This past semester I passed my Writing for Engineers course, which means I have a semi-adequate ability to write a blog.
On a groggy Wednesday morning, bright and early at 6:30 am, Grampa emerges from his cave sun burned, coffee deprived, and a tad bit delirious. After brushing his teeth using UV-cleansed nalgene water he slowly made his way over to my room. I open the door to see him in his dirty canadian tuxedo, glasses askew, and as we ready to bring our various bags of materials I ask him, "Mitch, can you get me the saw bag?". With a confused look he asks in return "What's a saw bag?", to which I blatantly reply"....it's a bag full of saws!". After a few moments pause we both burst out in laughter, not quite comprehending the conversation that had just ensued.
Since the two hour bus ride from Kigali to Musanze our trip had been full of these types of foolish conversations, becoming more and more prominent as the days of digging pits, bending rebar, and hauling gravel wore on. "Dude....I just put potatoes, on my potatoes". Its what we use to cope with the mental adjustment to the life these people we are striving to help endure every day. We've accomplished quite a bit having been with our community for only a week. After a welcoming meeting with the Chief and Community Vision Board monday morning, Jess, Michael, and Mitch headed out to get a feel for the sites we would be building with. Steve,Willy, Jordan, and myself headed back into Musanze to source our construction materials. We walked around to many stores using Willy's language skills in order to negotiate non-muzungu (non-foreigner) prices. We discovered many places that had not been seen in past trips such as THREE lumber yards, a metal working shop equipped with a welding machine that looked like an original Tesla invention, and multiple examples of basic roof designs that would have been useful to know about.
Throughout the week we began and continued to work with our village leaders and community volunteers, all of whom have put in an effort above and beyond our expectations. With great confidence in our abilities to complete the project on time, if not early, we were met with multiple challenges fairly quickly. The volcanic area has made digging footer foundations quite difficult, forcing us to move two footers to the opposite end of our Nyrutoshu site due to massive volcanic rocks, impervious to our basic tools. Gasebya has endured similar issues with massive boulders causing us to reassess our design and adapt on site. Mezack, our interpreter, has proven invaluable to our team. His soft spokenness and eagerness to help could melt anyones heart in an instant, but accompanied with this comes his driven motivation to complete our project. His ability to help us overcome the language barrier between their difficult kinyarwandan and occasional broken english and our limited knowledge of their language has allowed us to accomplish our goals at each site. Throughout the day, he is usually needed at multiple sites so, as he leaves our site we are forced to revert to primitive sign language in order to try and communicate how we need to mix concrete, tie rebar columns, and level footers while working with community volunteers.
We have accomplished quite a bit in the past week and have set ourselves on track for a busy coming week of pouring footers and beginning column work. Munini has proven quite a simple project, to be completed by tomorrow, leaving most of the work up to the local masons to create our foundations, and who have delivered beautifully.
Saturday set our schedule back a bit after a downpour of rain overnight and throughout the morning halted our construction progress, however it gave us a much needed day to rest our feet and decompress. We took Sunday as the locals did with Jess joining Willy for an East African church experience, followed by all of us, after a day of miscommunication and broken down jeeps, trekking for an hour through the 65 million year old caves left behind by ancient lava flows. The over priced experience was not what we thought, with a stone path laid out throughout the cave and accompanied by 4 armed militia guards sporting classic AK-47's we walked through the broken cave segments. The most worthwhile part of our cave experience was entering an empty parking lot with a run down tourist shed and the government minister in his three piece suit handing us our helmets, hairnets, and completely unnecessary rubber boots, knee pads, and face masks.
We are excited for the early morning to come to begin our week of footer pouring and column building.
On a groggy Wednesday morning, bright and early at 6:30 am, Grampa emerges from his cave sun burned, coffee deprived, and a tad bit delirious. After brushing his teeth using UV-cleansed nalgene water he slowly made his way over to my room. I open the door to see him in his dirty canadian tuxedo, glasses askew, and as we ready to bring our various bags of materials I ask him, "Mitch, can you get me the saw bag?". With a confused look he asks in return "What's a saw bag?", to which I blatantly reply"....it's a bag full of saws!". After a few moments pause we both burst out in laughter, not quite comprehending the conversation that had just ensued.
Since the two hour bus ride from Kigali to Musanze our trip had been full of these types of foolish conversations, becoming more and more prominent as the days of digging pits, bending rebar, and hauling gravel wore on. "Dude....I just put potatoes, on my potatoes". Its what we use to cope with the mental adjustment to the life these people we are striving to help endure every day. We've accomplished quite a bit having been with our community for only a week. After a welcoming meeting with the Chief and Community Vision Board monday morning, Jess, Michael, and Mitch headed out to get a feel for the sites we would be building with. Steve,Willy, Jordan, and myself headed back into Musanze to source our construction materials. We walked around to many stores using Willy's language skills in order to negotiate non-muzungu (non-foreigner) prices. We discovered many places that had not been seen in past trips such as THREE lumber yards, a metal working shop equipped with a welding machine that looked like an original Tesla invention, and multiple examples of basic roof designs that would have been useful to know about.
Throughout the week we began and continued to work with our village leaders and community volunteers, all of whom have put in an effort above and beyond our expectations. With great confidence in our abilities to complete the project on time, if not early, we were met with multiple challenges fairly quickly. The volcanic area has made digging footer foundations quite difficult, forcing us to move two footers to the opposite end of our Nyrutoshu site due to massive volcanic rocks, impervious to our basic tools. Gasebya has endured similar issues with massive boulders causing us to reassess our design and adapt on site. Mezack, our interpreter, has proven invaluable to our team. His soft spokenness and eagerness to help could melt anyones heart in an instant, but accompanied with this comes his driven motivation to complete our project. His ability to help us overcome the language barrier between their difficult kinyarwandan and occasional broken english and our limited knowledge of their language has allowed us to accomplish our goals at each site. Throughout the day, he is usually needed at multiple sites so, as he leaves our site we are forced to revert to primitive sign language in order to try and communicate how we need to mix concrete, tie rebar columns, and level footers while working with community volunteers.
We have accomplished quite a bit in the past week and have set ourselves on track for a busy coming week of pouring footers and beginning column work. Munini has proven quite a simple project, to be completed by tomorrow, leaving most of the work up to the local masons to create our foundations, and who have delivered beautifully.
Saturday set our schedule back a bit after a downpour of rain overnight and throughout the morning halted our construction progress, however it gave us a much needed day to rest our feet and decompress. We took Sunday as the locals did with Jess joining Willy for an East African church experience, followed by all of us, after a day of miscommunication and broken down jeeps, trekking for an hour through the 65 million year old caves left behind by ancient lava flows. The over priced experience was not what we thought, with a stone path laid out throughout the cave and accompanied by 4 armed militia guards sporting classic AK-47's we walked through the broken cave segments. The most worthwhile part of our cave experience was entering an empty parking lot with a run down tourist shed and the government minister in his three piece suit handing us our helmets, hairnets, and completely unnecessary rubber boots, knee pads, and face masks.
We are excited for the early morning to come to begin our week of footer pouring and column building.
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