Monday, August 6, 2018

Finally Using the East Africa Visa


Good Morning from Uganda, everybody! Actually from Rwanda, the WiFi wasn’t working in Uganda…..

(These “Good Morning!” greetings are how most of the kids, and even some adults, great us in English when they see us in Cyanika – no matter the time of day.)

We’ve been spending the weekend at a small retreat center called Entusi on Lake Bunyonyi in Southern Uganda. Max was working at Entusi for the NGO that runs it, GLI, for two weeks before meeting the rest of the team in Kigali. GLI is a Colorado based NGO so it seems like all of the other guests we’ve met here have been from the Denver area (a group from DSST, a couple Chipotle corporate lawyers, and a church group).
The trip to Entusi was a surprisingly quick trip. Max says this is because crossing from Rwanda to Uganda is like crossing from San Diego to Tijuana – there are no rules in Uganda. I have to say that I can see the differences in Rwandan and Ugandan road rules but I don’t know if the Tijuana analogy is necessarily the best fit. In fact, Uganda reminds me a lot of Kenya; there are a lot more stalls set up on the sides of the roads with vendors selling fresh vegetables from their farms and there seem to be no real traffic rules.

When we left Kibaya on Friday, Hasan told us that the trip to Entusi would probably take three to four hours. However, from the time we left community to arriving at Entusi probably only took about two and a half hours total. Right after we finished up work on Friday afternoon, we walked out from community as we usually do every day, to the tiny town right on the border of Rwanda and Uganda. Usually, when we hit the main road, we turn right and meet the van which takes us in and out of Musanze every day. This time, we turned left instead and crossed the border into Uganda. Since we all have East Africa Tourism Visas, and we were the only mzungus in sight, the immigration process at the border was very easy.

Entusi is located right on the shore of Lake Bunyonyi at the tip of a peninsula. You have to take a boat from where the taxi drops you off to the small dock at the foot of the main building of Entusi. The main building is a huge, open, thatched roof structure and the guest rooms are a mixture of private rooms and safari tents under smaller thatched roofs.
Once we arrived, all of the staff was so excited to see Max and the friends he brought with him.
We had an awesome dinner with the rest of the guests. I have to say that one of the highlight of Entusi is the food! The food is always freshly prepared, the meat isn’t the consistency of rubber, and it has SEASONING AND FLAVOR!!!! After dinner, we watched Interstellar with the group of high schoolers from DSST before going to bed.

Saturday saw the four of us going for dugout canoe rides in Lake Bunyonyi. Actually, Saturday saw Max and Will go on a canoe ride to Upside Down Island while Zayna and I struggled to steer the long boat. After the canoeing, Max and Will went on a rainy hike with a couple GLI staff members while Zayna and I created a day-by-day calendar of all of the things we have done so far on the trip. Hopefully this calendar will help other implementation teams know what to expect and where to buy supplies when they come to Rwanda. The calendar is also necessary in helping us keep track of our budget and finances. Zayna has been rocking the job of travel team treasurer and keeping meticulous records of all of our expenses so we don’t end up in debt as a team again. Even with all of the record keeping, we are still off by about $100. After going back through all of our receipts, we think the discrepancy in our awesome spreadsheet (shout out to Sam from making it) is due to the fact that not all stores and restaurants in Rwanda include tax on the bolded price printed on receipts but only have the tax written in fine print beneath what seems to be the final price. Even with the $100 discrepancy, we are still very comfortable with where we sit in our budget, sitting within 2% of what we planned for.

Yesterday we were also able to get a good map of all of our systems in the Cyanika sector made, using the GPS tracks Carlo gave us. While we are doing fine without him, it can’t be denied that the whole team from CU and Rwanda misses Carlo’s presence and the extra set of hands!

Last night, we played a few more rounds of cards. We have a running score for the whole trip in both Hearts and Spoons. A couple weeks ago Will was the king of Spoons but last night saw his downfall and Max’s reign begin. Without our scoring systems for both Hearts and Spoons, the fewer points you have, the better. I am proud to say that in both games I am at the top of the podium (aka, I have the most points by far and I’m owning it).

Right now, I’m sitting writing this post in the main room at Entusi looking out over the lake. We are getting picked up to go back to Musanze at 4pm before starting our second to last week of work in Cyanika tomorrow. We have a schedule planned out and it looks like we will have a bit of a crunch trying to fit in all of the repairs at the other systems while finishing Kibaya’s construction. The tanks for Kibaya and Gasebya should be delivered tomorrow. If everything goes according to schedule, we should be done with all construction at Kibaya and repairs at the other systems done by August 16.
In the past week, the rings/structure of the tank foundations and trusses

have been completed along with the rebar for all of the columns. The rest of the rebar still needs to be attached to the first meter of columns this upcoming week and the tanks are supposed to be ready for us tomorrow.

Stay tuned for more updates and pictures coming this week!
Cheers,
Sonrisa


Kibaya Construction













Entusi








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