EWB-CU Rwanda Blog: 50,000 Liters

Blog brought to you by Michael

Hello again, friends and family. We appreciate your desire to come and find out what we’ve been up to.

We are definitely rounding the home stretch. It is Monday night, and we fly out on Saturday. The system is almost finished, too! We have received all of the 5 new tanks as of this evening, with some difficulty from our supplier, Afritank.

As you may know, the two tanks we purchased before coming into country were not delivered on Thursday. And it appeared that our wire from the US for the last 3 tanks had not been received. So, we were feeling somewhat concerned that we would not be able to complete the system while we were here and might have to arrange for the community to finish it, which would not have been ideal in our eyes.

Regardless, we arranged with our Afritank contact to at least deliver the first two tanks on Saturday. After our final community meeting in the morning, in which the community selected the next implementation site at Kibaya, we headed to wait for the delivery of the tanks.

As Curtis predicted, the tanks were not delivered until later than we expected. We first got a call at 9 affirming that they would come... Yet, the next call we got around 11:30 told us that the driver had not left Kigali. We were interested to find that this was because the Afritank people had finally figured out that our wire had actually gone through (almost a week earlier, shout out to Sam Hardy in the US for helping us out with that). They were arranging to also send the other 3 tanks that day!

So at this point we knew that the tanks would not arrive most likely for 3-4 hours, and we decided to head back to Musanze. We would come back with the drivers when they passed through. I was awakened from a nap by Curtis telling me that the driver of the 3 tanks would not be coming, because “someone told him not to go.” We still do not know who gave this erroneous order. Yet, all was well, we decided, and we were assured by Hassan that we need not return that day. He and Jacques ensured that those first two tanks made it onto their foundations at Ntarama.

On Sunday, we spent another day relaxing at the hotel, which brings us today. The last 3 tanks were to be delivered this day. Of course, we did not expect them early.

So we went up to Ntarama, where Musaferi (the head mason) was there to help us place the leaf catcher and pipe the first two tanks. In other news, he almost dropped a hammer on my head today (whoops)! Also, Curtis went over the operations and maintenance of the system with Japhet and the water board he nominated. We then went “home” because the tanks were not yet on their way, at about noon. We just got the call from Hassan that the 3 tanks made it to Cyanika, at about 7:30 pm (ouch)!

So in regard to all of this it appears we will finish our system tomorrow. We basically just need to place, pipe, and tap the remaining tanks.

In our final days we plan to visit Kibaya (our new site) one more time and have a large lunch with all of those involved in the project to acknowledge all of their efforts and the consummation of more than a month of long working days.

One thing I learned today is that this system is truly not ours, and that the community is entirely free to do what they see best with it, which is very reassuring in a way because we will no be here in 20 years to operate the system. It is for them, and they have really taken it in hand.

So thank you all at home for your support in our time here, especially our dear families and advocates. It would not have been possible without you either. May humanity be strong together!

Until next time,

Michael