This is a
belated notification, but we are in fact alive and in Rwanda! The team arrived to Kigali jetlagged and a
little woozy over the course of May 29th-31st. First, there was one: Steve the mentor, the
most interesting man in the world. Then,
there were three: Steve, Andy, and myself (BJ). We traveled around the city, visiting our
new project site at the Rwandan Orphans Project and putting in reference points
for surveying (in which Andy singlehandedly carried 80lb bags of concrete),
meeting to arrange surveying equipment rental, and running errands all around
downtown. Then we walked to the airport
and there were six: Steve, Andy, myself, Jordan, Andrew, and Sonya. And with our powers combined, we were ready
to embark on a land surveying adventure of epic proportions.
 |
| Hauling concrete to set the permanent surveying markers. The whole time this was going on, I was like, "Andy: he is so strong." |
 |
| Sonya and Andrew recording points on the high-tech total station. |
On Friday
June 1st, we had our day planned out. We rode the cramped but super inexpensive
minibus to the ROP surveying site to greet the deliverer of our total station
by 8am, as we had previously arranged. He
wasn’t there. So we waited around a
while, chatting with Sean, the center’s coordinator, Celestin, the director, and Tom, the accountant at the ROP. We waited a
little more and got a tour of the center – Sean is very excited about the
library/playroom that Jenny (the other coordinator) has put together with
donations from abroad. The kids, who are
mainly rehabilitated street children, are initially nonplussed by the idea of
creative activities like drawing a picture or building something out of
playdough, but Sean says that arts and crafts activities inspire creativity and
expression in the boys. The walls of the
library are decorated with their artwork.
Eventually, after many phone calls, we realized that the surveying
equipment wasn’t going to materialize that day.
After playing with the kids for a while, we headed back to downtown for
a money exchanging adventure and lunch at Fantastik Buffet, which had a
room-sized buffet lineup of all types of Rwandan dishes and curries. It was a culinary experienced unmatched in
its greatness, perhaps amplified by the fact that it was 2pm and we were
starving. That night, Andy and Andrew
went back to the ROP to play soccer with the boys, and Andrew and his ukulele
drew massive crowds.
On Saturday,
the total station and tripod actually did arrive early in the morning, and we
headed out to the ROP’s new land to tackle the land survey. To our surprise and general happiness, the
total station turned out to be a new, and super-high-tech piece of
equipment. It recorded all of our points
digitally, which was fortunate as we ended up taking about 300 points that
day. We made a great crew, with Andy and
Andrew trading off recording points at the total station, and Steve and I
carrying the rod around the property.
Sonya took great notes of the locations of the points and drew up
detailed maps, which we used to later figure out that our data had a glitch –
which we hope to fix within the next hour when the owner of the total station
resurfaces. My favorite part of the day
was trekking around the property with Jeando, a supervisor at the ROP, who
explained their grand plans for the land and taught us Kinyarwandan words for
bird, airplane, and all of the plants. The land backs up to a river, and we saw
herons, eagles, hawks, and about six kinds of brightly colored little
birds. We ended up finishing the entire
land survey in about 10 hours, and stumbled back to the hotel exhausted and
sunburned, but content with a job well done.
And that’s
it for now! Today we are preparing for
our moto journey to our next destination, Children’s Village Kigarama, which
will be a new chapter in our Rwandan adventure! Thanks for tuning in, and as always, we appreciate your comments!
No comments:
Post a Comment