fin

im now home. it is great to be back. i figured i should write one last blog to finish off this thing. i wasn't able to get another entry in before i left for home. but, to sum things up, i rode a lot of buses and trains and metros and planes and slept in the airport a couple times and took naps on park benches and saw a lot of cool stuff. but im glad to be back. europe was awesome but the last 2 1/2 weeks in spain and amsterdam by myself were starting to wear on me. there were a few days where i hung out with people from the hostel or something and that was fun but for the most part i just walked around a lot by myself. after a while you just start to feel like a creep when you walk around in public and don't really talk to people much. i don't think i would do europe again by myself--but i also wouldn't trade the experience for anything either. traveling with friends is much better. im glad to be using the dollar again too; the euro turned me into a hobo.

overall, it's been an amazing summer and i loved every minute of it. i learned a lot. i love seeing different cultures and learning about them. i liked africa a lot more than europe mostly because of the wonderful people that live there. i miss it a lot and hope to return one day. unfortunately, i need to go back to school in a couple weeks. i should probably get a job too. hopefully this isn't the end of my traveling days............

it´s not a tumor

hey blog. well i am in barcelona right now taking advantage of this free internet at the hostel im staying at. it´s fast! i kind of miss reading a book while waiting for a webpage to load though. however, i forgot to pack my camera cord so i wont be able to put up any pics for a while.

i left africa a week ago but it seems longer than that. i really miss uganda. it was sad leaving everybody. i didnt feel too sad about leaving the HELP people because i´d see them in september but they were all crying so then i got sad too. it was sad leaving the people in lugazi though. i am gonna miss those people a lot. i am getting sad thinking about them right now. my two favorite people there were irene (our cook) and david (our gaurd). i feel that with them more than anyone i formed a true friendship. Irene reminds me so much of some of the maids i had on my mission that were my some of my best friends. i have a genuine admiration for people like irene and david who are just intrinsically good people. they don´t seem to have a bad bone in their body. i´ll miss the people of uganda in general so much. it was an amazing experience working with all of them. i really hope that i can return some day.

well onto the more superfluous news (im not sure if i used that word right but i wanted to use a big word). i rafted the nile again the saturday before i left and almost died again. sunday i went to wedding reception. patrick, a member of town council, got married and invited all of us. it was a lot bigger of a deal than we all expected i think. but we went and they presented us in front of about 400 people. the best part of all of it was arriving with amber in her traditional african dress, papaya headwrap and all. we showed up late and stephen escorted us as everyone stared to our seats right up front. and, to top it all off, the mugimu´s invited some of us to dinner that night so we had to leave like 20 minutes after we got there. im pretty sure that it was quite a spectacle as we stood up in the middle of the mayor´s speech and walked out but i just tried to find the door and not make eye contact with anyone as i left. it was worth it though because dinner at the mugimu´s was awesome! they are the coolest family. they are from uganda but lived and studied in utah then moved back to uganda to help the people here.

and since i left uganda i ´ve been in paris for the last week doing some sightseeing with jeff, dan, and tori. it was a lot of fun. i probably could have made it to barcelona with all the walking we did. it didn´t help that half the time i was wearing my italian boots either. but it was cool, we saw a lot of monuments, museums, and parks. i think just about every french stereotype is exactly true. except that they are rude. only a few of them were rude, but most were nice. and yep, there were a lot of cigarettes, accordians, berets, painters, and beautiful people. jeff, dan, and tori left before me so my last couple days in paris i went to the picasso museum, visited jim morrison´s and frederic chopin´s graves, and even managed to see a movie. i was hoping to see the new batman movie but it wasnt out yet so i saw hancock, it was good. i need to go back through all my photos to remember everything that i saw in paris. its a bit of a blur right now. barcelona is really cool. i got here yesterday. today i was planning on going on a free walking tour of the gothic neighborhood but i was late and missed it. so i decided to go to the beach and take a dip in the ocean. so......the beaches are a bit different here. a lot of women dont bother wearing tops or even attempting to cover themselves. i felt bad for going, but i went swimming anyways--it was a hot day ok. anyways, after swimming, i walked around a lot and went to the picasso museum here in barcelona which was really cool because they had a temporary exhibit which featured picasso´s work and study on ¨las meninas¨by Velasquez. it was really cool to see because i studied a bit about the painting in my spanish classes and its a rad painting. after that, i went to the Salvador Dali museum which was amazing as well. tomorrow im gonna check out all the famous architecture by Gaudi im excited for that. i hope i dont get too lonely here by myself though.

ok please. byeee.

kimmy gibbler

hello. man, blogging is tough. I am just as bad at this as I am with a journal. Oh well.

Well, I’m sad to say that I have less than a week in Africa. I will be leaving on Tuesday for Amsterdam. It will be really hard to leave. I’ve loved every minute of this experience and I’ve made a lot of great friends and met some amazing people. I can’t believe I’ve been here almost 3 months already.

I’ll start with the stuff that makes me sound cool I guess. Two weekends ago I went bungee jumping over the Nile. It was so rad because we went at sunset and it was so beautiful. We had the choice to dip in the water at the bottom so I did it three times and dipped in every time up to my chest about. It was pretty freaky but so much fun. I could do it all day. It was way funny watching other people too. I’ve never heard such blood-curdling screams from girls before.

Also noteworthy, I washed all my underwear last week and hung them up to dry and came back two hours later and they had disappeared. Yep, somehow somebody snuck into our back patio and stole every single pair of underwear I had……I wasn’t even wearing any underwear at the time. Good times.... Luckily, some 3rd wave people were coming three days later and my wonderful mother was able to meet up with them at the airport and give them some underwear to bring to me. Oh I love my mom. So, so far, the only things I’ve had stolen here in Africa were all 8 pairs of underwear that I had. I went to the big market the day after to see if I could find them for sale somewhere but I was unsuccessful.

Project stuff has been going really well. Some more new wavers got here this last week and they’ve been excited to get into the projects. Mike, the executive director of HELP Int. was here for a week too. He is the new director and he is rad—very laid back, he’s funny. Last week, me and jeff taught the last business training on innovation and it went really well. The 4 or 5 guys that came every week got so into it and they loved coming every week. It was a lot of fun teaching them. The secondary schools club went great too. Corbin and Heidi taught a lesson on HIV/AIDS and the kids participated a lot and had fun. I missed yesterday’s lesson unfortunately so I want to go say goodbye to all the kids before I leave. I’m happy with how the club turned out, it’s been a lot of fun.

The past five days I’ve been up north in Gulu. We went up with a member of parliament and did a two day business training in the IDP (internally displaced persons) camps. These are people that have been displaced because of the war with the LRA that went on for years. The camps weren’t really what I expected. They just looked like regular straw-hut villages, but all the huts were extremely close to each other. There were a lot of signs all over warning not to touch any foreign objects on the ground because people used to find shells and land mines everywhere. All the people were very happy and nice and welcoming to all of us. Each day, we taught some basic business classes and also played a business simulation game with them. It was a bit tough because the people didn’t speak English very well so we had to use a translator. The people still loved it and I think they learned a lot too. On Sunday, we visited a small LDS branch that just opened up in April. They meet in a small hotel café every Sunday. It was great. I love going to small new branches. I like it a lot more than going to giant wards because everyone is more eager to learn and it’s a more personal atmosphere too. After church, we did a little tour of the town and we visited the Lacor hospital. A few years ago, during the war, people would commute for miles at nighttime to guarded centers for protection from the LRA. The LRA would target kids mainly. They would abduct them and brainwash them and train them to kill. The Lacor hospital was host to thousands of children every night that came to sleep on the premises. The documentary Invisible Children is about these kids that would commute every night. We met some really cool people that we stayed with too. So, overall it was a great experience—except for the mosquitoes.

More good news, I was able to book a hostel for Paris and I got a flight to Barcelona. I extended my stay in Europe for 2 more weeks so I’ll be there for about 3 weeks and I’m really excited. I’ll probably just do Amsterdam, Paris and Spain and I don’t really know what I’ll do when I get there. I want to see the Van Gough museum, the Louvre, the Goya museum and La Alhambra but other than that I don’t know. I’m really excited for Spain—I’ll be there the longest and I want to see Barcelona, Madrid and Granada if I can. If anyone has any suggestions of cool stuff to see in Amsterdam, Paris, or Spain PLEASE let me know.

GOODBYE.

pogs

Yep, been a while since I updated this jazz…..”sorry, sorry”. Well, I just got back from Tanzania and it was amazing. It was way rad. I’m going to try and write a bit more about what we have been doing here in Lugazi with our projects and stuff because my dad thinks that all I do is go on vacations here and don’t do any humanitarian work……I’m working on the cost/benefit analysis of our organization’s work here that he requested of me. The vacation stuff we do on our days off is just so much more interesting and exciting so that’s mostly what I write about here I’m afraid. Sorry if that disappoints some of you. However, I just finished off all my vacation days with the Tanzania trip so it’ll be nothin but bizzness from here on out—except on the weekends of course. I usually work about 40-50 hours a week building adobe stoves, making lesson plans teaching, or in meetings or other stuff. And then we have Saturdays and Sundays off to do fun stuff like raft the nile or go hiking or something. Also for every 6 weeks, we get 3 vacation days—I’m here for 12 weeks so I get 6 vacation days total and I’m down to 0 now…bummer. I figure work hard and play hard is the best way to get the most out of all of this.

I’m excited though because next week a few of us in the business group are going to Gulu in northern Uganda to do some business training in the refugee camps. We will do two days of seminars and one day working with a grassroots women’s group that a contact we have in parliament works with. Most of these people are in these camps as a result of the conflict between the Ugandan government and the LRA (Lord’s Resistance Army) which has been going on for a few years now. Some of them have lived there for like 15 years and they will need a lot of help getting back into society and making a living. Actually, our guard at our house, David (who is hilarious and one of my favorite people), his brother was in the army and was killed by the LRA and now David and his wife are taking care of his 3 kids because the mother took off to find another husband. I hear so many sad stories from so many people here as a result of war or disease. It’s heartbreaking because the people here are probably the kindest and most humble people I’ve ever met. I think it will be a really great experience in Gulu.

All the projects have been going really well. Secondary schools club is doing awesome! The kids enjoy it a lot and I think it’s really good for them to have a club like this in which they can take a break from their regular classes and learn in different ways and help each other. i've been kind of bummed because the kids have been pretty shy but yesterday after the lesson on career exploration a kid named joshua stood up and said that he had a question for each of us. he asked some good questions about us and when we answered them he gave us two avocados for a prize. he then turned to the rest of the kids and told them that we always give them candy when they make comments and ask questions so they need to give back. it was so rad! he was encouraging all the other kids to talk more and not be so shy because we are there to help and they'll get candy if they talk more. it made my day. i videotaped most of it on my little camera. The kids in the schools here work so hard and are so dedicated to school. The only thing that holds them back is lack of resources. Frequently, they have to miss days of school because they can’t afford school fees. Few kids go on to secondary school and even fewer to college. It’s cool because at the same school we’re doing the club we’re gonna build a library for them and get some books for the school. Business training is going really well also. The work at the bakery is going ok but still frustrating. We’ve been building a lot more adobe stoves too. I really like working on the stoves. Those are the main projects I’ve been involved with but there are a lot more projects going on also.

As for Tanzania, it was one of the funnest trips I’ve ever been on. Me, Jackie, Ashley, Corbin, Jeff, Lindsi, Stephanie, Amber, and Heidi left on Saturday and flew to Arusha and stayed in the hostel there in Arusha for 3 nights. The first day, we walked around Arusha and bought souvenirs and went to a zoo with a bunch of snakes and we rode camels. Definitely the most touristy day of my life. I don’t know what it is about riding a camel but you can’t help but look like a dork while you’re doing it and that goes for everyone. The second day, we went to Mt. Kilimanjaro and hiked to a waterfall at the base. Our bus got stuck driving up to the mountain and we had to walk in the mud and rain to get to the trail. The hike was beautiful. We couldn’t even see the top of Kili because it was too cloudy but the waterfall we hiked to was awesome.

Then, the next four days, we did safaris at Serengeti National Park and Ngorogoro Crater. It was radical. We saw just about every animal you can think of. I think my fav were the giraffes. None of the animals even cared about us, we could drive right up to them and it didn’t bother them at all. The coolest part was when we saw a lion chase and kill a warthog right next to our trucks. We could not believe what we were seeing. It was like the discovery channel live. No joke. Ngorogoro Crater was beautiful! There were thousands of animals everywhere. Flamingos, zebras, wildebeests, hyenas, gazelle, water buffalo all together and we just drove right through them all. It was crazy. We also saw a leopard, hippos, rhinos from far away, a cheetah, a snake, baboons, monkeys, elephants, and other cool stuff too. We slept in tents and at night hyenas and other animals would come into our camp. Rumour has it a lion did too.

One of the coolest parts of trip was when we visited a Massai village. The Massai people are all over Tanzania and they just live in mud huts and they have the gaged ears with earrings and jewelry all over and they always wear red and blue blankets. It’s cool because even though they have a lot of contact with the city and other developing societies they still stick to their culture and traditions. They’re on the discovery channel and national geographic a lot. When we went to their village, they performed a tribal song and dance for us and invited us to join which was really cool to see.

The whole trip was so much fun with everyone and it was very relaxing. The hostel in Arusha was really nice too. I really want to go back to Tanzania. Some day. Happy 4^th of July. Chau.

Le pays des milles collines

Sorry I don’t update this very often and when I do the entries are so long. Oh well. I’ll try to work on my bloggin skills.

Well since I last wrote a lot of rad stuff has happened. Two weekends ago I went to Rwanda and it was really an amazing trip. The bus ride there lasted like 10 hours. It wasn’t that bad except the bus broke down for like 2 hours so we sat on the side of the road and read and played scattergories. Also, they played some awesome music videos on the bus and the volume was full blast and they couldn’t turn it down. My favorite was “If You Do Me, I’ll Do You”. The drive was so beautiful. Rwanda is the prettiest place I’ve ever been. There are lush green hills everywhere and the people live and farm on all of them. Kigale, the capital, is really developed and clean. We spent 2 days in Rwanda and we mainly just went to some genocide sites and memorials. I learned a lot about the genocide that happened there in ’94. It’s hard to believe that happened just 14 years ago. It was kind of weird walking and driving around knowing that over 1 million people were dead in the streets all over the country. We went to the Kigale memorial centre—that was extremely sad. We went to the “Hotel des milles collines” where the story of “Hotel Rwanda” took place. We talked to one of the survivors who worked there in ’94 and he told us his story it was amazing. One of his children was born in the hotel during that time.

Probably the most shocking part of the trip was when we went to a school where 50,000 Tutsis were massacred. All of the classrooms are filled with skeletons and dead bodies that have been preserved with limestone. Many of the bodies are still in the same positions as when they died and still have some jewelry and clothes on. I walked through some of the rooms alone and it was very eerie and extremely sad. Many of the bodies are little children and babies that were killed. there was a man there who was one of 4 survivors out of 50,000 tutsis killed at the school. he had a deep indented scar in his forehead from where he was shot in the head. after he was shot in the head he laid with the dead bodies of his family and friends for a day and then ran for 3 nights while hiding during the days until he made it past tutsi rebel lines and got help (all with a bullet in his head). it was incredible to hear his story. i'll try to put some photos of this trip on here soon.

The ride home from Rwanda was the bus ride from hell. We had to run to make the bus as it was driving away and the ride consisted of absolutely no leg room or anywhere to rest your head, disgusting African movies with rapings and weird voodoo stuff, the guy behind me peed on Ashley, very short bathroom breaks with the bus driving away honking as you finish peeing, and 3 of us getting left at the border because we didn’t have enough money to buy visas back into Uganda. So anyways, Ashley, David, and Corbin got across the border on a later bus and met us in Kampala after they got money. It was an amazing trip overall….except for the bus ride. But I guess that made some good memories.

Yesterday we got back from hiking at Sipi Falls. That was really fun too. We did two amazing hikes and it was beautiful. We saw waterfalls and swam under them and we stayed at an awesome resort on the edge of a canyon with a waterfall and an amazing view. It was a pretty luxurious place and the trip was only like $100 so that was good.

As for the humanitarian stuff, which is pretty noteworthy too I guess, everything is going well. I taught the lesson in the business training last Thursday on bookkeeping. It went well. I visited two class members’ businesses during the week. I took pictures of their books and then put them up on our projector during the class and had them explain their books to the class. It was very cool and I think they learned some stuff. However, it was kind of a bummer because only 4 people showed up to the class. The secondary school club went well. The lesson was on empowerment and self-esteem. Seren and Emily lead the lesson and did a good job. A lot of the kids are still really shy so hopefully we can get them out of their shells next week. And today, I helped out on an adobe stove and we built the form for it. I laid a lot of bricks and chopped a lot of stuff with a machete so I felt pretty bad-A. It was boss, mos def.

Wow this is long. Sorry. I’m going to Tanzania on Saturday and I’ll be there for a week so I don’t know when I’ll update this jazz again. Besos.

FOTOS.

It Has Begun

Hello blog. Well the weeks are flying by like crazay. I’ve been here a month already. Wow. It’s been a lot of fun so far. Everyone here in our group is cool. There are 16 of us right now and 8 more are coming on Tuesday. Some of us will be living in the mayor’s guest house apart from our house we have now. There’s about 15 girls and like 6 guys here. It’s interesting living with so many ladeez…….yep very interesting. They are all cool girls fortunately.

A lot of great things have happened this last week. Last Saturday we went to Kampala and saw Uganda vs. Niger in a qualifying game for the World Cup. Uganda killed em..........1-0, yep one goal to zero goals. It was the first pro soccer game I’ve been to and it was way fun. There was a ton of people and people kept trying to pick-pocket all of us mzungus (white people). Some of them even staged a fight as a distraction while little kids tried to pick our pockets. Those fools didn’t get the best of me though.

Tuesday was Martyr’s Day here. It’s a national holiday to remember 23 Christians that were put to death by a tribal king in the 1800’s. Every year thousands of people go on pilgrimages to travel to Namengogo, the site of the martyrdom. They come from all over the world, but mainly from neighboring countries. We went there to see and there were soooo many people there. There was a side for the Catholics and a side for the Protestants to have their prayer sessions. There were big choirs singing and stuff too. It was very cool to see.

More good news—yesterday we started the secondary schools club at Lugazi HhhhljklmkbmkjjkjkkjHill View and it went great! I was a little nervous as to how it would turn out. There were about 30 kids so we just talked to all of them and introduced ourselves. We separated into groups and for each group we have 2 “mzungu mentors”. We all thought of a name to call the club and they chose “Team Etangala” (etangala=light) as our name. We gave them a sheet with questions to fill out to tell about themselves and they put some questions in the question box. We read them today and they were pretty funny. Im really excited for this club. The kids are awesome and they warmed up to us and they love it too. Next week will be the first lesson, it’ll be on empowerment/self-esteem.

I’ll try again to put up some pics well see if I get lucky and it works. Uh I think im done for now. I'm going to Rwanda tomorrow! goodbye.