Alès, Frankreich; Barcelona; Und noch mehr?

Dear all,

everything is still going very well here. We are back in Kigali and are happy to get back to our normal live here. The time in Gahunduguru was very interesting and we made great experiences, but still we had to cut alot of our needs and especially privacy so here we feel like in a little paradise, including shower and sometimes even electricity.
On Monday morning we woke up by a thunder like sound and our building vibrating. Suprised and still confused from our dreams, wondering weather a truck had hit our house, we experienced our first earthquake, even though it was very weak and passed as fast as it came.

The last week at the bridge site passed as follows…

Monday:

On the weekend of 14^th and 15^th of may, I have been in Kigali to buy materials and pick up the welding equipment and the technician. We arrived at 15 o´clock at the bridge. Very excited we tried the first welding. The technician welded for about half an hour under the eyes of a couple hundred interested people from the village. Then finally he said: Doesn´t work, welding rots too large or generator too weak.

That was really annoying, since we had tried out the generator a couple of times in Kigali and apparently everything was: NO PROBLEM. But since everything is NO PROBLEM here and at the end it is a problem, we should have been prepared. Anyway, the generator got too hot very fast and shut down. So, once more, we had to find a African solution: Somebody knew somebody, who knew somebody, who was somewhere with his motorbike. This somebody was send to drive for one hour somewhere, where he could buy smaller welding rots. Then this somebody drove back to somewhere in order to continue driving to Gahunduguru. All that was not possible without a flat tire and other small problems. But in the end, we got our welding rots the same night at 0:00.

After we had organised that, we just had to wait at the bridge for the “GUNMAN” (security person) to arrive who had to look after our generator and the welding equipment. Luckily he left Gahunduguru at 15:00, so he should arrive at the bridge at 16:00. Strangely, when we called at 17:00 to ask where he was, he told us that he had just left Gahunduguru. So one more hour. At 18:00 we left the bridge and told the chief of the “village” (more two or three farms) next to the bridge to wait at the site for the GUNMAN to arrive. When he finally arrived it was 20:00 and we were already up in Gahunduguru and ready to go to bed.

Tuesday:

In the morning, we had to pay the Mototaxidriver, which had brought the welding rots during the night. Excited we were waiting for the test welding, which at the end worked out very good. Only the welder started to wonder, whether there are enough welding rots, which got me pretty mad, since maybe he could have thought about it, before we send the mototaxi to drive through the whole country. But finally, he said: Ntakybaso (NO PROBLEM).

So we told Alfred, one of our students to assist the welder while our employees from the village finished the drainage, by cutting a tree in the right length, that we had cut the day before. Nobody uses saws or anything similar. All works are done with the machetes and we were really impressed by the power, the people here have. They work for hours, always happy and chatting under the hot sun.

During the day, we found some of our best planks, which had been burned in a nice little fire by the GUNMAN the night before. At noon, the local authorities came to visit us on site and we explained them our work. We agreed to buy the most needed planks for a price of 1500 rwf per piece. During the afternoon a old man came, telling us, that the authorities had told him to sell us the planks. He told us his super-special-white-mans-offer of 1700 rwf per piece and one week delivery, without any chance to get it earlier. After a little discussion we agreed not to take the super-white-mans-offer but to pay him 1500 rwf for the planks with a delivery for the same day.

The welder worked during the whole day very efficient and well, until he decided to throw his welding mask in the river. Luckily, as always and I still did not yet understand why, there were many people working somewhere in the bushes doing I don´t know what. So one of them jumped into the river and saved the floating mask and gave it back to the welder. Therefore all needed reinforcements were welded on the bridge this day and we decided to weld some supplementary reinforcements the next day. After having discussed this with the welder and asked him, weather he could cut some steel profiles with the flex, he went home to relax and take a shower. The end of the day passed without any problems, only Donata coloured herself badly with anti rust paint.

Wednesday:

When we arrived on site, the welder was surprised when we asked him to cut the profiles. This, he said, is not possible and by the way, all the problems with the welding is definitely the mistake of the white people. Since we really needed the profiles to be cut, he started to cut them with his welding machine, which in the end didn´t work. So I told him, to cut it with the flex, which he denied, since there definitely is no chance to cut it. After we discussed, we said he would try and 30 seconds later, the first of the two profiles was cut. Before he started to cut the second one, he agreed that: yes, it is possible, but, since he was employed to weld, we would definitely need more money, since now he had to cut. And then, this was enough. I started to get so mad like I have seldom been and shouted at him, that I am paying him 15000 rwf and if I want him to dance on the bridge the whole day for that money, he has to do that. And if he doesn´t start cutting right away, I will find so many possibilities to weld on this stupid bridge, that he will weld the whole night through. 20 min later everything was cut and weld.

During this time, Donata and me where trying to nail the planks to the bridge and embarrassed ourself badly. With a great smile, the welder came over and hammered the nails into the planks like if they were butter. So he was happy to embarrass us and afterwards we talked again and everything was fine…

Thursday:

On Thursday, we had to finish our work. So we had to make the drainage, nail the planks, where we failed the day before and do the stress test. Since we had told the local workers the day before to bring hammers, we had two very creative, self-made hammers on the site. Everything went like planned and, even-though the people did not understand why they had to carry heavy sacks on the bridge, we could finish the whole work at 2 o´clock. Since we were too lazy to carry the sacks off the bridge again, we told the people, they can have them, if they empty them in the water before. We were surprised of how much value the sacks were for them, because only minutes later, there were more than 20 people standing on the bridge opening the sacks with nails, teeth and other tools. Therefore only 10 minutes later, everything was gone and the bridge clean and ready for the presentation the next day.

Friday:

On Friday morning we had a real breakfast, with bread and tee. This was great, after two weeks of mashed bananas etc. So we were starting the day in a great mood. At 10 we were at the site for the presentation to the local authorities and the people of the village. Our students held a very nice speech in Kinyarwanda and the people were very happy and interested. In the afternoon, we met all the people we got to know during our stay and celebrated with a beer in the only bar of the village. Happy and excited to get back in civilisation the next day we went to bed.

Saturday

While we were waiting for the car that would bring us back to Kigali to arrive we were walking around and playing. When it finally came, the teacher who accommodated us came with a very old camera and we took a nice last picture. Then we drove back on the bumpy and muddy (it had rained the night before) road and arrived at 2 o´clock in Kigali.

From then on, we were just enjoying all the thinks we had missed during our stay in Gahunduguru: Shower, beer, privacy, balcony, civilisation, electricity etc. In the evening we went eating out in a Musungu-Restaurant and had a great pizza.

The experiences we made during our construction are great and, even sometimes difficult, we will remember this stay as a great time.

Hope you are all doing fine

Mathis

since Wednesday we are at the bridgesite and everything is working out pretty good. We are accommodated in a very little village near the bridge. There we don´t have near water nor electricity. Since years, we are the first white people (musungu) that have penetrated that far into the country and when we arrived, the whole village came together, stood around us and just stared for 20 minutes, coming closer and closer. After a while, the first ones were courageous enough to touch us and some started to pull on my hair. Since our Kinyarwanda is still limited to the most basic needs, it was hard to communicate with them. Few people can speak some French, hardly anybody knows English. However, we were warmly welcomed and fed by Mr. Moise, who is giving us accommodation and food. As expected the food isn´t very different from the food we know from the cafeteria in Kigali. Basically we eat mashed bananas, potatoes, beans and some green stuff every day. After we spend the first night in this new and very unfamiliar environment, we discovered, that even breakfast doesn´t really differ from lunch or supper.

The works on the bridge are going surprisingly well. When we went working the first day, a crowd of 40 people followed us, bringing their spades and other tools in order to get a job. Since we weren´t prepared to this enormous man power, we had to tell them, to come back the next day. So the next day, they helped us to dig a drainage and we were cleaning the bridge and preparing it for the reinforcement work. We as well accomplished all maintenance work.

Now I am back in Kigali for 2 days. Tomorrow I will get the welder and the equipment and drive back through the very bad mud road. Just hope it will not rain…

Hope you are all fine.

See you soon…

Mathis

Hello everybody,

it is super late (half past eight) and we are close to falling asleep standing… 😉 Everything here is happening earlier. People start working at 7 am. at latest, so everybody goes to bed at about 9. This is quite a change, but we are getting used to it. Today, we slept in, so I woke up at 6:45, which is late.

Its Sunday, and on Sundays, the whole town is filled with the music coming from the people singing in the churches. As soon as we will find the time, we will definitely participate on one of these messes. They really seem to be a great party.

We are slowly getting used to the cultural differences and changing our German timetable to the African (very flexible). But still, we are overrun every day by new impressions.

Monday:

Normally, we should have had a meeting with somebody, who would show us the workshop facilities. But they figured, we could very well see them in the afternoon so we had to organize our transportation for a meeting with the authorities of the district, in which we are going to do our work. Therefore we went to the bus station at Nyabuogo, which is a part of Kigali. You better don´t think about one of the nice, organized European bus stations. There were about 10 000 buses, each one at least 20 years old, and at least as many people, selling anything you needed. There is no timetable. Buses leave, when they are full. That means again, when the people sit in between the seats so nobody can move anymore.

From the bus station we walked home. We passed though a very poor, but cute hoot, which was basically a huge marked. So we got some fruits and vegetables and other small supplies.

After a nice big plate of Rwandan food in the cafeteria (mashed bananas, mashed beans, mashed pees and mashed white stuff and green spinach-like mash) we could finally see the workshop facilities, where we could lend all the tools and welding equipment for our project (no problem).
Drilling is unfortunately not possible.

Luckily we were able to reach the district engineer of the district our bridge is in, with whom we tried to arrange a meeting in Karongi (3 hrs bus ride) on Tuesday or Wednesday (no problem)since Saturday. He told us, that he had made all kind of appointments for us at Thursday and that he is in Kigali on Wednesday. After some thinking, we decided to shift all our meetings from Thursday to Tuesday and Wednesday and arranged a meeting at Wednesday night with the district engineer, so we could go with him to Karongi this night. 10 min later, he called, that we had a meeting with the major of the district on Tuesday at 11. Unfortunately we didn´t have the possibility to fly there…

Tuesday:

We have to buy our material. Fortunately we have Guillaume, a local technician, who is going to come with us to help us out. We have to decide, weather we go to the luxury store „sonartube“, where we can buy high quality imported European steel, or weather we go to the junk yard to get cheaper, used material. The decision was pretty easy to take, after we passed at „sonaretube“ to get the price list. Therefore we arranged a meeting for the next morning with Guillaume at the junk yard.

Wednesday:

Since Tuesday morning, we didn´t have any electricity or water. Therefore we went unwashed and stinking with Guillaume to the junk yard. As soon as we left the car, we were surrounded by people, trying to sell us their goods. Guillaume speaks Kinyarwanda, and that is very good. After some hard negotiations we got our steel profiles and brought them to the technical center where we can cut them.

Coming home from the market, we had to cool down our brains and take a little nap. At half past four, we were sitting on our packed backpacks, waiting for the district engineer to arrive. We met him at half past five, and he was telling us, that we are leaving tomorrow at 8.

Our plan, to drive to Karongi, meeting the vice-major and going to the bridge-site afterward, seemed to be impossible. We negotiated with him to leave at 6 the next morning, hoping we still can hold on to the same planning.

Thursday:

After we were getting up at 4:30, we were ready to go at 5:30 to catch the bus. Almost on our way, the district engineer called us and informed us about a change of plan. So we finally left at 7, which allowed us to enjoy the sunrise with a coffee.

The road to Karongi leads though many hills and small villages. The people, that are with us in the bus, are very nice and are talking loud with each other in order to drown the music. The women next to me suddenly has a tiny baby in her arms, I don´t really know where it came from, feeds it and falls asleep on my shoulder afterward. When we arrive in Karongi it is raining and so we are sitting in the district engineers office, waiting for the major to have time for us (only a matter of some minutes as they told us). After 3 hours, we can go see him. We present our project and the memorandum of understanding and he seems to be very happy and to appreciate it. Unfortunately we can´t go see our bridge, since it is raining too much. So we have no choice than to drive back to Kigali, where we arrive very tired and fall asleep right away.

Friday:

On Friday evening we go trying some ruandesian beer and food with the members of engineers without boarders Rwanda. We have a great evening and drink and discuss. Engineers without boarders Rwanda is just being implemented so we give them advice. We have a great night, and at the end, I am surprised how many local beers there are….

So everything goes very fine. As you can see, we have some trouble to get used to the African way of thinking. But we are learning. The people that we meet a very friendly and open minded and after many changes of plans, everything goes its way.

Hope you are fine

See you soon

Mathis