16th december 2006

mountain gorillas!

today we set out to go hike a mountain, and find some gorillas!

when we arrived at the park we were split up into groups depending on how hard of a trek you wanted to do. i had just had malaria, duh! so of course i was like CAN I PLEAZE HAVE AN EAZY ONE?! kiki and helen weren't up for a crazy hike either, so we got a pretty 'eazy' group. there were about 8 of us in our group...mostly oldies! (super oldies 4 real!) so we all hopped in a jeep and drove to the foot of a mountain to start our trek. we started walking across some farmland, saying our bonjours to the adorable children of rwanda! then we hopped over a few streams, over a big brick wall, and then we were ready to start the trek up the mountain. a very muddy and wet mountain. i am still curious about the 'medium' and 'hard' treks. because ours was pretty sucky! mostly because it was super rainy and my nikes kept coming off in the mud. mud that went up to our knees! there were also loads of spikey plants that kept scraping my arms. but besides all of the dirt and rain it was a pretty good experience. well, truthfully i didn't really enjoy it because i felt like we were totally freakin the gorillas out. just chasing and hounding them for a few hours. i mean, it was AMAZING to see them in real life, but i would never do it again. especially for over $500...ouch! but seriously, the gorillas were so freaked out that one of them even punched an old lady in the back.

anyway, so that was an experience. almost as good as the tuna stuffed avocados that we ate when we got back to the dorms. YUM!

later that night we were supposed to go for a delicious supper in the town. but instead we got served a plate full of chips, and a tv full of rihanna videos. miaow!

ps: our guide was so chuffed at the fact that bill gates had been gorilla trekking with him a week prior to us!

RWANDA; Country of a Thousand Hills

6th december 2006

kabale to ruhengeri


today we drive to rwanda!

PART 1: in kabale we stopped for 'breakfast'...helen and i were still feeling quite sick at this point so we decided to go to the doctor for some medicine or something?! at this point i was 'better' from the malaria...just throwing up a lot of my meals! everyone was concerned about this, but i said it's normal, just the malaria! & then helen...well, she was too sick for words. the doctor situation is a bit of a blur... while waiting outside of the doc's 'office' hels and i watched a homeless man in his element. lying down in a huge rubbish heap that was partly on fire, and full of big hungry birds. after about 45 minutes the 'dentist' came out with a bloody shirt offering his expertise...but we said we'd wait for the doc. eventually he pulls up on his bike. so now we are running late so we get no more than 2 minutes with the doc...so we told him what was up, and he me; sounds like TYPHOID...and i told him GOODBYE. by now, helen had received a text from her veterinarian dad in wales about a medicine that he thought might help us...?? so i think, what the hell?! i don't want to hear that i could have typhoid, so i'll just take whatever helen takes. so i did, and it worked! then before hopping on the truck an adorable little girl told me to BUY MY MANGOES! so i did. she was too cute for words and told us that she was from rwanda, and said that we would love it!


PART 1.5: i remember everyone one in kenya saying, 'uganda is prettier and greener than kenya, more pleasing to the eye!' and it was. within seconds of crossing the border i could see a huge difference! and then there was the uganda/rwanda border. it blew my mind! it was even prettier than uganda! SO lush and thick with greenness. it was absolutely BEAUTIFUL! the only problem about this lush moisture was the driving. the muddy road was so slippery and the mountains SO high...freaked me out! as well as my thumb, which still suffers today due do a bump in the road! we got in a few mini bogs in rwanda. not so great...










PART 2: the genocide memorial centre; kigali, RWANDA.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rwandan_Genocide
http://www.kigalimemorialcentre.org/



kigali, rwanda

the centre in kigali contains an exhibition of the rwandan genocide as well as other genocides around the world. there are over 250, 000 victims of the genocide buried at the centre; a shocking reminder to us of the cost of ignorance.



the burial grounds are not sealed shut because bodies are still being found and put inside today, 14 years after the genocide.

this museum had a huge impact on me. just thinking about it now gives me shivers. i don't know if i can even describe the emotions i felt. mostly sadness and anger. man can be so cruel and stupid. you would think that we could learn from our mistakes...but one look at state of africa and the world says otherwise.
















if you do not know about the genocide in rwanda then please look at the links i posted above.

15/12/06

queen elizabeth national park to kabale.

our truck got stuck for about 40 minutes before leaving the park. this would be the first of many bogs for us! luckily our driver dave was real fierce at un-bogging the truck!
_ _ _

tonight we sleep at lake bunyoni! danya and helen and i weren't feeling well enough to boat over to a baby island for some african entertainment, so we settled on internet and bogus pizza instead! helen and i shared a quaint little room for the night. (...real sleep on a real bed is the best when feeling ill!)

14th december 2006

mbarara to queen elizabeth national park

13th december 2006

kampala to mbarara

on our long rainy drive to mbarara we stopped for "meat on a stick".
...even if i did eat meat, i would not dare touch the stuff! no one actually knew what kind of meat it was; yet there were many takers. thus, many sick people that night!



we also stopped at the equator!

i promised myself that i would finish this blog before 2008...easy right?! i guess not.

so now i'll just try to finish it before 2009.

dear miss gray,

remember that one time we rode a BODA BODA from our camp to garden city mall. but right before that we hopped into a matatu with leopard print interior! (this matatu smelt like coffee! yum!) but back to the boda boda ride. WTF were we thinking?!! and me?! i was wearing a skirt.

anyway, we lived to tell the tale. AND we did NOT pay 2000 shillings. BOO-YAH!

hope ireland is almost as COOL as africa.

love,
miss brummer.


(cute!)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boda-boda

UGANDA

11 december 2006

eldoret to KAMPALA via jinja



shut right up idi amin?! kampala has a mall...? yes. thank you garden city mall, for your air conditioned supermarket and semi-fast intronet.

doggy doggies

10-11th december 2006

lake baringo-eldoret.

this place was THE BOMB. luke warm showers INDOORS! an underground bar! mango juice YAY! and comfy soft grass to sleep on.

there were loads of big fluffy dogs all over this place. and that is why i loved it. because the big fluffy doggies gave me big fluffy huggy huggies! (cute, right?!)

hippos!

10 december 2006

fionnuala & i could hear hippos snoofling around our tent all morning! we were both TOTALLY freakin since hippos are SO dangerous. they kill more people than any other animal in africa! mark and julie; a really nice couple from australia had the misfortune of having their tent stomped/sat on by a hippo. OOPS! their tent was smooshed and mark's head was sore!

8th & 9th december 2006

(naivasha to lake baringo via nakuru.)

so much mango juice!

lake baringo is beautiful!...karin & i hung out by the jetty. a lil croc was just hanging out with us. YAY!!

then we went to visit the POKOT tribe:

shout out to luis!

a la la

7th december 2006

went to naivasha. spent the night at our old stomping grounds...fishermans camp. did i mention that the bar at fishermans had a tv...& i saw a CSS video. weird/THE BOMB.



shout out to CSS!

2-6 december '06

matt, karin, and i head to nairobi!

we've now finished our volunteer work....and now we are off to start our overland adventure across eastern africa! (oh boy...)

we stayed at the backpackers hostel for two nights. (karin & i had a brilliant little cabin to ourselves!!...our neighbour was great! this crazy british guy that used to live in kenya in the 70's! he had some REALLY interesting & sad stories for us....)

during our stay in nairobi we ate SO well! japanese, chinese, italian, ethiopian...uhh not that great! made me sick!

we stayed in the heron court hotel for our last two days before we set off on our big adventure! (proper showers!!)

this was the start of some CrAzY crap...



NELLIE, our new home!

first of decemember '06

...walked up to the karunga health centre for aids day!



we were supposed to help present some sort of 'western outlook on aids/sex' skit to the locals...i remember feeling super groggy and irritable this day. i just wanted to stay in bed!


(if these ladies are looking lazy it is OK! it is officially our last day in karunga...in just a few hours two of these girls will start the CrAzY mt. kenya climb! & the rest will be off to the maasai mara! BABES!!)


kiki & i were super bored. AND i was too sick & anxious to help out with the skit....later that day we found out that the entire presentation nonsense was in kiswahili?!! so, being the ignorant 'northern pricks' that we were, we realized that it was OK not to be there!...PLUS, i just remembered that oli & matt didn't even make an appearance at the aids day!! they were too busy at home dealing with their hangovers. what a pathetic group?! (preeti was also not at the aids day, but that is because she hurt her back so badly that she could not get out of bed! due to maasai nonsense that went on the previous night...)



so we decided that we were going to sneak back to the house! (oops?!) but before we did this i had to take one hundred photographs of the cutest beanie baby in the world!



here are some other photos that i took while sneaking away



...these guys were really COOL at first! until they started freakin me out trying to take my camera?!

and here is a CUTE/KRAZY pic of me & kiks saying goodbye to gemma, our wonderful LEADER!

boo-fa-low!

hels & simpson (damaris' son)


this was our last day at the school.

29th november 2006

have not checked internet for 10 days! (since i got malaria, you know?!)

i think that this is the day that matt, karin, fionnuala and myself went to Naivasha!

first thing we did when we arrived....went to the post office! (remember how i wrote one million letters while i was gone?!)

then we had HUGE dramas at the bank. barclays bank...typical! i think we must have been stuck here for a good two hours. (DO NOT get me started on traveler's cheques. i hate them.)

then we went to two internet cafes. the first one we went to had no electricity. the second, no internet. at this point we must have gone shopping for gifts for damaris, elsie, ruth, and mathematics, etc. (that is a bad joke, but i am going to leave it!)

we found a really nice watch/clock shop. it was SO great. some of the oldest watches that i have ever seen. the perfect place to buy daniel/fletcher a present! (my sister's husband! he collects old clocks!) i asked the man at the shop how much the clocks cost. he asked which one. so i pointed to a clock, and he told me that it wasn't for sale. then i pointed to a few more, and apparently they weren't for sale either. it was quite weird, i also asked him if he was just fixing these clocks for other people, and he said no. this really pissed me off. because there were so many beautiful clocks in there. and apparently nobody owned them, and they weren't for sale. and to make matters worse, there was a man waiting outside of the shop for me....asking me to marry him. NO!

after this we went back to the cyber cafes. and luckily, one of the cafes had electricity, and internet!

(my top 3)
while i was gone i could always count on 3 people to write to me. abigail pfunder was number 1! everytime i went on intronet i would have one, two, ten messages from this girl!! angel! (THESE SAVED ME!) they were a good variety of messages too! jokes! provo gossip! family drama! weather reports! crushes! le tigre quotes! they were all SO great! thanks baby!


number 2! vegas joe! in real life, i have only ever properly hung out with this boy once. at the hospital, on the night of my farewell party. we only talked for about 45 minutes perhaps? i was also with phil. and i remember when phil was driving me to my car he asked how i knew joe. and when i responded that i didn't, he was really surprised. he said that we appeared to be old friends! just catching up! this is the sign of a true/natural friendship! (am i right?!) joe's messages were not that long, but they were plentiful! and so sincere! and so positive! thanks joe!


and karl jorgensen comes in at number 3! this was one of the best surprises to me while i was gone. karl and i have been friends for almost four years now. but i have not been able to see him as much as i would like to over the past year. karl did not write me as much as abby and joe, but he wrote me the longest messages by far. quality as opposed to quantity. thanks karl, i hope that you can come visit me in sydney someday. (that is so creepy! as soon as i finished this paragraph ok ikumi started to play on my itunes shuffle! technology, man!)


so long story short, as soon as i opened my gmail account...the electricity went out! BOR-ING! i must have waited for about another 15 minutes when it came back on....but i was still not trusting this cyber cafe! so i decided that i would print off the TWO gmails that i recieved! one from davey!(just a boy!) and one from richard!(just my mom's husband!) so i printed those both without having read them. and then decided to check MY myspace while the electricty was working with me! checked it, saw a good handful of responses from a bulletin that i had posted about having malaria....most of which consisted of this kind of crap..."this is a prank, right?!" "you have herpes, right?!" NO! and then the power decided to die again.

at least i had two emails to take home and read right?....
wrong.
i didn't bother to check that the cyber cafe's printer was just as buggered as their electicity wiring...
this is really funny to me now. but at the time it made me cry. i really needed that email from richard to help get an airoplane ticket sorted. and this was really difficult to figure out....when only two thirds of the email was printed. leaving me to fill in the blanks.....so basically, split an email in thirds lengthwise, and pretend that the third on the very right is non-existent. (i only realized how funny/ridiculous this situation was; when i told this story to kari jorgensen about two weeks ago! can you imagine me....sitting in a pitch black room, with a torch on my head, trying to figure out how each sentence was supposed to end?!! that, is why i was a BIG CRY BABY!)

so i left the cyber cafe in a bad mood. and so did karin. i remember why kiks was miffed, but i will not write about it due to privacy issues. (but it would be funny if we were to talk about it now!)

we bought ruth and damaris each an umbrella. and a mini radio player for elsie. (thank you gifts!)

then we probably ate?...yes! matt was given a numnum banana for free because he didn't have any small change!

and then we went to catch a matatu back to gilgil! and after fighting with the boys at the place where you catch matatus...? we ended up in some bogus bus type of thing. fionnuala, matt, and myself were squashed in the very back. and poor baby karin was sitting somewhere in the middle? hot! and sweaty! and crowded! (how the hell did we manage this one again?!...)

it was a hell of a long day.

28th november 2006!

"ashleigh is still not on top form" - karin.



ps: timmy bit the butt off of a lamb while everyone was....maybe at the worksite?

elsie was SO the helling. salim* helped elsie to tie timmy up with the goats. i remember everyone was freaking out about this. especially karin! (karin was like timmy's mama!)
i felt quite neutral about the situation. (malaria, you know?!) although i didn't want timmy to get tied up, the farmer that owned the wounded lamb would surely shoot the dog/dawg if he were to see him again!
timmy is probably dead for all i know. but for the record, i liked that dog.

*right before leaving the house elsie told me that salim was not salim's real name. i don't remember what his real name is? but apparently salim is the name of his favourite singer. it makes sense...right?

elsie & salim! (secret LOVERS!)

25 november 2006, karin and i go to the GILGIL market!

kiki and i took a matatu with the rest of the crew into gilgil. (i think the rest of our group were on their way to the caves this weekend...? yes! now i remember...to drink blood from a baby goat's neck!) so we hitched a ride since they would be passing through gilgil!

we had to stop on the way to gilgil so that lucy could puke the hell out of her hangover! karin being the good girl that she is was the only one to go out to offer the poor girl some water....while the rest of us sat in the matatu...laughing?! (good on you kiks!)

then we were dropped off in front of the mattress shop (a mini grocery store?) to meet ruth and her cousin lois. and then we walked to the butcher's to meet up with damaris! and then we all walked to the gilgil market...in the midday sun! (karin's fair scottish skin was not a huge fan of the kenyan sun. especially since she was on doxycycline; the anti-malarial that made her skin hell of a sensitive to sunlight!... oops!)

i mostly remember just sweating a lot at the market. i would have liked to have stayed a bit longer....but not in that heat! i bought a really cute nightie! (you know me and secondhand lingerie, am i right?!) the man that i bought it from was SO cheeky! he couldn't speak english, so ruth had to translate for the both of us! long story short...he was making fun of me for being white! and then damaris told him to SHUT UP (or be quiet?) because i could cook! then he laughed and said that he would stop by the house to try my cooking. but he never did!

then we all sweaty-butted on over to The Options Place! gilgil's finest restaurant! with no veggie OPTIONS besides a mon-go juice, and chips with cabbage sprinkled on top! (options?!) and during our meal we had the fine company of an older drunk man that was trying to push up on ruth. and she was LOVING IT! this man went on to tell us that he was some sort of assasin that had fought wars in america and the uk? weird huh?! damaris giggled like a little girl during the whole ordeal!

oh! and this must have been the day that we picked up my parcel from securicor?! from my dad! can you believe it? a parcel all the way from oz arriving in gilgil, kenya? a saviour! a miracle! a miracle box filled with tim-tams!

that night karin and i sat upstairs, applying after sunburn cream on our faces while reading aussie magazines and munching on timtams!

THIS WAS A GREAT DAY! A DAY FOR GIRLS ONLY!

(ps: check out our girls only bathroom!)

23 november 2006

kiki and i stayed at home helping damaris and ruth make supper!

i don't remember where the rest of the group went?...gili-gili? hell?

anyway, we had girl talk! and ate like kings! and giggled so much!

and then we went to sleep...only to be woken up by the drunk dinks/rest of our crew that had been locked outside! not funny when you are sick, you know?!

this is me, trying to be good at keeping a blog.

i obviously became very slack about writing in this blog after getting malaria. the next few entries may, or may not be in sequential order?

20 november 2006:
(the day after i found out that i have malaria!)

my project leader gemma drove us (me & matt & kiki/karin) back to karunga from nairobi. this drive was SO SO long & bumpy & rainy!
on the way we stopped by a Delamere dairy farm to look for some sort of yoghurt for ashkan's supper that he was going to be making for everyone that night. i remember the smell of the delamere farm making me feel faint. malaria maybe?
karin helped me carry my things upto the girls room upstairs. the rest of the group had just come back from a weekend at the beach/mombasa. as soon as we walked in the room fionnuala told us that her mobile was stolen as well as 10 or 20,000 shillings. karin one-upped her by announcing that i had malaria. BOO-YAH?...
the room went really quiet, and then everyone asked if i was going to give them malaria? the answer was (and still is!) no. i CANNOT give you malaria. you get that crap from mosquitoes.

ashkan made really good curry that night.

i must have been pretty stressed before i left, because 'smashleigh brum brum' is a pretty dumb name for a blog. am i right?

my mom called me today to tell me that i need to update my blog. she is sick of reading that i have herpes!

so here is my late night resolution: to update my blog with all of my nasty/exciting african adventures! i owe it to myself...and kari! (whom i started this blog for in the first place)

it will take a few days...but i am going to go through my illegible diary (due to a leaky tent) so that i can tell all ya'll about the last half of my trip.