Communications for Development

youth march for peace at Kenyan Youth Peace Summit

I am trying as hard to stay in Kenya in my head for as long as possible (going on 5 days now).  First thing at hand was working out a nasty computer virus that attacked my laptop.  With the youth media team swapping flash drives faster than 17 year-old girls change outfits all the computers stopped working after a few days.   A few working methods I plan to take with me to what I hope will be many more youth peace summits in Africa:

• wear the flash drive around my neck so I don’t lose it, and bring 5 to share
• upload any important files to an internet site in case flash drive goes missing
• travel with anti-virus software and learn how it works in extreme rescue situations
• travel with sound cables to hook up the laptop to anything with speakers
• disallow workshop presenters from using powerpoint because 1) they don’t use it correctly and only put up their talking notes 2) for goodness sakes this is a youth conference 3) I need to use my stressed out moments for human-related problems
• when an American wants to come, I will say yes only if they have IT  skills including the ability to take a projector apart and put it back together in 20 minutes
• when an American wants to come, they must first pass a comprehensive  ”go with the flow” test (sorry type A’s).
• must have on hand “the Kenyan big sister” – she deals with women issues including counseling and telling any women acting up to get it together, and likewise “the Kenyan big brother” to keep the boys in line. (obviously nationality to change in case of conference)
• as lovely as a youth videography team is, if we want this thing captured properly we need a professional
• build in hours of flexible time into the schedule so we can adjust as chaos demands
• fight like hell to have time before and after the conference in country to do follow-up and prep.