Thor: The Weakest Link

We have safely made it to Rwanda, despite a few "delays" along the way. To the seasoned traveler of DIA, I posit the following question:

How many United Airlines agents does it take to check a bag?

Answer: More than one.

It was a slow morning at DIA as the travel team waited for Christian to check his bag at the United counter. Michael and I tapped our feet and watched as more and more United agents showed up at the kiosk to 'help' Christian check his bag and match it with his reservation. After a half-hour, Michael, Jess, and I ran out of airport topics to complain about and joined Christian and the four other agents at the kiosk.

Despite their frantic typing, the four agents couldn't overcome whatever database glitch they were supposedly trained to deal with. After this slight delay, we made the executive decision to officially and finally start the three-day trip to Rwanda.

With rebel bag in tow, final goodbyes were given, obnoxious tour groups were avoided, and security lines were navigated. We made our way to D.C. and renewed our boarding passes at Dulles. At the gate counter, the Brussels Airlines representative swiped Christian's passport and keyed in his itinery number - only to immediately look up at Christian, pause, and say, "You have five bags checked, sir?" Apparently, the Denver agents registered four phantom bags under Christian's name...

We fueled up on the last American meal we would have for a month before embarking on the eight hour leg across the Atlantic.

Rain, trains, French, Dutch, German, G7 (G8-1) security, and more rain greeted our day-long layover in Brussels. The team elected to save money and explore Brussels by night. By morning, we nearly got stuck in a police cordon, befriended Frenchmen at a local taphouse, and got attacked by drunk tatooed-women.

Christian enjoys a Belgian waffle!

Grand square in Brussels city center

Over the next few days in Kigali, we'll sort out communication, cash, transport, materials, and attend critical meetings with our NGO partners before heading up to Cyanika.

Adventuretime...plus work.

Scary Stephanie!

This whirlwind trip has been slowing down during the past two days while the team has hunkered down at a local coffee shop to work on EWB documentation. This is one of our least favorite tasks, except for Michael who apparently loves writing documents...weird. I am definitely not going to go into the details of the days of document writing but we did take some breaks to go on intermittent adventures.

working, working, working...at Bourbon.

NYABAGOGO MARKET
All of us wanted to experience a true African marketplace before leaving so we hopped on some motos and headed over in hopes of finding gifts and random trinkets for friends and family back home.  It was not what we expected, it was actually a sea of second hand clothes and shoes and bags.  All things we weren't too interested in bringing home.  Nevertheless, we went "deeper and deeper into the rabbit hole" exploring the rows and mazes of the market.  We emerged victorious after fighting off insistent shoe salesmen, unbudging textile ladies and unreasonable prices. It was an experience indeed.

Kimirongo Market

MEZE FRESH
So...being from Colorado, we all love burrito bars.  We love the instantaneous food and watching a spoonful of rice on a tortilla, piled up with steak, a mixture of salsas and other tasty toppings and then wrapped into burrito. Well, in Kigali there is one such restaurant and we ventured off in search for our little taste of home.  It was amazing and all that we hoped it would be...plus complimentary guacamole! 

CASINO
So, there is one casino in Kigali, and it is a relatively small room on the 2nd flow of an old hotel.  We decided to check it out...the under 21 year olds of the bunch wanted to try their hands at some blackjack. After the initial confusion about what currency to use, we played some blackjack with a few US dollars for a little fun. As gambling always goes, only one of us left with any winnings. 

MATERIALS SOURCING
To finish up the last true field work activity here in country, we wandered through an area with hardware stores and asked prices of various necessary materials.  Without a translator, upon entering each store we didn't know whether to expect broken English speakers or having to deal with a complete language barrier. But with only a few instants of confusion, we got all the information we needed.

ZEN
For our last night in Kigali, we planned to go to a fancy dancy asian restaurant in Kigali with our favorites Willy (NGO contact) and Mazack (translator) and their wives. We showed up to one of the fanciest restaurants in Kigali wearing shorts and t-shirts. Yeah...we immediately regretted that decision, once our friends showed up looking very nice.  Dinner nevertheless was amazing! But the goodbye was bittersweet.

before our amazing dinner

Now, with the documentation and planning nearly finished, we are hoping to enjoy our last day in Kigali before before flying back home.  With school just around the corner, we don't want time to move too quickly.

Till we meet again,

Ariana

Remembering

And we’re back! On Monday we left Musanze and the north of Rwanda for good, down the winding roads of so many hills and once again to the bustling city of Kigali.  

After settling into the hotel we went to see the genocide museum located in the city. The museum is dedicated to the remembrance of the Rwandan genocide twenty years ago so that people can understand all that happened and learn from the mistakes of the past.  It was truly a deep and heavy experience to be able to see it. Inside we walked a timeline of the history of Rwanda leading up to and through the genocide, outlining some of the reasons it occurred and telling about the effects afterwards. We saw stories of survivors, their emotions about everything and what they were thinking while it was happening. The acts of many of the perpetrators were described graphically. Some of the heroes were also recorded; those who sheltered many people, those who hid a few, those who saved one.

It was especially infuriating to see the reactions of the other nations of the world and to see just how little could have been done to stop the genocide. They had a room dedicated to pictures of the victims and a room dedicated to the children killed. Another exhibit covered many of the other genocides that have happened in the world, a scary statistic of how many there are with one clear message; please don’t let it happen again. Don’t let history repeat itself as it has in the past. In the end it was heart wrenching to see all of what had happened and to think that a few people could start such a horrible event. The hill that the museum is located on is a burial site for 250,000 of the victims. Seeing Rwanda now, it is remarkable how they have recovered in just twenty years. They truly are an amazing people. If you are ever in Kigali you should definitely go and see the museum.

After a little while to contemplate everything, we went to dinner at Sol E Luna for trivia night. We feasted on pizza and met with Meagan, a recent graduate who is working with an NGO in Rwanda and wants to work with our team in the future. The restaurant was filled with people from around the world and trivia questions ranging from identification of places in pictures to naming serial killers based on when and where they were arrested. Out of 60 questions our group scored 20 correctly, the winner being a competitive table that only wrote out their thoughts for fear of others hearing them, yet only beat us by 13 points. 

The day was interesting and marks one of our last. Work, work, work for the next few.

That's all from me.

Michael Swartz

Guys with Guns, Gorillas...and a Volcano

Do you sometimes stop, right in the middle of what you were doing, and wonder “What kind of life choices did I make where I ended up here?”

Okay, now the reason I ask is because today we climbed a volcano, named Mt. Bisoke, and let me tell you that while I was hiking- no, sorry, scrambling and dry heaving-I was asking myself that very same thing.

Let me start from the beginning. We wake up, meet the driver, drive, and arrive at some white person haven at the entrance to the national park. After being surrounded by locals for so long, a dense white population can be very overwhelming to some. And these are white people from all over the world, so at least we got some diversity going on. Also, it might be interesting to note that out of the 30 or so that arrived to hike Bisoke that morning, not only were we the only Americans, but also the youngest of the group as well.

So, with those two facts in mind, we were thinking “Yeah, we’re young, we’re strong. We’re from good ole’ Colorado! We climb these peaks in our sleep! Bring it on!”

Well. As we went uphill, things for us started to quickly go the other way. Don’t get me wrong, from the get-go all five of us were eagerly hiking directly behind our kindly guard and the two military men-hereafter known as “guys with guns”- and didn’t struggle to keep up at all. But then the stairs came. The dreaded stairs. Dear readers, image any staircase you have ever climbed, no matter how tall it was, and now replace the stairs with old canvas wheat bags filled with dirt and replace your what I’m hoping was a pleasant mood with one of total despair and hopelessness. I might be exaggerating a bit, but these stairs from hell just wouldn’t end. There is no such thing as switchbacks in Africa apparently because the entire trail was vertical. But the best part was that when there weren’t satan stairs, there was steep mud slides of doom that you had to crawl up as the guides and guys with guns would hop and skip gracefully up the side in rubber rain boots.

Mastering the stairs of death

Okay, so there was my rant. Let’s go over why Bisoke is so amazing, and a mountain that everyone should get the chance to see (once. Only once. It’s still a hard hike, you know.) Remember in the beginning when I mentioned the life choices question? Well while I just finished my 13^th set of the staircase of death, I took the time to look up for a bit and take in my surroundings. Not even the best of my 11^th grade literature class descriptive skills can describe this view. I was walking in a rainforest in the heart of Africa, surrounded by mist and strange flora and birdcalls that were at times eerie but at others more beautiful than anything else. At the base of the volcano were plots of farmland that extended anywhere you looked, and the silver roofs of corrugated metal and the colorful cloths that covered the people working in the fields. Directly in front of you were more stairs. But as I heaved and my heart and lungs struggled to keep me alive and my legs convulsed, I was amazed at where I was. While my body screamed “YOU DAMNED FOOL ARE YOU TRYING TO KILL ME” my mind was entirely at peace. What a miracle that my life had led me to this wild and foreign place.

            Now, for the moment you were all waiting for. In mid-ascension, one guy with gun told us to quiet down, for while we walked by a patch of forest you could clearly see an entire family of gorillas. About 15 of them; just hunkered down and watching us. There were two males, relatively small in stature and plenty of babies, but before anyone could get a good look we were hurried onward. You sometimes forget that these animals could easily rip you apart. But what luck we had! There are only 400 wild gorillas in the world, and we saw a family of them!

            Finally, we summitted. Well, not all together. Salka and Swartz, having to prove their burliness and represent our hometown, made it to the top first and in good shape. Then came some fit South African couple, then myself five minutes later, and then the rest of the pack afterwards. From the top all you could see were clouds, so there wasn’t much of a view, but the crater of the volcano was a dark lake surrounded by trees so that was perfectly fine with us, and after a lunch of lime-flavored peas, bars and beef jerky under the watchful eyes of the guys with guns, we were en route for the base.

            And let me tell you that the sadistic steps of doom are much more enjoyable coming down, and the mud slopes of pain turned into fun mud slides of pain! All while we shared conversation with some worldly Spaniards. That, dear readers, was how we climbed Mt. Bisoke, and while it was definitely not easy for even the most seasoned climbers, if your life ever takes you in that direction, make sure to take full advantage of it.

You’ll thank me later, but your calves won’t.

Hasta luego, amigos

-Steph

Goodbyes are only temporary

Well folks, our time in Cyanika is quickly coming to an end. All of our days of death defying bus rides, adorable preschooler morning greetings, and miles and miles of walking are no more. The last drive to Cyanika was strikingly beautiful, more than I have ever noticed, perhaps because I have taken it for granted the last few weeks. Miles and miles of eucalyptus forests line the road, surrounded in early morning mists that seemed to dance as the sun rises in the sky. All of this at the base of an enormous volcano. This country has been good to us.

Sabinyo Volcano, near our worksite

Friday marked our last meeting with the Community Vision Board (CVB), composed of local cell and umudugudu leaders desiring to bring water to their people. We reviewed with them the pros and cons of pipeline and rainwater catchment that were discussed in previous meetings with both the CVB and the Executive Secretary of Cyanika. This time, we also gave our official recommendation that after this assessment, we believe that implementation of a rainwater catchment system provides the best solution to expand the populations access to water, while providing a money-making opportunity for the community. The CVB readily backed the idea. We went on to outline next steps in the process, such as what we will be doing from Colorado, and what they can do in the mean time while we work on the design. The community responds with such eagerness to all of our suggestions, promising to mobilize their communities for the undertaking. Community members even donated their personal land to create new catchment systems for them and their neighbors. There is a great sense of community and compassion for ones village in Rwanda, which we have experienced over and over again this trip.

Final community meeting

After a round of "see you laters" (because everyone hates goodbyes, we spent the rest of our day sourcing materials in Cyanika and Musanze, where shop keepers helped us find the best prices and were surprisingly not trying to give us outrageous abazungu taxes. 

Now, we must turn to our handy dandy checklists to fill the rest of our days here! We are compiling our myriad of surveys, writing the 522, using GIS, and finish up water quality testing to name a few tasks.

Working hard in our gazebo!

Saying goodbye to Alberto. Our favorite Italian.

But first...we took a break to visit the local Chinese, yes, as in fried rice, egg rolls and teriyaki chicken, restaurant by the name of "Green Garden." Necessary background information: We have passed this restaurant EVERY night on the way to dinner, and made some quip about its risks of food poisoning and salmonella. And on more than one occasion, someone in ur group swore that we will never eat there. Ever.

But alas, craving something different than heaping piles of cassava, rice and beans, and not to mention our near daily ration of pizza, we caved. After all, Chinese in Africa could be good right? 

Turns out, no lives were lost, and the food - while not Chinese in nature by any means - was a welcome change to our palates. We hyped the risks up for nothing, the dramatic college kids that we are.

tomorrow.....we hike Bisoke Volcano!! Stay tuned.

Bì ag rince go deo,

Jordan

How many tongues does it take to get to the center of a Tutsi (or Hutu) pop?

Dear reader,

I hope you are still able to recall those occasions when, as a child in search of permission for some controversial activity, sound strategy dictated selectively approaching one parent before the other such that the precedent assent of the more laid-back of the pair would pressure the other to concede in spite of their better judgment so as not to appear the heartless disciplinarian. For our EWB team this past week, such youthful exploitations of adult psychologies proved to be continually applicable life lessons.

Faced with the less than encouraging responses to our proposals from big poppa EWSA described by previous posts, our adopted Uncle figure, the Chief Executive Secretary of the Cyanika sector, became a stalwart proponent of our plan to install rainwater catchment systems as a primary phase. We suspect his taking up of this position was motivated in equal parts by a good natured sense of protection as by fear of our abandoning the project altogether, nonetheless the shift was significant given his initially expressed predilection towards the pipeline extension. With the Chief’s blessing, our motherly and nurturing hosts comprising the Community Vision Board received our bid to implement catchment with much enthusiasm. The Board members were swayed by the community’s ownership of the water, the immediacy of the solution, and the entrepreneurial opportunities afforded through accumulated user-fees. Thundercats are GO!

 

The sunny reversal of circumstances above was a sign of things to come; the rest of the perfectly temperate afternoon was spent following the umudugudu leaders through the stunning Cyanika landscape to additional potential catchment sites, as was the following morning. Thursday afternoon, after topographically mapping six sites in rapid succession, we were gifted with a sight right out of an umuzungu’s African fantasies- the utterly undeveloped and enigmatic Lake Burera. The nearby cousin to the more widely renowned Lake Kivu, the terraformed shores of Burera fade into the mist with equal mystery, yet the crystal clear waters tempt one to dive in without the omnipresent threat of being permeated by innumerable burrowing, suctioning, and slithering extremophile parasites mutated by methane into deadly micro-beasts. The Chief asked what we, as engineers and architects, would do to improve the place. My suggestion: don’t.

 

Upon returning to the hotel, thoroughly exhausted and soiled by long hours of surveying and collecting earth samples, we were surprised by a phone call received the very instant we’d collapsed into our beds. The Chief had stopped at our hotel to visit with a few of his superiors, apparently mentioned our work, and it turned out they wanted to meet us; what better way to celebrate a successful two weeks of work than getting tipsy with government officials? I’ll admit I was mildly nervous at first, we were quite beat and these were the Rwandan equivalents of state senators, but after they ordered us all a few rounds (each round here consists of two beers, so you can figure the math) those anxieties evaporated and a boisterous conversation ensued in a wholly postmodern admixture of French, English, Swahili, Kinyarwanda, and gestures exaggerated by inebriation. Topics ranged from the acceptable number of children in a family:

            Rwandan Officials “Ten or eleven is just more fun, if you don’t like some of ‘em                                                   there are always others to visit! You can have your own                                                          football team!”

            EWB Team      “Are you kidding me? How can you remember all their names?”

To national gun control policies:

            Rwandan Officials “Teenagers can buy guns? Isn’t that dangerous?”

            EWB Team      “Uhh…. yeah”

It also merits mentioning the openness with which our Rwandan counterparts were willing to discuss their nation’s history, including the darker periods we are all too familiar with. Between the forces of colonial guilt, the NAACP, and the separation of Church and State in the U.S., we often refuse to deliberate provocative subjects rather than expose them to public consideration though most of us recognize repression often results in the minimally concealed festering of open wounds, merely delaying violent repercussions. The present success of the reconciliation of Rwandan ethnic groups based upon candidness and public accountability is a powerful testament to the merits of transparency.

We rounded out the evening with a hearty dinner at our favorite local Italian joint, Alberto’s. In case we hadn’t butchered enough languages yet that evening, we instigated a conversation in Spanish with a Belgian engineer who currently lives in Guadalajara, Mexico and has been in Musanze for nearly two years on a job assignment. I took it upon myself to explain that some claim Colorado as the world’s new Belgium of beer. He was not pleased, but took the news in stride.

May your hearts and glasses always be full,

Michael Salka

FRONTAL LOBE!!!

Thanks for being a wonderful addition to our travel team, Kara!  You have the matured frontal lobe that we all lack.         

          An ongoing inside joke within our group is about that fact that we learned that the decision making part of the brain (the frontal lobe) is not developed completely until age 27.  This is evidenced by the fact that young people do not always make the best decisions, mainly because we do not think through everything as we make them. All of us are far below this 27 year old marker in life and thus our decision making ability is not up to par of that of our mentor, Kara.  Today we had yet another "frontal lobe" moment:

            Between taking water use surveys (which I will talk more about later) we had some time to kill so Salka, Stephanie, and I decided to play a little bit of frisbee in the field.  Unlike the soccer game last week, people decided not to join in our play, but instead to watch us play catch. As Stephanie was passing the frisbee to Salka, some crazy, wayward wind gust must have occurred because huge frisbee suddenly landed on the roof of a nearby building.  A gasp echoed through the crowd, with a few intermittent giggles as we eyed the frisbee atop the roof searching for a way to get it down.  As we rounded the back of the building we found a pile of stacked bricks, about 4ft x 4ft x 3ft. Salka immediately climbed up followed by Stephanie and I with a plan to lift help one of us on the roof. Before we could decide who would do the honor of climbing up, our shuffling around caused much if the pile of bricks to collapse.  This time the crowd watching all gasped while we stood flabbergasted at the mess we had made.  Then, like children, we starting to pick each block up and stack them up. You know how the worst part of Jenga is the construction of the tower before game play, well this was much worse.  Our shame made us work faster and finally we staggered from the back of the building, covered in brick dust, to find the kids and Swartz playing catch with the "lost" frisbee.  They had apparently gotten it down by jerry rigging some sticks together.  Now who are the engineers here? Anyway, clearly our frontal lobes are not fully developed, but it did make for a good story. 

Frisbee on the roof with the stick contraption to get the frisbee off...

The frisbee was down, but we are on the other side of this building, working on stacking some bricks.

Other than that mishap, the rest of the day went very smoothly.  It was Kara's last full day in country, so she helped us finish the water use surveys with two more Umudugudus (villages).  The surveys will become very helpful when it comes to finding out how much water every person uses so we can size the catchment units correctly.  It also gives us an idea of how the sanitation has been for them.  They also have served to let the community members know we are here and what we are doing.  It has been nice to walk around the villages to find familiar faces!

Finishing up with the water usage surveys.

We then met with the Community Vision Board again to explain to pros and cons of rainwater catchment vs a pipeline. After hearing these the community represenatives were definitely leaning toward the rainwater catchment systems, so that was definitely good for our travel team to hear.  

With things going smoothly, we decided to go on one last hurrah dinner for Kara along with Mezack, and Willy. We went to...of course, Alberto's Mambo Italiano.  Dinner was better than ever and our Rwandan associates definitely enjoyed the fresh Italian food.  It was our last day with Kara and we are going to miss her so so much! 

God Bless,

Ariana