Travel updates

2022: Day 7 - 8 (Aug 21 - 22)

Muraho! Day 7 We started the morning a little later than usual to respect the community’s worship hours on Sunday. Aaron and Jon took the extra time to run through the misty Muhunga hills. After eating another Don Bosco breakfast, the team hit the road to the community and got to work. The morning was filled by tedious tasks including wire extension, delicately pushing wire into protective conduit, and more water source recharge measurements.

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2022: Day 5 - 6 (Aug 19 - 20)

Muraho! Day 5 Another early day for the team. So thankful for the priests at Don Bosco who packed us an exquisite breakfast of coffee, bananas, ground nuts, watermelon, bread, and bananas for the road. Lots of coffee was regrettably shared with the floor as the bus clamored down the road to the community. Upon arrival, we were once again greeted by the smiling faces of the technical students in their hard hats and coverall suits ready to work.

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2022: Day 2 - 3 (Aug 17 - 18)

Muraho! Day 2 Our team has just finished day three of our trip to Rwanda. On our second day in Kigali, we woke up early for a light jog to the airport to pick up our lost luggage. The jog took us through the rolling Kigali hills and local neighborhoods. We were impressed by the spacious green landscape in the hill valleys preserved by the city of Kigali. After returning to Centre Christus for what the team has decided is “the best coffee ever made,” we crammed into the Green Machine for a trip to the MTM cellular store.

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2022: Day 0 - 1 (Aug 15 - 16)

Muraho! We are excited to announce that our 2022 travel team is in Rwanda after kicking off our travel from SFO on August 13th. The students traveling this year are Mia Gabriele, Aaron Juan, and Katie Ott and are accompanied by EWB alumni and 3x past traveler Jon Borst, and civil engineering lab manager Brent Woodcock. (Pictured from left to right: John R, Jon, Katie, Brent, Aaron, Mia, and Fr. Innocent)

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2019: Days 9-12

Hi all, Our last two days in community, Thursday and Friday, passed very quickly. On Thursday, both the cart team and the water team headed into the community. The cart team started the day by monitoring the old cart and asking interview questions, including what the community has been using it for, and how frequently they’ve used it over the course of the past year. After the interviews, Garrett and David took the new cart up the street to a nearby “water bar,” where water is available for purchase.

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2019: Days 6-8

Hello y’all, The theme of Monday was hurry up and wait. We woke up early to seize the day, but were delayed after breakfast waiting to coordinate transportation and drivers for the two teams. Once that was settled, the water team went to research the available pumps and piping available here in Rwanda while the cart team headed off to find a soldering gun. While things were going smoothly for the water team, the cart team popped a tire on their vehicle halfway through the ride.

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2019: Days 3-5

Muraho (hello) all, On Friday, our fourth day in country, the water team started organizing the water information and doing some research in order to figure out what questions to ask the community and the sector engineer who has been helping them with their project. Innocent, the welder, surprised the team on Thursday night by revealing that the cart had been welded, so the cart team set off to Safintra Friday morning to pick up the cart and bring it to Sunpreme, the machine shop where the wheel clamps and battery box were being fabricated.

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2019: Days 13-14

Hello all, Our last two days in Rwanda were busy and bittersweet. On Monday, the team split up for the last time: Garrett, Ben, and Dr. Doyle headed out to community to use a pump (the correct pump this time) to drain the borehole and obtain a flow rate, while David, Megan, Dr. T, and Katie stayed at Centre Christus to run calculations for the water project and pick up everyone’s clothes from the market.

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2019: Days 1-2

Greetings from Kigali! We arrived on Tuesday evening to a warm welcome from Father Innocent, who is our everything. He organizes transport, lodging, some meals, gives the best hugs, inspires us, and we would be lost without him. On Wednesday morning, we got off to an early start and headed out into Kigali to pick up SIM cards, exchange cash, and print some technical drawings of the cart to take to the welder.

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2018: Quality Control Testing 2

After the failure of the front castor wheels in the last testing, we replaced the wheels with a much stronger brand of wheel. The new wheels are welded in two spots separated by a distance so that they can resist a moment caused by potential side loading. The QC2 tests these new castors, and we experiment with front/rear wheel drive. We ultimately decided to keep the rear wheel drive because otherwise the transaxle would take the brunt of the forces.

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