Week In Review

This has been my busiest, most productive, most fulfilling and most exhausting African week. I think it deserves a recap.

The initial learning curve here took a couple of weeks. I couldn't always communicate or travel independently, but I worked as much as I could. There were more meetings than anything at first. Since then, I feel like I've constantly been chasing after resources - contacts and informants, materials and manpower. There are things to build, transport and publish. I realized about a month ago that I would not have nearly enough time here before moving on to the next place.

At the very beginning in Rwanda, I was tasked with following up with construction of four church buildings (and seeing through the completion of one of them in particular), locating/training/updating each of the 24 cooperative savings groups around Northern Province, consultation on the design of new science labs at a prep school, and various marketing and consulting projects for a local construction company. All of these projects are funded, in some part, by American interests. As of three weeks ago, I hadn't yet seen one of the church sites or met any one of the savings group leaders.

So I've been chasing, around the clock - running and jumping and calling and gathering people. But all may have come to a surprising head over the past five days. The construction company (Haki Construction Solutions) is in good shape. I finished a records database for them a couple of weeks ago, and they are learning to update it independently. Also, we presented products at a regional trade show last week and received a lot of attention, along with very positive feedback. Apparently it works as a marketing ploy here to simply stick a white man next to your product. So, much as I love spending the days alongside the company laborers, I felt comfortable to withdraw during the past weeks and focus elsewhere.

Last week, I was able to meet with all 24 savings group leaders in one place. That was a small triumph. I learned about their projects and different group issues, and this week I set out to visit three of them. I will not be able to visit them all, but it was most important to meet the leaders, to encourage them and begin to implement basic accounting principles as the groups grow. They are very innovative, with members sharing loan funds and businesses, and they are quickly growing independent from the sponsoring entities that organized their start-up.

Also, by this Monday I had finally seen three of the church sites (at various stages of completion), but not yet the one that was most important to complete - by July 20, this Tuesday. They are all very remote, with exquisite views, but in extremely poor villages (average income less than 250 USD/year). There is only a 'road' to two of them. The other two are reached by path. To transport materials for construction, hundreds of villagers (children, elders, women, men) walk up and down the hills in line, carrying cement and wood and stones, on heads of course. This cannot be much different than building a pyramid 3000 years ago. The first time I was taken to see the construction sites, I rode with a local Anglican Vicar on the back of a dirt bike. The journey was agonizing, impossibly steep, slow and bumpy over countless soccer-ball-sized stones, with blinding-dust sand dune stints due to the height of the rural dry season. We tipped over sideways three times, killed the bike countless times, lost it sliding back down a hill once, and started to flip over backward once (I bailed every time). But there was a minor victory in finally seeing these church projects first-hand. But the final church - in a village called Regeshi - remained a mystery. Of all my work objectives here, the completion of this small obscure church had been repeatedly emphasized. Yet I had not been able to see it, and my questions were skirted by the locals. I took this to mean that they had diverted the American money given toward construction to other community projects. But I kept pressing, passed on from person to person, looking for answers and accountability from someone.

Exhausted and frustrated, I took two days this week to help the Tom's Shoes project. I posted pictures from this experience below. I'm afraid it was one of those distinctly African experiences that I could only cheapen in an attempt to describe. Let the pictures speak. Suffice it to say that the other half of the Tom's Shoes business legitimizes the American style craze. This is one bandwagon worth jumping on. I realized the pictures and faces and expressions I came away with in my mind are the reason I traveled to Africa in the first place. In that experience I found part of what I came to search for.

Yesterday, I decided to simply take the day off and go adventuring. I haven't taken an off day in two weeks now. I've been running to see and finish as much as possible. I had given up on the Regeshi church deadline, and was very frustrated and disappointed. It would not be finished, and not for lack of effort. I had insisted and annoyed as gracefully as I could to push the project along,
but I wasn't receiving good information and I had run out of avenues. So I took off early yesterday with my friend Francis to go to Lake Burera on the Ugandan border - an absolutely gorgeous water-filled volcanic crater with multiple islands, skirted by banana and tea farms and stilted thatched huts. We found a fisherman tying his boad (a hollowed-out tree trunk) and asked him if he would paddle us out to the first island, about an hour away. He insisted we pay him ten U.S. dollars (two weeks' wages, at least). I had been willing to offer five, still generous considering the average bus ticket around the country costs three. But he was hell-bent on his price. So we acquiesced and he fetched his 12-year-old son to help paddle, and we shoved off. The day was perfect. While we cruised, I felt more relaxed than I have in a couple of weeks. The man and his son ended up being remarkably hospitable. They walked the perimeter of the island with us, showing off the best lookout points and lagoon spots. The island was inhabited by two families; they harvest bananas each morning and float them along shore to be picked up by a passing boat. I felt like a castaway. They could have left me there.

By noon we had to turn back so Francis could go teach English. She teaches in a village called Mwico, on a hill point that juts out into the lake, surrounded by water on three sides. I set off on my own to explore the shoreline and take some pictures. We met again in a few hours to return to Musanze, thoroughly exhausted. On the way back my phone rang, and I picked up to speak with the same Vicar who had showed me the three churches a few days before. He was out of breath, and there were hammers pounding in the background. He told me they had managed to organize the funds, and the villagers in Regeshi had come together to help finish the church. They were removing stones to pour the final concrete, so it would be dry by Tuesday exactly - the day that the contingent of Americans who funded the project will arrive to visit. I couldn't believe my ears. I was more proud than any other moment in Africa thus far (Landon Donovan's goal a close second). I have not seen the place myself, but by some good fortune I have been able to coordinate its completion through connecting the right people. In the overall scope of things, this lone church building is insignificant when compared to the other, larger projects - but it feels like my biggest work-related victory in Africa.

Last night, I was invited to take dinner in a family's home, and I arrived to find a spontaneous, raging house party. I was handed a Coke as the surrounding mass of Africans sang traditional tribal music and danced ferociously. I stayed for a couple of hours, returned to my guest house and collapsed. Perfect.

Everything can slow down now; I am largely finished with my work commitments, slightly ahead of 'schedule' (whatever that means here). I can move on to tie up lose ends and polish the details this week, as well as host groups of visitors from the U.S. So I breath out. I have ten days left here. After that I'll travel for a couple of weeks on my own, to Congo, back through Rwanda, then overland to Kenya. The adventure begins anew.

In other news, I have the beginnings of an awesome beard, the 24 DuPont Chevrolet tops this weeks NASCAR Power Rankings, and - for what it's worth - it is nearly unanimous opinion amongst Africa's GenY that Tupac is still alive. Also, with my departure, I must have popped the cork on engagement and wedding season. Congrats to Jake & Kara, John & Maggie, Kallie & Chris, TB & Sam(B), and Nate & Erin. I toast you from afar. The untimely 8,000 miles I've placed between myself and your respective festivities probably symbolizes the relative distance I intend to keep between myself and marriage for the foreseeable future. (although a wife in Africa is ripe for the picking.)

Peace & Love.