Hello friends and family,
I apologize for the lack of blog for the past two days! Due to power
outages, wifi overuse at the cafe and timing I was unable to post anything! However, we’ve had a great past two
days!
Let me start with Friday. We arrived in the community at the
usual early start with the plan of land surveying our site of implementation
for next summer! We walked along the path to the new site and met with the
Chief of the village, Japhet. We caught up with him and asked him how his
family was and then asked if it would be okay if we surveyed his land. For
those of you who are keeping with us and don’t necessarily have an engineering
background, surveying is the process of collecting information about the
physical land of a site. So we basically collect data that allows us to
recreate a 3D map back at home of the area, so that we can better plan how to
build our system. So we essentially gather changes in elevation of the land and how far away they occur from a given spot.
So we set about the process of surveying our newly planned
site and we had quite the process doing so. The land that we were surveying had
both goats and cows living on it, which to our amusement enjoyed licking the
equipment. The goats tried to nibble the tape measure while the cow was
satisfied with licking both the upright measuring stick and the tape measure.
However, after successfully maneuvering the animals, we ensured we had all of
the key elevation differences documented that allow us to create a 3D map. We
also surveyed the land of a site where we have already implemented tanks,
because we are planning on adding a tank to their site as they collect water so
quickly.
Following this we returned back to the main village center
of Cyanika for a big meal we had arranged a week beforehand with the chiefs and
leadership of all the different villages we had worked with in the past and the
chiefs we were currently working with. Our in-country contact, Jacque hosted us
in his house while the final preparations for the meal were made. Following
this we all gathered in a big house nearby and had a fun, “family” meal
together. We ate potatoes, rice, cassava leaves, beans, beef and a peanut soup.
It was a feast for all of us and it was a really great opportunity to build
first our friendship and secondarily our partnership with the people of the
community. This gave us a close to our fantastic day.
Today was our first day off since coming into country, and
we decided to use it to explore the local surrounding areas. We caught a bus to
a nearby-“ish” lake, Lake Kivu. We enjoyed a relaxing afternoon of reading and
eating lunch and then walked around the town of Giseni. We saw the boarder
between the Congo and Rwanda which was very interesting to see. Following this,
we caught the bus back to our home base and have been working this evening.
Tomorrow is a planned busy day, but we will give you the
scoop on that tomorrow!!
With much love and many hugs,
Nikki
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