Gearing Up for the Summer Trip!

Muraho Friends!

It's almost time for our travelers to embark on this summer's Rwandan adventures.  In order to make our time in Rwanda as meaningful as possible, we have been holding training workshops to learn the skills that we'll use for our projects.

This Saturday, several members of our travel team met with Dr. Milan Halek from CU's Civil Engineering Dept. to learn the art of land surveying.  It turns out that our professional mentor Steve had taken Dr. Halek's surveying class back in the 70s and still managed to recall more about surveying fundamentals than most of us with more recent experience.  We learned how to use a leveling instrument and a total station, how to level a tripod, and how to correctly read the height markings on a surveying rod.  We were also reminded that trigonometry is actually still important, and is in fact the friend of the lazy surveyor. 

Dr. Halek demonstrating how to take a distance measurement with the total station

Sonya mastering the leveling instrument

The goal of the workshop was for us to learn how to make a topographical map of the Rwandan Orphans Project's new land, on which we are planning to build a school.  Once a topo map has been created, we can start figuring out a site plan for the new land, and get started on picking an appropriate location for the school building. 

Big pre-travel preparations are also underway with our team's extensive documentary film training.  We have been working with Jeff Larson and colleagues at In the Telling, a Boulder based film and media consulting business, to come up with a video instruction curriculum for EWB-USA.  The idea is that we will film ourselves planning and executing various activities during the Rwandan Orphans Project assessment trip to create a sort of How-To guide to building construction.  All of this means that we get to learn to use this super-professional-looking video camera:

Tomorrow, the travel team will practice filming interviews,  surveying some land, and filming interviews while surveying.  It will be good practice for a typical day once we get to Kigali.

We will keep you posted on our trip as our embarkation date grows nearer and nearer!  A little more than a week from now, you'll be seeing pictures from Rwanda!

And We're Back!

Dear Readers,

Muraho muraho! Welcome back to the EWB-CU Rwanda blog. The bad news is that it's been quite a while since we last posted here. The good news; we've come so far since our last post and we're excited to share that with you. As we approach the summer 2012, be sure to check in here regularly for updates and pictures!

Since our last trip to Rwanda in January of 2012, our team has been working diligently on all different fronts. We have been wrapping up our work with our partners at the Children's Village Kigarama. This has included following up with the monitoring and evaluation we did during our last trip. This includes updating and finalizing the Operations and Maintenance Manual, developing a maintenance plan for the fuel-efficient cookstoves we installed several years ago, and lastly producing education curricula for the orphans and den mothers to be carried out this summer!

In parallel, we have begun planning work with our newest partner, the Rwandan Orphans Project (ROP). Located just outside the capital city of Kigali, this group takes in boys who have been living on the streets in order to provide them with food, clothing, shelter, and education. This incredible organization was founded in 2005 and has an amazing history that you can read about on their website. We met with members of their staff in January of 2012 while in Rwanda and were highly impressed with their commitment to these orphans. Now that our team is officially partnered with the ROP, we have been vigorously planning our Assessment Trip for the summer 2012. They have asked for our support in the construction of a catch-up school for children in the ROP as well as the local community. This will help close the educational gaps many of these children have because of their time living on the streets. We're so excited to get started!

Please do continue to follow us on our blog, like our Facebook Page, and look for our new website coming soon! If you feel compelled to donate based on what you've learned, please visit the donations page on our website.

EWB-CU Rwanda team photo in Boulder, Colorado.

Photos courtesy of Louis Han

Thanks to all those who have supported us thus far and we look forward to the future! Please contact EWBRwanda@gmail.com for any questions and comments you may have.

Tugenda! Let's go!

In the mini-bus! These vans can carry up to 25 people. Ours held a cozy 19.

Wow! It's been quite the whirlwind of activity this past week. I think we've managed to take just about every form of transport there exists here in Rwanda; i.e. buses, mini-buses, taxis, moto-taxis, trucks, back of trucks, and walking. Cramped knees, tight spaces, and claustrophobia are challenges of the past for this team of travel experts now. We are even getting a hang of the mzungu tax (which is the extra amount people attempt to charge the foreigners), though we've still a ways to go.


Having finished the bulk of our work at the Children's Village Kigarama, we swung back through Kigali for about 24 hours. Here, we visited the site of the Rwandan Orphan's Project, an organization dedicated to helping and raising rescued street boys without families. We met with members of the staff, Tom and Celestin, who introduced us to the facilities and gave us a tour of the new piece of land they had recently managed to purchase. As a quick anecdote, before leaving, they got all the boys together so that we could introduce ourselves. It cracked them up to find out that I, the tallest member of our group, was the youngest, and they doubled over when Steve told them he was 55 years old, since the life expectancy for men and women in Rwanda is in the mid 40's.

Meeting with leaders of the Twa community.

Then it was off to the northwest of the country, where we stayed in Gisenyi. There, we first visited the Imbambazi orphanage, founded by Roselin Carr, who passed away in 2006 at the age of 94, making her, at that time, the oldest living person in Rwanda. After a quick tour and stay, we proceeded to visit a small community of marginalized peoples in Rwanda. Ethnically, they're known as the Twa people, but politically, they're known roughly-translated as "the people who history left behind" (after the genocide, speaking of ethnic identity was forbidden). The need at the Twa village was greater than most places we'd seen and was a humbling experience for all of us.


Now, we’re back in Kigali, getting ready to head back to Children’s Village Kigarama. Yesterday, we were invited by a Peace Corps Volunteer, Tyler, to visit a community in Northern Rwanda called Bungwe. The community was a 3 hour car ride away from Kigali, one hour of which was on dirt roads that took us to this very rural, yet still highly populated area of Rwanda. The community was extremely welcoming and the smiles were a plenty. The main need of the entire community was the lack of access to water, especially during the dry season, meaning a steep and dangerous 30-45 minute hike downhill to the source. After meeting lots of people, playing with the kids, and gathering the necessary info, we hopped back into the car for the 3-hour ride back to Kigali.

Now it's time for the 3-hour bus ride to Kibuye, followed by the hour-long moto ride that will bring us back to the Children's Village Kigarama. Victor, the director, will be arriving back to the orphanage after time away, and we will be meeting and discussing the future with him.

Muraveho inshuti!

Andy

Umwaka Mwiza

Umwaka Mwiza or Happy New Year,

We brought in the New Year with a night of dancing at the orphanage, followed by a lively game of UNO, goofiness and insightful talk. The kids are amazing dancers, with expressive styles and natural rhythm. And as hard as the little babies tried to stay up for the New Year, they asked to be carried and fell asleep in our arms.  

Our team has continued monitoring our irrigation system that was implemented during the summer, and it is operational! The hydro-powered ram pump delivers stream water to the upper tank, which is in turn routed to tap stands in the fruit- tree nursery. We have also mapped out the orphanage, trained kids in efficient surveying techniques, and learned about water uses at the orphanage.

Prince, Victor’s right-hand man and future director of Children’s Village Kigarama, continues to emphasize how the orphanage’s priority is to provide for the children through sustainable income-generating streams, using the resources and ingenuity available at the orphanage. For the past several days, we have seen this resourcefulness and creativity in action. Antwan, an orphan here, spent six months training in Ruhengeri to hone his carving skills and has showcased his new works on a table in Bisoke, the older kids’ dorm. His carvings include giraffes, masks, and giant gorillas that sit on tree stumps around the orphanage.  Solar dryers, provided by the Johnson space center, are used to dry pineapples. These pineapples are available for consumption at the guest house.

We also had the chance to visit the Birambye site, which will serve as a Sustainability lodge, providing for educational opportunities at the orphanage.  The lodge can serve as an economic engine, generating funds sustainably and serving as a market for goods produced at CVK, such as crafts and dried pineapple. The site will be the first of the kind located on Lake Kivu. I am looking forward to leading initiatives to help create a business plan and get this project running. More about the project can be found here: icatis.org/birambye

And if you would like to get involved, drop me an email me at ankit.sharma@colorado.edu.

It has been great seeing the children again. When we arrived, they warmed up pretty quick. Elena continues to add to my Kinyan-Rwandan vocabulary. I learned that I really need to be careful when I say the word for hair on my head, Oomosatsi. One false move, and I could end up saying Oomosazi, the word for crazy person.

Today, we went to Lake Kivu with the kids. I commandeered a dugout canoe with Inno, who is an amazing American football quarterback unlike Sonya, who kind of throws like a girl.

I have also started an intense workout regime' with Steve, several kids, and Janak, another volunteer here. We are putting our spare materials from the irrigation project to good use. Galvanized pipe makes for an amazing pull-up bar.

It’s the end of the day and I’m beat. Hearing the sounds of the crickets in the hills is soothing – I’ll sleep well under the stars tonight.

Murabeho,

Ankit

PS. Feel free to leave comments – sometimes we wonder if this is read. Cheers!

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

Summer 2011 Video

 

Check out this great video from our Summer 2011 Project edited by Ankit Sharma!