Archive for September, 2011

I’m quite glad that even long-winded discussions can result in simple statements like this one. On the other hand, what is at stake is not the stomach’s happiness after a meal of either bruschettes or Pizza, but rather the fate of an entire village.

Cooperating with the UN-habitat to bring electricity to a Tanzanian refugee village this year has been probably one of the most challenging, but also rewarding experiences. When you enter the village just about an hour’s drive from Rwanda’s capital Kigali, you realise that this should not actually be called one. Merely a collection of 50 houses organised in three straight lines of 19, 19 again and then 12 houses, but without bar, kiosk or anything remotely business-like, the villagers still seem to be in the process of finding out what their actual role in the village is. When we arrived, a simple two water tanks, a shack with a door but without window and the well-planned similarity of every single house were the only unifying elements here.

However, now the shack has been turned into a hopefully vibrant Energy Kiosk, along with a rather sublime Social Engineering project/experiment (Who says we’re only electrically minded anyway?). “Empowering people” would probably be the catch line if we tried to sell this idea on. What we envision is to give the village’s five leaders, typically farmers who have to depend on a good day’s weather to earn their money, full responsibility of the kiosk’s operations and accounts. Why so? Well, the village leaders are usually the most wise/old people in Rwandan villages and have been chosen by the rest of the community to be responsible for their own welfare. The real reason though lies in the fact that we hope it will unite the village once and for all. Each village leader being responsible for one “umudugudu” in the village, that is a cluster of about ten houses, the entire village’s population will feel directly involved with our project.

Thinking about it now, involving locals more in our projects has actually been one of the key points of our trip this year. Not only have we again met up with loads of students from KIST (Kigali’s Imperial) to help with the implementation of our kiosks, no, we have also successfully managed to hand over the entire operation of one of our other kiosks (Kamonyi) to a local cooperative. But more about this in another post.

Now back to Kavure, the UN-habitat village, and a few other (slightly weird) notes on things that happened there:

1. Having a random villager approach you and ask for your sister’s hand, which is not even present, feels slightly uncomfortable.
2. Having the same villager calling you the next day to offer you fish which he caught single-handedly is kind of cute.
3. Not being able to go to Burundi (4km from this village) because the visa would cost $90 is such a waste of unused passport space
4. Sitting down inside a car expecting to drive for about half an hour to get bruschettes and then being dropped off about 57 seconds later on the other side of the 19 houses feels a bit Mzungu-like
5. Then being offered fresh goat meat out of a tiny shack with flies all round it  feels too local though

And finally

Being followed all around the village by kids just to capture them about 754,643 times on camera is kinda tiring.

But definitely worth it.

Sawa, sawa, sawa, yeah.

After a 4 and half hour, bumpy and cramped bus ride from Kigali, we’re finally there…. Banda!

The site where our colleagues from DHE implemented two pico-hydro sites.Population: 7000 – local partners: KAGENO – zero grid implementation plans till 2050.

We get off the bus, all excited to see a new typical Rwandan village… But wait… WHERE ARE ALL THE HOUSES?? We’re in the middle of a jungle! Exotic trees, huge worms, insane amounts of insects, weird bird noises all over, a bunch of monkeys crossing the road. We’re actually very close to the Nyungwe national reserve. But no sign of any human being…

To my surprise, they tell us the village is actually around one hour and 45min from the road! There’s no ‘road’ per say, just a laid out curvy (and very rocky) downwards path, which they tell me is 11km! But thankfully, there are shortcuts apparently…

Did I say shortcuts? I meant extremely steep passageways through the forest… but hey, at least there’s monkeys right?

After the third ‘shortcut’ I start regretting all those times I bailed out on hiking back home… It was such a pain! Dodging tree roots, tripping over rocks… I’m already dreading the way back up!

But after an hour and 15 min, NOW I can say it: Banda!

We can finally see it, and boy what a view! All the way down in a valley, surrounded by hundreds of hills, is a small t-shaped arrangement of houses – that’s apparently the town centre – with a handful of houses spread out along the valley… Talk about isolated! It’s incredible how anyone can even find such a place! We wasted a couple of minutes debating how the 1^st settler got here… Ted from DHE thinks he was drunk on banana beer (a local speciality) and got lost in the woods, to then give up and decide to just settle here.

But jokes aside, the view is actually breathtaking! The top of surrounding hills touch on the clouds, clear blue mountains further away, birds flying over our heads, green fields as far as the eye can see, and a bunch of banana trees popping out here and there.

We make our way down only to be greeted by kids calling us ‘muzugus’ (white people), following us everywhere and saying ‘good morning teacher’ (seemingly  the only English sentence they learned at school)… An adorable little girl just stood there at one point with her arms wide open, and went towards us to hug us! While other kids just wanted to hold our hands for some reason… Apparently we’re the most exciting thing that happened in the area for quite some time.

We make our way towards the place where we were staying, still followed by kids, and greeted ‘mwiriwe’ by the friendly local village people. In the house we find Jeremiah, a 28-year old public health student that works with Kageno, very nice guy, friendly, and gets excited over anything! We then sample some bananas, which we all agree are the best we ever had – by far.

Afterwards, we make our way to the 1^st site,which had broken down and was being repaired. The 1^st person I see there, is a member of DHE with a massive beard ‘à la Robinson Crusoé’ and hair bands on his heads that made it seem like he had palm trees growing on his head! At first I thought solitude drove the guys here crazy! Nice 1^st impression! Lol

We spent the biggest part of the day doing technical stuff (fixing the intake filter, arranging the turbine misalignment etc.), which I won’t bore you with. We then had some talks with local people about what future prospects could be, and about bringing up some second-hand battery boxes to the area.

Unfortunately, our time was up! I would have loved to stay longer in the place, it was genuinely a great experience… But a potential site for next year was calling… Hopefully I’ll be in the team that comes back to Banda in the following weeks.

Then came the walk up… What a hike! And of course, it HAD to rain… perfect! I quickly realised my boots didn’t deserve that title; I was slipping every two steps I made, and struggled to keep balance even while standing still! My teammates who were doing better than me, rather that helping me out, decided it would me more useful  to film me slipping and getting all covered in mud… Eh Lukas? But I can’t complain – at least we got great footage for the fresher’s video! Lol

If the walk down was a pain, the walk back up was torture! The path was so steep!! Around 30deg. easily (but I still believe it’s at least 45deg. Mikolaj ). One of the most tiring experiences of my life…. Best part was seeing kids barefoot carrying a huge basket on their heads overtaking us! Pretty embarrassing…

An hour… two hours… we still can’t see the top of the hill (more like a mountain if you ask me)… It’s a miracle how Bandan’s can make this hike more than once a week! The only other option is a 3000RWF ($5) moto-taxi ride, a sum that’s a worth a whole two weeks’ income for some farmers here!

Two and half hours, and we’re finally back on the road, back to ‘regular’ civilisation, so to speak… Only to be greeted this time by the badly-cramped out-lengthy-bus-ride back.

Regardless of the all the trouble hiking, Banda was way worth all the effort! I really hope I’ll get to go one more time before I come back to London!

Abdalla Abou Jaoude

No we are not talking about the browsing experience developed by a certain US company that can be dreadfully slow in Rwanda. Last weekend we experienced the ancient meaning behind safari. The word itself comes from the East African language Swahili and means, “to travel”. During the period of colonialism the word was adopted by Europeans to describe the act of travelling to watch wild animals. Rwanda is the perfect spot to do so with three national parks offering a wide variety of species in different climatic regions. The Volcano National Park in the North, known for its Gorillas, the jungle-like Nyungwe National Park in the South West, which neighbours Congo and Burundi, and the Akagera National Park savannah bordering Tanzania.

Although we are Imperial College students and thus drilled to work hard on our electrification project {;P} we also deserve some sweet relaxation time refuelling our souls with sunlight and procrastination. Due to the high price of the Volcano Park we decided to drive out to the cheaper Akagera Park on a sunny Saturday. We started our journey at 4am half asleep with a fearless driver, who seemed to accelerate in sharp, obscured turns and when pedestrians stood on the street. After two hours of fear and bumpy roads we arrived at the southern tip of the 70km long park. With six hours of muddy road ahead of us we let onboard our guide leaving us seven students squeezed in the jeep back designed for 5. The park ranger, by us deemed to be a wildlife expert due to his camouflage outfit and big binoculars hanging around his neck, introduced himself as a bird expert. With all respect, we were not here to spot tiny birds and learn the differences in their mating songs, but rather see the famous big five as the park ranger could suspect from the standard ignorant non-African visitor.

5 minutes in the park the driver suddenly stopped. A family of baboon monkeys blocked the street. Staring back at us they did not seem to fear the car and took their time to clear the road. Even to the extend that the alpha male had time to mate a couple of his female family members before departing into the steppe land with victorious posture. We continued our journey up north along the Akagera river and lakes. Our ranger pointed out that due to the dry weather conditions during the last days most of the animal herds moved to the north of the park. The early morning sun slowly disappeared behind light rain clouds that unfortunately brought us a quick shower just as we got our of the jeep next to a river bed. We were just able to see the last hippopotamus and their kids walk into the water. Although our guide told us that those massive creatures attacked people he reassured us that there was no danger getting closer to the river. While watching the hippos disappear below the water surface and materialize again with an air, water fountain of exhalation we discovered another specie just two meters away in the water from where we stood. Crocodiles were swimming across the water.

Sitting in the car again, we scared smaller herds of antelopes. Our guide explained to us the differences between impalas, bushbucks, waterbucks, and zebus. We also lived through a moment of Disney childhood nostalgia when we saw a “pumba” eating its way though the park. During the long ride we experienced periods of collective tiredness and mass paranoia. The paranoia was triggered by small flies with the ability to sting. At some point about five of those creatures kept us busy hitting wildly across the jeep and made us following our basic instincts when we felt a tickling sensation on our skin. The guys in the back used this as an opportunity for much hilarity by causing those in the middle row to jump from the simple action of a poke. From this moment on the driver and guide possibly categorized us as mad.

Arriving in the north of the park all cameras and smartphones were loaded, pointing in all possible directions to shoot whatever ran across our way. And like a paparazzi we experienced one hour non stop action: monkeys, warthogs, antelopes, zebras, hippos, giraffes, elephant faeces, buffalos, ‘muzungus’ (white people) sitting in other jeeps and a variety birds. One could have the impression that we were so busy catching every animal on digital memory that we forgot about recording our own ‘analogue’ image and emotion. … First world problems as we call them. As the park ranger has put it at the very beginning when we were eating cookies: “you are not here to feed your stomachs but your eyes with the sight of the animals”.

What an impressive experience for all us. Reminding us how important biodiversity is and environmental awareness. As a farewell present the birds above the park exit presented us with a rain fusillade of crap as we walked underneath. The secret revenge of the bird expert to withhold the knowledge of this common attack, as the white spotted ground showed. {J}.

Lukas Lukoscheck

Amakuro, greetings from the land of a thousand hills! Our expedition team is enjoying the first week in Rwanda, and I have plenty of exciting news to keep you guys updated. The adventure began even before we arrived in Rwanda, with one team member forgetting to check that his passport was actually already expired (blame the Europeans for not requiring a passport when traveling within Europe, haha). When we landed at Addis Ababa for transit, the oxygen mask compartment a few rows ahead of us decided to fall from the plane ceiling, which made me all the more appreciative of physically getting to Rwanda in one piece. Nah, I’m probably over-dramatizing this ‘ordeal’. At least Ethiopian Airlines provided some in-flight comfort – beer.

I was really excited about meeting the DHE team (Dartmouth Humanitarian Engineering) for the first time in Kigali. We have had numerous Skype meetings, but meeting face-to-face and living under one roof in Kigali will be a different experience altogether (I was quite sure they had queer habits! lol). What really surprised me was how we sat around one night playing geeky card games and solving riddles. By then I was convinced that geekiness transcends geographical boundaries.

On a more serious note, we went on a mandatory visit to all our 3 Energy Kiosk sites. As usual, the first-timers were very excited and started snapping photos every 30 seconds. It was great to see their first reaction to the kiosks – It must have been really cool to physically see the kiosks that everyone has been working on and talking about for the entire year.

Besides visiting the kiosks, we were busy sorting out administrative stuff, such as haggling for electrical/mechanical components from the metal market, calling 10,000 people (TIA!) to get our shipment in Rwanda and Tanzania sorted, and taking turns to shower with limited water supply.

So there you have it! I should probably make myself more useful with the data logger experiment (Var is also nagging me to stop now). Till the next time!