EWB-CU Rwanda Blog: Independent livin'

Dear world. Despite the best efforts of local malaria carrying mosquitos, we are still alive and everyone is healthy.

The past week has seen us transition to a new phase in our time in Rwanda. As we move from the beautiful verdant hills surrounding Lake Kivu and our monitoring and maintenance of past projects at Children’s Village Kigarama back to Kigali, we are excited for what is to come, but sad that it’s time to leave. We have made many great connections and friendships here at CVK and it’s hard to walk out of these kids’ lives and not know how to answer when they ask us when we will be coming back. We had a bonfire the night before our departure since the older kids had school in the morning and wouldn’t have time to say goodbye then. In the morning, we packed our bags and headed out to catch motos back to the bus station in Kibuye. The little kids who didn’t have school walked with us and waved goodbye as we drove away.

Sonya saying goodbye

The view from behind my moto driver

The moto to Kibuye

The bus to Kigali

In Kigali we were greeted by paved streets, fast internet, and a plumbed water supply. We met up with Noah, our landlord to be, and he showed us to the house we will be living in for the next month. The house is furnished with 5 rooms, 2 bathrooms, a small kitchen, and is enclosed by a wall and metal gate with a guardsman. At first this seemed a little over the top, until Andy pointed out that the cost per night is almost $10 USD cheaper per night than renting a single hotel room with a queen bed. Sean and Jenny, the coordinators or the Rwandan Orphans Project (our partners for the second half of this trip), spent the week before our arrival visiting different houses and negotiating for us. Sean looked at close to 20 houses, which he found through “Kigali Life” a yahoo page which acts as the Kigali equivalent to Craigslist.

Our Kigali house

The wall, gate and guard house (red, green, and white)

One of the most exciting parts of having a house here has been navigating culinary independence. We have had a lot of fun diving into local markets to test our Kinyarwandan skills and attempt to negotiate prices. Intially, despite our best haggling efforts, we were getting ripped off, but we’ve made significant improvement and now are getting much better prices. Jordan and BJ have proven to be an excellent negotiating team. Jordan directly talks to sellers and negotiates prices, while BJ smiles and appeases those that we don’t want to buy from. They have a theory that maybe they get better prices because the women at the market prefer to deal with other women. Back at the house we put our cooking skills to the test. We had a slow start, but the meals have been getting progressively more delicious as we figure out how to cook with the kitchen and supplies available.

Cooking

Toasting toast over the burner

Our dinners as of late have been punctuated by mewling as a cute scrawny ball of fluff comes over to emotionally manipulate our team members into feeding it. When we gave the furball a name, Gollumn, and a bowl of milk, I realized that this kitten was going to become part of our lives. When a veterinary friend of BJ’s told us the cat could give us ringworm, I wondered if maybe it would be better if it didn’t. Nonetheless, Gollumn has decided that free milk is an invitation, and returns to see us every night.

Gollumn the cat

Jordan decides to put her rabies shot to the test

On Tuesday, we were excited to have another team member, Matt Hulse, arrive in Kigali. Matt had previously been in Haiti working on another development project, where he taught the skills of electrician-ship (if that’s a word) to a number of local Haitian teachers at a trade school so that they could develop their own curriculum and teach others.

Thursday marked Matt’s birthday, and we celebrated with a homemade chocolate cake. Matt decided the best way to serve the cake was to cut circular pieces out from random points in the middle of the cake. Andy cringed.

Matt's Birthday

Blowing out the candles

The next month here in Kigali will be spent partnering with the Rwandan Orphans Project. The orphanage, located in Kanombe, Kigali acts as a home for 96 boys who were previously living on the street. They provide housing, education, meals, and counseling. The ROP pays rent to use the land their facilities are currently on, and wants to transition to operation on a new piece of land they recently purchased. In the transition, they want to expand their facilities and purpose to act not only as an orphanage, but also as a community center. The ROP wants us to partner with them to provide engineering design expertise and build a school on their new land to that will service both the ROP’s boys, and local children that can’t pay to attend public school.

This phase of the trip is a pre-design assessment. Earlier in the trip we did the surveying of the plot of land that we will be building on. Our days now are filled with doing the leg work necessary to answer all the questions necessary to make our design possible. Naturally what this means is a ton of meetings. We met with city planners Donna and Joshua, to clarify local laws and find out how to get building permits. We met with a geotechnical expert who we are considering contracting to do the assessment of the conditions of our plot. We met with Sean and Jenny and discussed their vision for the use of the plot of land, had a planning activity, and scheduled 3 more meetings with them next week to discuss our timeline, budget, and their priorities for new facilities, and to tour local schools to see designs they would like to emulate. Our time in Kigali so far has been hugely productive and consequently fulfilling. I continue to enjoy people I’m with. We’ve got a good group and I look forward continuing to live with them and the work in the weeks to come.