then, Jambo Bwana!