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)
Our Project:
The Nyange community currently pays for clean drinking water from a distant municipal water source. We plan to implement a water supply and filtration system that will provide the surrounding community of more than 200 with a sustainable source of clean drinking water. In this phase of our project we are pumping water from an encased borehole located in the valley below the main co-operative building to a filter house. The community hopes to be able to supply water for the government while they are repaving the heavily trafficked road outside the community in the coming weeks. The pump system is solar-powered and gives the community the ability to pump water for the co-operative members as well as to create a business opportunity by selling this water to travelers passing by. Phase two of this project aims to filter the pumped water to potable standards, and so we will be taking some water quality tests while visiting the community to prepare appropriately.
Upon arrival at the Kigali Airport, Fr. Innocent and John R. welcomed us with their famous BIG hugs and warm welcome. As it turns out, the checked bag containing our tools was lost by the airline during a layover. Luckily, the airline found our bag and we will pick it up first thing in the morning.
We spent the first morning strategizing at Centre Christus and visiting Munyax Eco to pick up our solar panel and solar pump ready for us to pick up. Despite ordering the materials months in advance and being told the materials would be ready upon our arrival, Munyax informed the team that the supplies would not arrive for another two days. Having anticipated this risk, the team is planning to pick up identical materials from a backup alternative supplier, Davis and Shirtliff. We confirmed that the materials are in stock and ready for pick up tomorrow, which will allow us to stay on track with our itinerary.
(the team making important decisions at Centre Christus)
Before retiring back to Centre Christus the team visited the famous outdoor market Kimmironko, where they explored the bustling market and met local fashion designers.
Tomorrow is our last day in Kigali before we head to Nyange, where the co-operative is located, so we will continue gathering materials and meeting with our advising in-country professional engineers (EWB Rwanda).
As implementation days grow closer, we are excited to see the CO-OP in person for the first time since 2019.
Murakoze,
EWB 2022 Travel Team