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.