Scholarship!

Well it has been over a year since I have been back.... but I suppose people still might be reading this blog every once and a while. I thought I would post a link to our scholarship fund which was a result of my time in kenya. We are sponsoring local youth to complete there primary, secondary and post secondary educations. Check it out!

http://canadamombasascholarshipfund.weebly.com/

wow..... i have been a failure at blogging

haha well its been pretty much forever... actually over a month if im not mistaken.

well in that time... i have finished travelling returned to mombasa and had a few very busy weeks back on project. Im overseeing a few different things from a youth to hire program to a new group called sounds of change. Its been a blast so far and im glad to be back at it.

I have to say (this is for amanda if you read this) when we did our orientation in toronto and they talk about the stages you go through when u travel and volunteer... i honestly thought to myself ... oh im beyond that haha...... well the honeymoon phase has ended and with serious consequence haha. No just joking but I definitely notice that my temper is somewhat short and things like bad internet connections make me loose my mind. However, im sure it will pass and I actually think it already is, last week was rough but I realized its just not worth going to places with slow internet cause my day will be ruined after that haha

on another note... its officially really rainy and muddy here now (who would have thought with it being rainy season and all). Today I thought it was going to get sunny... boy was I wrong. Wore my sandals out... bad call ended up taking them off to walk home in bare feet through the thick mud to avoid slipping with them on.... it was lovely!

ok hope all is well at home
Jessie

Kigali Memorial Center

Well today me and Michelle spent the greater part of the day at the kigali memorial center. It is an entire museum devoted to information on the Rwandan Genocide. It was definitely the most powerful museum I have ever visited. The war museum in Ottawa is an amazing building but I think simply the topic of the genocide is just so powerful. The exhibits have many movies and interviews and stories. Both me and Michelle found ourselves in tears at quite a few times throughout the day. The stories of the people who let people seek refuge in their houses was most powerful for me.

anyways an interesting day.... learned alot!

jessie

Its been a while!

hmm where to begin.

Well I will tell you all about my last few days in Uganda. Me and michelle left on thursday from kampala Uganda and headed towards Buhoma on the western border of uganda. It was a 12 hour bus ride.... ugh but quite cool. The last three hours were along this tiny dirt road snaking its way up these steep mountains. Aunty tammy it reminded me of you.... michelle was freaking out because it was like just wide enough for the bus and if you drove off it was a long way down..... shannon lake road:). anyways after a very long bus ride we arived ina small town thewn loaded into the back of a pick up truck with about 12 others... and enough supplies for a week (needles to say it was full) and headed to bhuoma. After 9km of hair raising driving and a numb but we arrived. We stayed the night in a lodge in buhoma inside Bwindi Impenetrable forest national park. In the morning we woke early and started our hike.
The first day of the hike was mostly within the park. We had two porters to carry our big back packs, a giude, and two rangers with rifles in case anything got to close. We walked 15 km the first day up and down two passes and then ended with a long ascent up to our camp.... and when I say long I mean we climbed straight up a mountain for about 3 hrs. We were tired!

The camp at the top is called Nkuringo campsite..... amazing. U sit on top of the mountain with 360 degree views over the bwindi forest, the democratic republic of congo (just a few kms away) and south to a series of 7 volcanoes. Soo amazing
The next day we took off at 8 again and had a very long day. U walk 10km along a road snaking its way along the tops of the mountains through little villages then turn off and start moving a few valleys over. The next 7 km was all up and down but scenic. After completing the 17km before lunch we stopped and ate and watched the local villages at work in the field. The children were terrified of us and literally ran away. Its pretty remote! After lunch we continued down to the lake just a km or two and loaded into hollowed out tree canoes and paddled across lake mutanda for 3.5 hrs. After that it was 5km more to kisoro and our place for the night....

it was alot of fun but alot of walking and we wereexhausted. One of the funniest highlights was having to tuck our pants into our socks and run as fast as we could along one section of trail to avoid being bitten by the millions of red ants swarming the trail.... that and the huge black momba snakes we saw!!

anyways today we have arrived in kigali Rwanda. The drive here through the mountains was excellent and i think we will enjoy our time here.

Ok thats all for now. Hope all is well at home!
Jessie

PS- YCI is letting me head back to mombasa to do the second project. This is amazing as I will be able to take off running as soon as I get there and continue along the great projects we got started!!

Uganda

well we made it across the border yesterday to uganda. The customs people were very friendly and it went smoothly. However we made the mistke of forgetting to figure out the currency conversion and then arriving after the banks had closed before the long weekend for easter... woops.. anyways we eventually figured it out.
Uganda is amazing, lush green, rolling hills... lake victoria... we love it. However we walked across the start of the nile today here in Jinja and were taking picture of the dam and the river when we were stopped by a uganda army officer... apparently taking pictures of the dam is against the law and they assume u are a terrorist for doing so..... woops! so after he took our cameras and wanted to take us away... we managed to have another army lady come over who spoke better english and talk our way out of it and even get our cameras back... minus a few pictures... woops! But no worries we will make sure to read signs from now on...... even though there we none warning us against this haha

Hope all is well at home

Jessie

Navaisha

Well we left mombasa on saturday night. It was very sad to say goodbye to everyone. Have made alot of good friends there. We left at 10:30 pm and took a bus to nairobi. We arrived at 6;30am and transfered to a matatu and headed to Navaisha. When we arrived we literally got dropped on the side of the highway with all our stuff.... so we had not alot of choice and got onto two motor bikes with all of our gear and headed for the lake... it was like a 40 min motor bike ride and ended up costing much more than we wanted but oh well.

Anyways we are staying at this place called top camp which sit way up above the lake and is amazing. We went the first afternoon for a bike ride with a local we met down to one of the soda lakes and watched the hippos and flammingos and then headed home and saw some girraffes on the way.

The yesterday we got up early and did a bike safari through hells gate national park. It was amazing, we saw zebras, girraffes, water buffalo all sorts of antelope, gazelles etc and babboons and warthogs. We explored a huge set of ravines at the end which tomb raider and rqaider of the lost ark were filmed in. Then we headed back out of the park. We had to get off the rtoad a ferw times to avoid being charged by water buffallo.... which was very cool. I then got a flat tire and had to walk like 6km out... oh well. It also started to rain but it was a nice day all around. Today we are heading to nakuru to see some sights.

anyways hope all is well at home

Jessie

Lamu

Well we arrived back to Mombasa last night after a wonderful time in Lamu. We were there for just under a week and enjoyed every minute of it. It is a small town on an island off the coast of kenya near the boarder with somalia. We spent the time relaxing and boating around the islands. The beaches were amazing as was the water. We did an overnight Dhow trip out into the indian ocean which was also amazing. Anyways I will post more later I have a busy day ahead.

Jessie