Jumping into an adventure!

The morning we left Kigali, we met with Wellars, an engineer from the EWB-Rwanda chapter, to visit a couple of his current construction projects.  These were quite interesting: one is a three story building for the Kigali School of Finance and Industry.  All constructed with wooden scaffolding and hand mixed concrete; some beams are 60 foot clear span concrete beams.    There is a lot of construction happening in Kigali.

We were then off to the bus station to take a public bus to Kibuye.  We loaded our gear onto the bus, when Ankit and Sonya decided that we needed snacks for the 3 hour bus ride.  Off they went to look for snacks and off the bus went to Kibuye.  As Andy tried to get the bus to stop and wait, we spotted them a few feet from the bus.  We yelled but of course the bus station had hundreds of people milling around, deafening noise, cars, buses and motorcycles all making their way to the exit.  Andy made the executive decision as team leader and leapt from a back window of the moving bus.  He succeeded in gathering Ankit and Sonya and made it back to the bus.  With the snacks!!

Once we arrived in Kibuye, we transferred to the preferred local transit solution, Motos.  These are motorcycles, where we ride behind the driver with our backpacks while the driver manages our suitcase straddled between the handle bar and gas tank.  The moto ride from Kibyue  to the orphanage takes a little over an hour on a dirt road, the mud holes are large enough that we actually had to off road around a bus that was stuck up to its axles.   This turned out to be quite the ab workout.

It is hard to describe how beautiful the orphanage is.  It is obvious there has been a tremendous amount of work and love that has gone into l’esperance.  All the buildings are brightly colored, they have planted gardens throughout the grounds and all the kids were shouting “Andy!” “Ankit!” as we arrived.  After a tour of the orphanage we spent the rest of the evening playing with the kids.

Today we got on to the task of monitoring past projects and surveying the compound area.  I will end the suspense now, everything is working great!  The surveying took a little longer than expected as we had the assistance of 10-20 kids the entire time.  We finished the day with some soccer and volleyball.

Have a Happy New Year!!


Steve

Winter trip begins!

Muraho from Kigali! It's our second day in the capital, which means that everyone still needs afternoon naps, but we're adjusting quickly.
We somehow managed to get all of our bags here (and bags and cookstoves for other people), which was extremely difficult and involved lots and lots of tape...

The last day and a half have been busy with phone calls, shopping and errands, terrifying motorcycle rides through the city, the making of delicious food with other Coloradoans (is that a word?) who now live in Kigali, and planning our trip in more detail. Oh, and trying not to fall asleep during conversations, which was quite difficult.
So, we wanted to give you an overview of the purpose of our trip and a general outline for what we'll be doing in the short time we are here.
We just had an incredible meeting with EWB Rwanda, organized in 2005 with the help of students and alumni of the Kigali Institute of Science and Technology (KIST). This group has been partnering with visiting EWB groups (including ours!) and gave us an impressive list of completed projects. We hope to find a project that we can collaborate on over the next couple of years, as they have great contacts and ideas of what people really need. We'll be meeting again at the end of our trip.

Tomorrow we are heading to the orphanage, where we plan to bring in the new year (with champagne! we're fancy) and stay until around Jan 5th. During that time, we'll be monitoring the irrigation and the rainwater systems to make sure everything is still working, as well as checking up on the pump, cook stoves, and slow sand filters and doing some water quality testing. We'll also do a water use survey. Then, we'll be conducting a survey of the stream and of most of the orphanage property. We're going to train some of the staff on how to use our awesome hand-made flow and pressure meters (thanks hydro team!) so they can continue to take measurements during the wet season. We'll be taking a day to map out the Birambye lodge area near the orphanage. And of course, we're planning some fun educational activities for the kids.
After our time in Mugonero, we'll be heading north to Gisenyi to visit Eric's biomass pellet/cookstove factory, and will take an overnight trip to Imbabazi, another orphanage in the area. We might meet up with a peace corps volunteer, who has contacted our team, to do a quick assessment of the situation in his community.
Around Jan 10, we plan to come back to Mugonero for a couple days to see Victor, and to talk to him about goals for the future, fundraising plans, and our exit strategy.
On Jan 13, we'll be back in Kigali to visit another orphanage, meet with the EWB Rwanda group again, and go out to dinner with a Rwandan we met on the plane. We fly out on Jan 15th and should be back in Boulder on the 16th!
That's the general plan for now. We'll update again from L'esperance!

Sonya