Captain Transit Departs

Three months it has been since Captain Transit set out on his journey to the land of Africa, and what a journey it has been. Stumbling through an all-nighter in Belgium, bussing through the lush hills of Rwanda to the sector of Cyanika nestled at the foot of an age old volcano, enduring the many struggles of carrying out a project in a place where transcending the language barrier can be as easy as pointing from one place to another accompanied with a thumbs-up or as difficult as trying to use measurements and roughly sketched drawings for masons to adjust columns, only to find hours later that it was obviously not communicated at all. Working in a place where finding materials is nowhere near as easy as making a run down to Home Depot, however no matter where you end up buying from the prices always seem to be negotiable, depending on the receipt, or lack thereof.  Learning to work with what you have and the skills you’ve honed to adjust to the never ending road blocks along your path.

How to work well within a team where differences arise very quickly, but the teamwork and cooperation endured over the past months in order to get to where we are now allows us to strive to work better together. Learning about how little you truly need in order to be happy and content, or that maybe here those two feelings are one in the same. Something as small as a drink of water from a stranger, a plastic glove for a child to make a balloon out of, taking a sick little girl out to dinner for the first time in her life and watching the smile on her face grow to a size you never knew existed, or simply showing a child there reflection. The lessons I have learned here are those which will bring me back, to what seems a distant dream, home, as a person with new outlook not only on life and how to approach it, but also with skills from the trials endured throughout this project.

I’m sitting in the very room where I first began my journey. Only this time the trip is finally coming to a close, and in a way that seems quite fitting. With all of us sharing one room, to my left there are 10 bags strewn about in front of the door, all packed (hopefully) to the perfect weight for the plane ride home at 2 am. To my right, Michael and Dakota lay sound asleep on either edge of a shared twin bed, exhausted after a long day adventuring through Akagera National Park followed by the best meal of our trip at Kahna Kazana, or maybe they had just grown tired of listening to Oak rattle off the random conversion factors he has found in the back of his journal. 24 ¾ cubic feet = 1 perch of stone, 24 grains = 1 penny-weight, 3 scruples = 1 dram. Just a bunch of bored engineers who can’t go play Frisbee or recalculate truss designs. We have finally come to a close. I would like to express on the behalf of myself and the rest of the team an immense gratitude for all the people, teammates, friends, and families who helped make this project come to life. To be cliché, it has honestly been the trip of a lifetime that will never be forgotten. The friends made and the lessons learned are those that will never cease.

Being tired isn’t the same as being rich, but most times its close enough.

Shelter from the Storms - A Graphic Novel

     Let's be honest – I’m a physicist, not a writer. So instead of a feeble patchwork of words and phrases, here is our story in pictures. There are 50 all together, and I was hard pressed to boil it down that much already. Enjoy!

Before heading up to Kigali we ordered all of our supplies that we could find in Rwanda's capital, Kigali. Here we are discussing the construction of our trusses with a local contractor named Edward. 

Christian and our chief mason Musafiri reconnect immediately after arriving in Cyanika. 

On Sundays nobody works. Dakota and I used the opportunity to climb a local volcano Bisoke where we met and broke bread with a few Rwandan university students. Edson (in the red hat) was one of the nicest people I have ever met and spoke fantastic English. He is studying business in Kigali. 

The Crater Lake on top of Bisoke.

The last group did a fantastic job with foundations and columns! Here we are starting to build the scaffolding we will need to complete the first of our three sites: Gasebeya. 

Trusses and pipes and purlins arrive in a truck from Kigali! Everything is in our hands now and the construction can begin!

Our fantastic mentor Elliot is describing the ideal welding techniques we want to use with the help of our translator Mezack. Musafiri the mason and Jaque the don look on. 

Let the welding begin! 

A view of our second site, Nyarutosho, with scaffolding complete and trusses attached. 

Putting on the roof at Gasebeya. It is starting to look like something now!

Here Musafiri is painting the purlins at Nyarutosho to help prevent rusting. This red became a sort of trademark for our trip: you can find our structures from afar quite easily.  

Dakota helps to place the gutter at Nyrutosho. After we had all the trusses welded we figured out that the roof was too long to get enough slope on the gutter to ensure consistent water flow. We ended up having to break some welds on the purlins to wedge them up a bit, so that the whole roof leans downhill ever so slightly. 

Tanks arrive at the beginning of week two! Man, are they big!

In fact, the tanks were so large that we had to deconstruct the wall surrounding Gasebeya in order to get them in!

Lifting the 10,000 L tanks over a ten-foot wall was no small task and required all hands on deck. We did it though, and the tanks fit perfectly on their foundations. 

Musafiri heats up a machete in a fire to burn through the tanks so that we can put in the tubing. They might not have many tools here, but they sure know how to use the ones they do have!

Dakota and I struggle to get a pipe through its opening. We wanted to get the closest fit possible, and often had to carefully shave of small bits off plastic from the tank with a hack saw.

Even when we got the tubes through the fit was so tight sometimes that it required substantial force to get everything aligned. Here Christian is hammering on a T-joint after gluing it to the main pipe. This joint will connect to our first flush, which helps keep the water inside the tank clean by removing the initial dirt and grime that gathers on the roof between rainstorms. 

Why buy couples when we can make our own African-style?

At Nyrutosho we built a fire in the sky to help correct for a disagreement in foundation levels. 

Munini (our third and final site) before ...

... and after assembling the tanks and piping. 

Nyrutosho at completion - well done team! 

Our taps! We were quite hard pressed to find all the connections necessary, hardware stores are not as well stocked here as they are in the states.

And look at that! It fits! All that's left is to hand off the keys to Wilson - the site caretaker. 

     Well that's the construction portion of the trip in a nutshell, but I have too many pictures left to stop now, so here come some more!

It's a 30 min walk through true Rwandan farm land to Gasebeya and Nyarutosho. Gorgeous!

The view of Muhabura (in Volcanoes National Park) from Gasebeya. 

Muhabura from the drive up to Cyanika. This building is being reconstructed after being torn apart during the genocide 20 years ago. 

Our hotel - Fatima - has some pretty good views too!

The famous Mototaxi - they'll take you anywhere. Though half the time they seem to have no idea where they are going!

After getting in the tanks to clean them before we put them up, a group of kids though it would be a good idea to spin me around! Talk about a roller coaster ride!

Taking a break from work to play a bit of tree-tomato-baseball. Dakota missed about 50 in a row before he finally blasted one across the site. 

Putting on the leaf catcher at Gasebeya - oh woah! Look at that! There's a volcano just over there!

Christian gives his okay on the roof attachment!

Ending the day with a game or two of bridge over pizza and beer. 

Salka with a gift of fresh avocados for lunch!

Dakota is a beast! He was chosen to screw the taps on from the inside of all eight tanks, I'm still not really sure how he managed to get out of them each time. 

Elliot talks to some kids before climbing Bisoke. Even though we couldn't speak a lick of the language, we often seemed to be the most interesting things around and were constantly given attention. 

Everyone pitched in to help us with the construction process - even the kids!

The kids made it infinitely easier to transport materials between sites, often making what seemed a daunting task trivially easy. Here a band of youngsters is running off with some purlins. 

Gotta move those trusses too! Even if they wen't actually carrying any weight, the kids loved to try and help as much as possible!

Polishing shoes at Gasebeya. 

The classic Mzungu-rollercoaster! It took us quite a lot of time to get them to form a line, everyone was so excited to have their turn while we became so dizzy we could hardly stand up. 

A crowd of observes watches over every part of the project.  

The kids love to see pictures of themselves. Here they are barely leaving Dakota any room to breath!

Christian with two of our favorites - Rebecca and Deborah. Coincidentally these were two of few names that we were even close to being able to pronounce.  

Mofa (in red) is the king of fist bumps! As a team, we must have given him at least 50 fist bumps per day.

Everyone line up for a photo!

Tagging the trusses before they fly 20 feet up off the ground.

Everything is complete at Nyrutosho. Thanks everyone for your hard work!