Wednesday and Thursday were all about data collection,
community interaction, and digging…all under the watchful supervision of all of
the children in Cyanika. There is very
little that happens without a curious onlooking from the beautiful and playful
children of the community. The term
abazungu (white person) has subsided greatly and they moved on to a more blunt
“give me money” or “give me book” spoken in clear English. Once that grew old
they were left staring curiously at what these crazy American engineers were
doing. They now feel more comfortable
to play games with us, ask our names, and even laugh at/with us. All of this is part of the bonding process
that will hopefully lead to our success with our future project.
We started Wednesday with Ariana, Michael (the one with an
S), and me doing surveys of the two the communities. The surveys were conducted at the cell house (much like a
community center) in groups of roughly 15 households. It was a written, multiple choice survey and we were impressed
and the high literacy rate of the community.
They arrived on time and took the survey very seriously. We unfortunately embarrassed them with a
questing regarding how often they cleaned their jerry cans. The “daily” option was met with “how can we
clean it daily if we cannot get water daily?”
This is definitely a first world oversight on our part. Aside from that small blunder it was a good
way to interact with and receive information from the community.
While this was happening Michael (the one with an S),
Jordan, and Stephanie went to measure a roof for Carole’s work back in the
States. Along the way the group learned the following important lessons: 1)
“they all came from God” 2) they all need to learn swahili and 3) a tape
measurer is by far the most interesting thing that the people in the village
had seen in a long time. All are
equally important lessons. The roof
measurements show that one of the sides of the building is 1 foot higher than
the other side. This fact will prove
important if we should consider rainwater catchment systems in the future.
In the afternoon we continued walking to understand the
layout of existing pipes. We keep
coming back to a tank that seems to have a mystery surrounding it. The pipe goes from a low elevation at the
road up to a higher elevation tank and back to the road? This is not to build head/pressure, they
tell us. We also felt the pipe moving
below the ground with such vigor that it made us repeatedly question if there
was a pump. After much debate about the
reason for this pipe to the tank we learned that the Chinese built the pipe in
the road and EWSA (local water governance) was building a tank, which the
Chinese asked to utilize for water storage.
This new fact didn’t really help solve any mystery but instead just
peeled back one more layer of the onion.
So after trying to wrap our brains around the
Rwandan-Chinese spaghetti system of water piping we retired back to the
monastery. Not without first stopping in
town at the “hardware store” (read as: American gents go to your local home
depot and kiss the ground) to buy PVC glue…more to follow later on PVC glue
adventures….no moms, sniffing was not included.
The evening consisted of sleeping, eating, working, sleeping…no
card games, no riddles, I want my money back for Wednesday evening. (says the
mentor)
Oooh speaking of mentor I think I should advise you of a few
lessons I have learned myself. I am trying to learn Kinyarwandan. So far I’ve learned the word for let’s go,
goodbye, cow, and nanny (couldn’t find anything similar to mentor…that will
have to do). My “lessons I’ve learned”
have nothing to do with my learning, but moreso an observation that when they
say it gets harder to learn a language as you get older, it is true. I am SO impressed that the students are
learning things like numbers, “how are you”, “what is your name,” etc. They are very impressive! I will never understand how to say the
number six (GahTahnDahToo) and so I stopped worrying about numbers…I have
fingers. Cows on the other hand are used in so many sentences in my day to day
language that I knew I must learn the word.
Is it Thursday already?
Why yes it is and today we are going to….? Yes, you guessed it.
Today included walking, camp Cyanika, and hoes. Today was the end of
Ramadan and the entire country had a holiday. This meant that some of what we
wanted to do was put to the wayside this morning, which allowed us to have some
fun with the community. Stephanie, our
resident camp counselor, ripped off her shoes and began frolicking in the
fields playing soccer with the children.
It wasn’t long before there was an organized soccer game including a
ball, a truck running through the field, sheep, and what appeared to be small
children at either end of the field placed as goal posts. Maybe that was just where they plopped
down. Once the small children wore out the EWB team, we moved on to more common
games like slapping each others hands, learning rhythmic songs by using our
knees as bongos, and arm wrestling. Lessons learned: the kids slap HARD and a
boy in bright pink shorts can definitely beat you.
Now that we’ve started making friends, we should start doing
some real work. In this country that
pretty much always (as we learned from umuganda last year) includes a hoe. Good thing several of us packed them and
snuck them by TSA security. It’s time
to do what every civil engineering student thinks would be great to study and
will never use in their life: geotechnical engineering. (I too studied this with a vigor thinking
every employer would think I was brilliantly smart…fooled them) Basically this equates to digging in the
dirt…or, excuse me, “soil.” We (and by
“we” I mean primarily the Michaels....the ones with an S) hoed approximately 1
foot into the soil at an existing tap stand, a cell house, and a proposed tap
stand site. This sounds simple, right?
No. The land is volcanic soil and rock. It is difficult to dig and the crowd of
Rwandans watching us use a hoe and laughing doesn’t help. Mezack, our translator, kept taking it from
us saying “let me show you how”.
Somewhat embarrassing, but not as bad as the 60-70ish year old woman who
tried to take over….and succeeded.
After we had played in and collected the “soil” we were on
to our final task of fixing a pipe. The
pipe was a buried PVC pipe that had sprung a leak. (get excited! This is where we use the glue…I think that may have
been a let down) The strong arms of CU Boulder hoed up a 6 meter piece of pipe
and the technician taught them how to remove and replace a section of
pipe. This included melting the pipe to
secure a fit between the two pipes (this was done with a wad of grass) and then
once the pipes fit the glue was applied and the pipes were pushed
together. Simple…until the force of
putting the pipes together creates a break at another joint….start digging
again….
Is that enough for a day?
Yes…time to go back to the monastery.
Sleep, eat, work….hopefully something exciting in store. More to follow tomorrow…
Written with love (and longing for a good taco),
Kara
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