Maseno University and Dunga Fisherfolk partner to curate new knowledge

Written by Otiato Guguyu

For my Maseno University fourth year media project, we shot a documentary at Dunga Beach, across a raggedy pier, onto the cheapest motor boat for a short detour into the jitters of the lake and back to shore where we gathered the rest of our material on the railway line, over the other end of the lake’s gulf.

The clips were scarcely enough, we had to make up for it with borrowed pieces some out of ratio, some bordering on the rights of other material, all for the educational purpose of producing our first documentary.

I remember when we were brainstorming the ideas, crazy ones, in between missed classes and forgotten meetings as the tight timelines squeezed out what we could possibly do while juggling the school work in a term. Our pockets were also lean, while it was easy to contribute Kes10 to print a term paper, when you need to pay fare to town, then to Dunga and fund a boat trip, can only afford you one shot at getting it right.

In the end we managed to do a decent job that earned us a thumbs up given that up until then we had been viewed in the Media Faculty as literary inclined to print production rather than video and film. It was an incredible feat for a few students without a realistic budget and last minute planning while having to book a camera that was oscillating among the students looking to do projects like ours.

Recently it was déjà vu when Maseno University hired the company founded by its alumnus, Seamless Frames to do a documentary on a prototype of a new way of creating knowledge, linking scholars with villagers to ask questions about their geography’s apply scientific problem solving and recommending solutions to real problems in our society.

Science and our take off

Now this is heavy stuff, compared to us, we sat in dorm rooms, at the cafeteria or outside the library and crafted a vision of our documentary. We figured one plus one equals two, there was a problem of water hyacinth, a little bit of google will suggest reasons. We would then go for a day trip, which was all we could afford to do the shoot and collect as many interviews we could and rush back to campus to cut and paste it all together.

What they ere suggesting here was the possibility of creating real new knowledge, researchers embedded in the community could finally solve the questions of upwelling, a phenomenon that has killed thousands of caged fish.

Such research could generate the body of knowledge to understand and adapt to the unique weather patterns over the largest fresh water body in Africa, that makes Lake INyanza the deadliest in the world, instead harness more of its potential sustainably. Who knows we can bring home Moshe Safdie’s Habitat 67 to build into the natural slanting topography that surrounds these waters, we dream.

Real-Life Learning in Action- RLLL

The European Union funded Inspire Project that is ambitious. It wants to develop the higher education staff capacity for the delivery of courses and modules on food systems and climate change and to equip students with skills and real-life experiences for transformation of food systems and their future labour market success.

In Maseno the project has put together 108 students from Sociology, GIS and Environmental Science and staff from five disciplines including environmental science, sociology, urban planning, a GIS and a public heath demonstrator to analyze and understand the interconnectedness of food systems and climate change from an interdisciplinary perspective.

This means students who were at even lower stages than we were at our time in the University would have the opportunity to integrate real learning into their classrooms rather than reproduce insulated online generated and regurgitated narratives about our society.

They actually made visits to the community under the three month programme that included deployment of digital tools like WhatsApp, Google Drive, Slack to keep track of the projects and weekly guidance meetings with faculty.

They were articulate in their presentation of what they had discovered, took the community feedback in a stride and shared how the experience had changed them and their perspectives of the community the university is supposed to serve as a guide of knowledge.

“Rather than treating RLLL as an add-on, it became an essential method of instruction, where students actively constructed knowledge through reflection, collaboration, and applied practice within the existing curriculum,” Prof. George Mark said.

Working formula

And there is a formula to it that allows students to get exposed to the community to understand what their problems are and generating solutions and then presenting them in a public baraza to disseminate the new knowledge that could turn around the community fortunes.

Students collected and analyzed data from Dunga community through focus groups through what they called Transect Walk– where students conducted guided observational walks with community members, identifying environmental, social, and economic conditions while mapping key challenges and resources.

They did Gender Analysis – reviewing power dynamics and holding discussions and structured exercises explored gender roles, inequalities, and participation in decision-making to ensure inclusive stakeholder perspectives.

Then together with the community, they collaboratively identified root causes and effects of core issues, allowing students to map problem linkages and prioritize areas for intervention, in what they called, The Problem Tree Analysis.

“Once data was collected, students employed qualitative and thematic analysis to identify patterns, trends, and stakeholder priorities. Through, clustering themes, and synthesizing stakeholder inputs, they translated qualitative insights into actionable findings, ensuring that recommendations were well-informed by real-world experiences. The participatory nature of these methods ensured that diverse voices were captured, leading to contextually relevant conclusions and solutions,” Prof. George Mark said.

Sleeping potential

In practice the fishermen told us that the new model had really helped the Dunga Community organize better creating new ways of making money like hyacinth furniture from one of the studies by a student and are making the most to capitalize from the streams of endless student buses coming to tour the Dunga Boardwalk a bridge-like wooden structure that extends a few metres into the water for a picturesque view of Africa’s largest freshwater lake.

A fisherman showed us a block of cement which he said is now being used as an anchor instead of dripping plastic containers weighed down with rocks.

The students have also challenged the gender roles that were apparent in Dunga. Spaces including the ownership of boats, fish catch, stalls as well as the membership of the community based organisations that ran the market, and even those who had attended the Barraza to get the student feedback were predominantly controlled by men. In Feedback they asked students to also find better quality research to work on, something affordable and scalable that can transform their daily lives and not keep replicating the studies on climate change.