last bricking day

friday afternoon.. we've been rejoined by the other gappers and it's once again so joyful and lively around camp (: i've gotten so many hugs and 'we missed you's and it's so nice that a sense of amicable affection has developed in this way.. i really do thrive on company and being around people. we've now gone over our mark of 800  bricks and our camp leader seems very pleased about that.. now when the new load of gappers arrive at muhaka (whilst we're at tsavo national park) they can get stuck into construction without having to stop and make more bricks halfway through.

everyone's pretty chilled out now - playing cards, snoozing on the couches, catching up with each other.. my spirits are back up again because i feel proud of what i accomplished during the week (despite the dullness of it). i know i wasn't very enthusiastic it when writing yesterday but now that it's done, i think it's pretty cool i can say i spent a week making toilet bricks in kenya.. (: plus i'm so very keen for the weekend and for the next 3 weeks during which we'll be visiting both tsavo and a monkey sanctuary (: i need the change and the adventure.. and i think i deserve it (:

given my brick-making career is now over, here are my finished masterpieces.. well, those with people's names on them anyway..  please don't hate me if your name isn't represented here, i love you all but there's only so many bricks i could make.. >.< and also please excuse my awful scrawlings: a twig in wet, sandy cement isn't the most practical writing tool.

brick-making

it's currently thursday 23rd.. i haven't yet written about the past 4 days given we've pretty much done the same thing throughout. the 1 & 2 monthers left monday morning for the elephant sanctuary and since it's just been our small group of 9 3-monthers at muhaka. we thankfully didn't have to go back into the pit with nipple man and instead opted to make bricks this week as we need a good 1000 in order to build the toilet block.. morning starts similarly to cementing - wheelbarrows of sand are pushed to the brick-making area and mixed with cement, chalk (to help them dry faster & have a lighter colour) and water (that we fetch and carry back from a communal tap a while away). it's hard work; the shovelfuls become so heavy once water is added and it needs to be properly churned up. we then separate the mix into wheelbarrows and spread them out for easy access. from there it's all up to you, your trowel, your pounder, your brick mold and your level of patience..

the first time i went to make bricks i assumed it'd be like clay and fairly easy to do. it's not.. in order for the bricks to stick together, you need to pound the mix down into the mold after every trowel-ful or two. this takes a whie. then once the mix reaches the top of the mold and you've smoothed off the top, the fun part begins!! cutting out the bricks is actually so difficult.. you need to constantly wet your trowel and repeatedly slice along the edges of the mold, trying to go through to the bottom.. and after you've done that a few times, you hope for the best and try to shake it out. honestly with me, 2/3 times the brick remains stuck inside or only the bottom drops out or the mix is too wet/dry and the whole thing crumbles as soon as it slops out. it is actually so frustrating.. i'll admit that i've had multiple exasperated rages at my stubborn bricks, been told i'm disturbing the 'peaceful brick-making aura' and asked to go dig another pit somewhere [all in good humor]. and especially frustrating is watching our legendary camp helper, sampuli, who is an expert brick-maker and has picture-perfect, straight, smooth bricks every single time. i can't actually comprehend why our final products look so different!!! it seems simple enough.. i'll confess that i now more often than not ask for his help to carve my bricks out, i'm so much more productive that way.. and by wednesday we had a whopping 630 bricks!!! [keeping in mind that other groups were making them since our arrival in kenya]

after 3hrs straight of making bricks (every so often needing to re-make mix), i was bored. so bored. i missed the hard, sweaty pit workouts and their relentless digging pace.. this seemed so repetitive and i was dreading a full week of it.. but i'm a firm believer that you ultimately control your own mood and decided to try and find a source of motivation in order to make the week a little less dull. i decided to make bricks with people's names on them (as you'll be able to see in the next post) and it actually is making a big difference in keeping me relatively entertained (: i have so many names in mind and each time i complete a brick displaying one i feel a small sense of accomplishment and amusement at the thought that the person in question will be forever immortalized in the walls of a kenyan pit toilet.. SUCKED IN!!!!

oh and as a side note: nipple has actually just joined us at brick-making and has given the same disturbing speech to the other girls there.. he pretty much just stands around and watches us without doing anything. it's really creepy.. i've no idea why he's actually there.. i feel bad because he's not technically done anything wrong but i think there must be something behind the bad vibe we all seem to get from him. he's made maybe 8 bricks over the past 4 days and on one of them wrote 'much sex'. what the fuck??

so yeh, that's pretty much it thus far. i wish i had brought a mountain of books with me because from 4pm to bedtime we really don't have much to do here.. we've watched another few movies on my laptop but i'm running out fast. the 3-monthers are really lovely; it's a nice, chilled group dynamic.. and i guess it's a good thing we're spending some time together like this given we'll be living with each other for a while! we also actually had 3 people (ashton, ellie & zoe) return from the elephant sanctuary on tuesday as they were either feeling unwell or just wanting to come back to muhaka for various reasons.. hopefully the issues they had with the sanctuary staff will be resolved before it's our turn to head over there.

we've got around 140 bricks to go which we'll hopefully smash out in time for the weekend (: it's now dinner time and i'm starving so i'm off! and by the way, the two hand photos are the result of working with your hands in concrete for 4 days straight.. i've moisturized them more than i ever have before in my life and they just crack and dry out hardcore.. now there are still sheets of skin peeling off them, i look like an old hag with a skin infection, it's charming.. probably something to do with the fact that concrete is toxic?? i'm thinking donning my gloves again might be a smart idea..

fire songs

beach bbq

sunday brought another routine trip to the forty thieves with a thankfully non-seaweed-annihilated beach (: i had the most amazing pizza with avocado, pineapple, ham and cheese.. they have really thin crusts and taste awesome.

we were once again plagued by the beach boys, which makes me realise i haven't written about them yet. pretty much diani beach is [unfortunately] swarming with these beach boys who, either dressed as masai warriors or not, will come up to groups of mzungu (white people) and pretty much harass you to buy their merchandise the second you step away from the inside of thieves (they're not allowed on the premises). they all pretty much sell the same things - carved wooden necklaces, bracelets, key-rings with names on them.. and they really are quite aggravating. i have absolutely no issue with locals setting up stalls and shops along the shoreline, but having men come up to you whilst you're sun-baking and pestering you ceaselessly every weekend is not the same thing. and once again, they're really sneaky.. if you so much as touch one of their items they'll say you've made an 'australian promise' to buy it and will not leave you alone. they also keep a very close eye on your belongings which means i always, always leave my bag with someone lounging inside forty thieves when i head outside.

i've gotta say i'm quite rude to them and try to ignore them.. when i walk from thieves to the water for a swim and they come up to me saying 'sister, sister!!' i walk straight past them without looking them in the eye. seems to work ok for now.. i'm hoping they'll give up after a while but i really don't think that's gonna happen. just something to accept and deal with.. the beach is still sumptuous and our beach weekends are still a godsend (:

after lunch we were driven to a separate section of the beach maybe 10min away where a secluded bbq was waiting for us.. i know i'm not the only one to have descended upon the meat like a starved vulture - after mountains of rice with floating pieces of beef as a standard meal, the carnivorous dinner of fish, lamb, chicken and beef steaks was just amazing. not to mention that the site we were at was absolutely stunning.. there was basically a narrow beach enclosing a big, still estuary save for the deep channel of ocean water surging into it. the sun was steadily going down and joe, sam and i opted for a swim (: we decided to try and cross the raging flow of water and started sprinting through it, and before we knew it our feet were swept up from under us and we were pushed a good 30m back into the estuary whilst swimming for the other bank. [don't worry, parentals, the estuary was under neck-deep so we weren't in any kind of danger]. we found a bunch of camels chilling on the sand and started joking that they were man-eating camels who'd devour us if we stayed there past sunset..

the swim back was just as amusing and the remainder of the sunset was spent watching jane try to coax hermit crabs into racing each other.. needless to say, they weren't particularly interested. then jane, miranda and jasmine (all fully clothed) had a big play-fight/wrestle and two of them ended up in the water. great day (:

the downside: come monday morning a few other people sported sand-fly bites, including myself. i've got angry, red bites conglomerated down my leg/feet in ugly patches, but thankfully they don't seem to be reacting in the same way as poor emily's.. i've smothered them in antiseptic cream and i hope they'll go away soon.

full moon, take 3

saturday night was our third trip to the full moon. after being reunited with the 2-monthers everyone was really excited and cheerful and "pre-lash" commenced. we were also joined by a new gapper, sam, who had been traveling around southeast asia up until now. we went through perhaps a dozen different drinking games as i kept getting bored really quickly (in my defense, sam & alex, half those games sucked balls). the bus trip was a crazed cacophony of people jumping over seats and screaming out the windows.. we're not a hugely subtle group haha. and then the night was pretty much as the others had gone, expect perhaps even more exuberant..? once again we thought we were having a HUGE night out and once again we were basically the only group in the whole club (:

there were a few more casualties and by the time we left the club, a handful of people were passed out on the bus seats waiting for our designated lift home.. slightly amusing. i didn't suffer the same fate but instead copped a cigarette burn just above my eye -_- given that reaction time is slower whilst under the influence, by the time joe pulled his hand back the durry had been literally put out on my face.. it hurt like hell, multiple layers of skin singed right off.. and in such an awkward place.. yummy!! i did get a tequila shot out of it but i really hope it doesn't scar >.< it's definitely put me off smoking.. so glad it wasn't my actual eye!!!!

but all that aside, once again another fun night. the club owners love us, we're such good business :p and i'm proud of my budgeting thus far, haven't gone too overboard.. [can i just say to you sydney kids - kenyan currency means we can buy big bottles of vodka for an aussie equivalent of $4... o.O]

upon our return to camp jasmine and i plugged in some ipod speakers and had our own half-hour dubstep rampage around the communal area's tables whilst a few others played pictionary on the blackboard and the monkeys screeched in the trees around us (:

beach day

saturday was a well-deserved and much needed break from camp.. the beach was covered in seaweed which was a first, so we were careful about selecting our sunbaking patches (: spent a bit of time online (hence the latest blog entries) in that small, halogen-lit room that smells of damp and mould. i'm becoming quite fond of it despite it's distasteful state as it's pretty much the only link i have to all you kids [other than my kenyan sim card that's costing me a small fortune, but that's to be expected..]

there's not so much to recount.. just a very lazy day enjoying the water, the sand, the sun and the amazing food at forty thieves (: however one thing definitely worth mentioning was the amusing series of events following campbell's order of a kid's pizza. the gappers doing their PADI open water course were out diving all day and when they came back to the thieves they only had 20 odd minutes before we were to be picked up. she orders, and 10min later the waiter arrives with a large margarita pizza he says is hers. she denies it, saying that she clearly ordered a 'toto' pizza, but that she'll gladly eat this one as long as she still pays the toto price. the waiter didn't seem too happy about that and decided to instead take the pizza back to the kitchen (mind you, by this time the place is empty other than our group), and when campbell reminds him we had to leave shortly and asks to have this big pizza once more, he just shrugs as if to say "bad luck".

literally 2min later the waiter returns with a toto pizza plate sporting the small margarita ordered. he's about to leave when campbell notices it doesn't have a crust and we all realise he's just cut half of the original pizza away and tried to pass it off as a new pizza so that she wouldn't get a scrap more than what she payed for!!! it was hilarious but at the same time quite irritating.. he at first denied the accusation, assuring us it was a new pizza, then simply started laughing (evidently quite pleased with himself) and walked off.

i've gotta say i've never seen anything like that before in a restaurant..