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.
The group headed out to community got off to a late start, leaving Kigali around 12:30 pm after having some trouble finding a pump to rent. We reached the community around 2:00, and from there used the almost too powerful pump to drain the borehole. We then monitored the water level over the next few hours to determine the flow rate, and finally returned to Kigali around 7pm.
The team running water calculations passed an uneventful morning working through our data, contacting the various engineers associated with the water project, and double checking calculations. We also contacted Engineers Without Borders Rwanda. Though EWB SCU has previously worked with EWB Rwanda, as we did more mechanical based projects, we were largely working outside of the expertise of the professional chapter. Now that we are working on a water project, we realized that having a group of professional engineers who are able to closely monitor the project would be invaluable. We met with Wellers, our old contact at EWB Rwanda, and left feeling very encouraged about the partnership.
The two groups reunited at Khana Khazana for dinner, an EWB favorite.
On Tuesday, we spent the morning sorting through our remaining RWF before saying our first goodbye of the day to Garrett, who is off to further explore East Africa with his family. The rest of the team spent the remainder of the day wrapping up loose ends–one final trip to the market, one more stop at Davis and Shirtliff, the pump store, to pick up brochures and information on water treatment systems, and one last lunch at Women’s Bakery.
After a tough goodbye with Father Innocent and a semi-rushed sprint to the airport, the team said goodbye to Dr. Doyle, who was booked on a flight routed through Amsterdam. The rest of the team split up in Brussels, with Megan, Dr. T, and Ben heading back to the United States and David and Katie heading to London for their semester abroad.
The team, having all reached our final destinations safely, is feeling so incredibly grateful for this experience. Rwanda is a beautiful country, full of wonderful people, and the sheer gravity of this opportunity has not been lost on us. We want to thank everyone for supporting us in this venture, and reading these emails to keep up with our antics even when they are several days behind schedule.
Though this will be the last update email, there are still several more vlogs that will be posted, so look out for those on our youtube channel in the weeks to come.
Murakoze (Thank you),
The EWB SCU travel team