Meetings, Measurments and Games

Hello friends and family,

We have had another fantastic day in Cyankia working with our amazing partners here!!

This is our very patient and understanding translator, Mezack. He has worked with our team since the start of our project in Cyankia and he understands the mission of our team very well! He is always smiling (as seen in this picture) and goes the extra mile in order to ensure our team is safe and cared for when we are here! 

As I am sure many of you know, English is not the predominant language spoken in Rwanda and it is not spoken at all in Cyanika, so our strong relationship with Mezack is crucial to the success of our project. He helps us to translate group meetings, communicate with everyone in the community, translate surveys, and he acts as the middle man with everyone we interact with in the community. 

 

Above is a picture of the meeting we had with the water board yesterday. The meeting (as Curtis said) was very successful! We got a lot of great feedback regarding the current needs and wants of the community, the current status of the tanks, how the financial system put in place is operating, and how the community is being impacted by the tanks. 

We had a similar meeting today with the chiefs of each site, the maintenance head of each site and the financial manager of each site. We sat outside (in the stunning day we had) and discussed, in great detail, the financial management of the sites, the maintenance manual, maintenance operations, costs of the water, potential new sites and suggestions. What made this meeting really unique was that at the end of it, we asked if they wanted to know anything about us. This was not something we had asked directly before, and we were surprised by the immediate abundance of questions they had about us. They wanted to know what our home was like, what we ate on a daily basis, what the climate was like, how marriage worked in our country, if either of us were married, and other similar questions.

Following that meeting this morning, we made our rounds of the systems. We performed water tests at each site as we went (a PH test strip can be seen below for our Gasebya site). 

 

We of course also made time to hang out with the kiddos and Wilson (the chief of the Nyrotosho site). Yesterday we taught everyone how to play patty-cake and today everyone wanted to play again. They also taught me a hand game where you stand in a circle singing songs and clapping hands. We also had one-footed races yesterday, spun in circles and had went for airplane rides. The picture below shows Deborah, Rebecca, Sieve and several other children I didn't catch the name of in addition to Curtis, Wilson and myself.

 

This is a picture of three of our most involved individuals within the community standing between the tanks in Gasebya. From left to right the image shows Curtis, Ignease, Wilson, Jacques and myself. These men are with us almost everyday we are in community and are always willing to help take water tests, carry gear, measure land areas, make repairs, and chat. 

We also got a chance to see the process of brick making today. We were surveying a potential future site when we found several masons creating bricks. We asked where the bricks were meant for and we were told that they would be used to make a house down the road. 

 

That concludes the summary of our day today. As for tomorrow, because it is a Sunday and Mezack is a pastor, he has returned to Kigali for the day to give his sermon. This leaves us without a way communicating with the people of Cyanika. So we have planned slightly ahead for this.  We will survey the land near the site of Nyrotosho and we will test the water at each site again. 

Thanks so much for taking the time to read this!

We will check-in tomorrow again!

 

 Cheers,

Nikki