Headin' Home

Sadly, we left Rwanda on Thursday. We flew to Bujumbura, Burundi en route to Nairobi, Kenya. Kenya Airways is pretty nice, and they served food even though our flight was just 1.5 hours. In Nairobi we had an overnight layover, so we opted to get a hotel.
The drive to our hotel was the first time we'd been out of the airport in Kenya. Cars drive on the left side of the road, like in England. On the way to our hotel, we passed through a particularly poor neighborhood, and didn't see any foreigners anywhere. This, coupled with our guidebooks depiction of the city as "Nairobbery", enforced our decision to stay in the hotel and not wander around the streets. Our hotel was nice, and the attached restaurant served good food. We watched the Germany v. Croatia match in the EuroCup (soccer). We were not too excited about the long flights ahead of us, but we are ready to go home. We had a great time and all of us are leaving without illness...the elements of a successful trip!

The next day we got up early to catch our flight from Nairobi to London. Again, this leg of the trip featured a partially-full flight, so we got to stretch out and relax. I sat next to a Canadian guy that had just climbed Mt. Kilmanjaro. He had some altitude sickness and said he was glad he never had to do that again. The cool thing about our flight was that it was during the day, so I got to watch the African continent go by out the window. I saw the landscape transition from the Kenyan scrublands to the Sudanese sahel to the Libyan desert. We flew right over Darfur, and I thought about the fighting going on down below us. The Sahara looked sandy, flat, and hot, a far cry from the lush hills and cool temps in Rwanda.

I saw the African continent disappear into the Mediterranean Sea. We flew next to the tiny island of Malta, which looked like every foot of land had a road or a building on it. We flew over Sicily, next to Corsica and Sardinia, and over the Alps. Some of the highest peaks still had snow. The views were beautiful! Finally we passed northern France and the English Channel. I thought about that woman that swam the English Channel, and it looked like a crazy-far distance from my vantage point at 25,000 feet. We flew into London, it was cloudy again and very green. Josh J. left us to catch his flight to New York that night. We had a night here in London too, and Alvin got us set up at a hostel. We took the Underground (subway) from the airport, a 1.5 hour trip. Elliot and Josh A. were staying with friends in town, so just 3 of us were at the hostel. We stayed at Saint Christopher's, which is ranked the best hostel in England (I don't know how we ended up there!). It ended up being very loud here (music playing till 2am!) and the adjacent bar encouraged drinking. We walked across London Bridge, which was cool but didn't look that old. The buildings were all very cool. We passed a church that was rebuilt in 1212 after a fire! Old building in the US don't hold a candle to old buildings in London! We wished for another few days to further explore the city. We ate dinner at the bar, which was very tasty but pricey (thanks to the crappy exchange rate). I tried to sleep early, but the bumping music made it a little difficult. We woke up early to head to the airport and made it no problem. The flight was full and lasted 10+ hours, but the entertainment was good.
Again, the daytime flight was nice...I saw Greenland with its mountainous, glacier-covered shores. I could see the glaciers entering the sea. We flew over the Hudson Bay, but it was covered with clouds :( I saw the farmlands of Saskatchewan and Alberta. We crossed the Rockies in Montana, which had totally awesome views of snow-capped peaks. I also saw some of the western Cascade volcanoes, including Mt. Baker and Mt. St. Helens. We flew really close to Mt. Shasta and Lassen Peak. I also saw Tomales Bay and Point Reyes. Finally we reached the SF Bay and familiar landscapes.
We got all of our luggage without any problems, and all of our gifts made it home without breaking. Hooray! Now we have to get back on schedule and post some photos. Thanks everyone for following our adventure in this blog and for supporting our trip!
-Maureen

Yay...bike work!!

For the past few days we have finally been doing what we set out to do...build Project Rwanda coffee bikes! On Monday morning we got into the fabled warehouse and got to work. There were about 600 bikes in the warehouse that needed some wrenching. We divided into two teams: a wrenching crew and a warehouse-stacking crew. One of our major contributions was the re-stacking of the coffee bikes. It seemed that there was little to no care in handling the previously-built bikes. Many of them were more or less tossed into a pile. Our Berkeley brains devised a stacking method that opened up floorspace while preserving the spokes, derailleurs, and brake levers. We worked on these bikes for a few days, slowly but surely working through the warehouse.
On our last day in Rwanda we hoped to finish the job, and we almost did. We got through about 80% of the bikes in the warehouse, and we could've easily finished if we had another day. Achille (our Project Rwanda coordinator) was very pleased to see our handiwork and tried hard to convince us to become expats ;) We considered it after having some amazing Indian food in Kigali. We thought it may have been the best Indian cuisine in the world! It was a great end to our trip. We've seen so much beauty here in Rwanda! We will definitely get some photos out soon.

Butare Coffee Washing Station

We traveled to Butare to see some Coffee Bikes in action. It seems like most of the coffee growing occurs in the southwestern part of Rwanda, so Butare was the best place to head to find a real-life coffee washing station. What exactly is a coffee washing station? Well, you may or may not know that coffee beans are basically the pits of a certain type of cherry. Coffee farmers cultivate coffee cherry trees and bring them (by bicycle or on foot) to these coffee washing stations. First, the cherries are taken out of the bag and inspected. People sort the cherries by quality and remove any bad ones. The good cherries are weighed and the farmer is paid based on the weight and quality. This is an obvious benefit of the coffee bikes; farmers can carry more coffee, which means the cherries are fresher when they arrive at the washing station.
We got a tour of the washing station, which is entirely outside on a steep hillside. Our tour guide was a young woman named Alice; her job involved recording the different lots of beans on the drying rack. Here's a short version of the tour:
After the cherries are purchased, they are placed into a pool of water for soaking, which makes it easier to separate the flesh of the fruit from the coffee bean. Then the cherries are run through a machine that pulls the flesh off. The machine looks kinda like a millstone. We didn't get to see this machine in action. After separating the beans, they are placed onto huge mesh trays, where the beans start drying and workers sort them again. At this point, the beans are pale green and have a thin outer coat. The beans turn dark brown during the roasting process (which is not done at the washing station). The sorters are looking for the following imperfections: overripe, under-ripe, worm-damaged, and machine-damaged. The overripe are a little brown and under-ripe beans are a little green. The worm-damaged beans have little bore holes in them, and the machine-damaged beans have knicks on the edges. After sorting, the beans are sent to drying racks, which cover the hillside and consist of the same mesh trays. The weather today started out cloudy with a threat of rain, so the beans on the drying racks were covered with black tarps. While we were there, the sun came out. Then we saw the workers remove the tarps. We also saw some workers checking the water content of the drying beans using a legitimate scientific instrument (it stood out because everything else was handmade from wood or other locally-made materials). It looked like there were at least 30 people working at this station, and many of them were older women. We saw some coffee farmers using their coffee bikes loaded down. It was awesome to see the early stages of coffee and how Project Rwanda has helped and will help coffee farmers.

Sunday: Rainy in Ruhengeri

On Sunday we had hoped to do some trail reconnaissance for the August fund-raising event (Wooden Bike Classic), but the weather did not cooperate. It rained during the night and for most of the morning, so the clay-rich soil here would be anything but rideable. The Wooden Bike Classic event will include a road race, a mountain bike race, and a wooden bike crit. Wooden bikes are the original mode of transportation for African coffee farmers. They are beautiful handmade machines that look like a cross between a scooter and a bike. I heard they were recently banned by the government because they are rather unsafe on the steep descents. One other benefit of our Project Rwanda coffee bikes: brakes!
Instead of doing recon, we visited the new Ruhengeri home of Team Rwanda, the national cycling team. The home was previously used as the veterinary clinic for Mountain Gorillas. We took a bus back to Kigali and arranged to work on Project Rwanda bikes tomorrow. This is the work we have been trying to do for several days now. It turns out that trying to help in Africa is oftentimes mired in bureaucracy. We are working with Project Rwanda, a project affiliated with SPREAD. Project Rwanda sold/donated hundreds of coffee bikes to WorldVision, a micro-finance company. The coffee bikes are stored in a warehouse owned by WorldVision, and we are having trouble accessing this warehouse. It sounds like WorldVision is worried we plan to 'borrow' some of the bikes permanently, which, of course, is ridiculous. Our main contact at Project Rwanda, Achille, is one amazing dude that has been working hard to get access to that warehouse. After 3 days of false starts, it looks like tomorrow is the day!

Ride Report: Kigali to Ruhengeri (92 km)

On Saturday, June 7, we went on a great adventure to deliver mountain bikes to Ruhengeri. The bikes will be used in August during the Wooden Bike Classic. They are very nice bikes, GT Marathon Pro Carbons, and some of them were used in the Absa Cape Epic earlier this year. Our route was the standard ‘black road’ (African term for paved road) that we took last weekend during our travels around the country. We faced two significant climbs; the first was just a few miles into the ride at the edge of Kigali, and the second was about 20 km from the end of the ride. Each climb gained about 1500 feet and took about 30 minutes. They both reminded me of climbing Mt. Diablo to the ranger station (a popular cycling route in Walnut Creek, CA). On the first climb we were plugging along, conserving our energy, when a super-fast Rwandan woman on a Trek road bike (unlike any other bikes we’ve seen here so far) came up the hill behind us. She was wearing street clothes, had toe clips, and was riding very strong. She seemed determined to show us Mzungus how to ride in Rwanda. She attacked our group near the top of the climb, leaving most of us in the dust. The ride was beautiful, long, and strenuous. Once we reached the top of the first climb, we had a lot of tough rollers to contend with. People came out from their houses and lined the roads to watch, yell, and wave as we rode by. A lot of kids ran next to us on the climbs, some kept up with us for upwards of a mile! We met an Irish guy that had been riding his bike for 2.5 years. He started in London, biked through Europe, took a boat to Morocco, biked to Cameroon…it was a lot of traveling, and he only had 3 small dry bags on his bike.

After the rollers we had an awesome descent into a beautiful green valley. The vistas were amazing, with rolling hills as far as the eye could see. During our ride in the valley, we were joined by some bike taxis that rode with our group for a while. Their bikes were singlespeeds, and many of them had busted pedals with only a small spindle to pedal with. Soon we crossed a brown river that looked like chocolate-milk, which meant we were heading toward the second big climb. Our support vehicle passed us near here, and we stopped for some Kirkland trail mix (definitely an imported item…thanks for sharing Jenny!) and some photos. There were light showers here and there, but the sky was looking dark and ominous in the direction we were heading. The second climb bordered on brutal since we were about 70 km into the ride. It was a little steeper than the first and it started raining near the top. On the descent conditions deteriorated rapidly and it started pouring. I tried to ride behind Elliot to conserve energy, but I was afraid of drinking his spray. Finally, we saw a sign that said 4 km to our destination, but the road turned up slightly and was a hard finish to a brutal day. Just as it got too dark to see, we reached our guest house. We were soggy and cold…and looking forward to a hot shower. No such luck, as our scary, horror-film quality shower room lacked hot water. It was sad, and we had to rely on tea to warm us up. After a nice dinner with friends, we went to sleep, exhausted and happy.

Thanks for reading!

-Maureen

Kids, Books, Rain

On Friday we did a bit of everything. In the morning we volunteered at a school in Rwanda. We helped a class of 1st and 2nd graders with math and reading. We helped a 3rd and 4th grade class learn about the environment and ecosystems in their science class. We told some older students about college and ourselves. After lunch, the group split up with two staying to help out in computer classes that afternoon. Four others, myself included, took what we thought would be a short walk to another school to help sort books for a library they were building. The walk turned out to be roughly an hour, in retrospect, we should have listened when we were told to take a taxi. We spent the afternoon beginning to sort through a massive stack of books, which had been donated by a group from Florida.

While most of the books were textbooks, we did have some fun revisiting our youth while sorting through children's books. We had a bit more fun trying to find the "wackiest" religious text. In the end, "God's got your number" and "Satan is alive and well on planet earth" were close ties. My personal vote was for a textbook that attempted to "debunk the myth of evolution". While we only had a few hours to sort books, we made significant progress in the massive pile of books.

Later that evening, we met up with our driver from earlier in the trip, Abdul, for dinner. He took us to a very fancy Italian restaurant, which served some incredibly authentic Italian (especially when considering where we are). The meal was great, the view over Kigali unbeatable, and the company fine. The only drawback was that it started to ABSOLUTELY POUR about 10 minutes before we were going to leave. We tried to wait it out, but ended up scrambling into a taxi and then back to our rooms. In the maybe 20 seconds I was outside between the taxi and front door, I got completely soaked through. The force of the rain was downright impressive. We all went to bed tired from the days work, full from a good meal, and eagerly anticipating the coming adventures of the next day.

Thursday, June 5th - Bike Work and Meetings

Today we were able to begin work on bikes donated and shipped from the United States. We assembled two bicycles and made sure they were in proper working order. At least one of the bikes will perhaps help with the Wooden Bike Classic later in the year as a prize for the winner. The bikes can be an amazing gift and definitely open up better transportation possibilities to the recipient. The overwhelming majority of people in Rwanda either bike on older single speed bicycles or walk to and from their destination often seemingly regardless of the hills and/or distance. Following assembling of the bikes, the team continued to work on logistics for the rest of our time in Rwanda and had a productive meeting with people from Project Rwanda. We discussed going to different coffee cooperatives and inspecting Project Rwanda bicycles in Kigali to make sure they are in good condition prior to distribution to coffee farmers. We all are looking forward to helping to get these tasks on their way.
-Elliott

Wed 4 June 2008 - Working in a Kigali Orphanage

Having returned to Kigali and our bicycle work in limbo, we tried to be resourceful and volunteer where we might be of service. Mary Jo, another resident of the guest house where we've been staying was going over to an orphanage associated with Mother Teresa's order of nuns to spend some time with the children. We decided to tag along to play with the kids. This particular orphanage supposedly is one of the better ones in Kigali, and one of the few that adopts out to international parents. About 120 kids are housed there, most of them abandoned by their parents and a smaller fraction orphaned by the death of parents with HIV/AIDS.

The first child we encountered immediately ran up to Elliot and hugged him, barely getting his arms around his legs, and then quickly ran off. We then headed down a long, poorly lit hallway (it was almost dark inside of the hall except for some weak yellow lighting, giving the feel of some sort of set from a horror film) to see the rooms where the different age groups lived. I feel like much of our visit displayed this contrast. First you would see a child who seemed so excited to see you, but then that smile would be tempered by a feeling that somehow these kids should have had it so much better than their current situation allowed.

We spent a fair amount of time playing with the special needs children, kicking around a soccer ball and playing with a couple of puppets that Mary Jo had brought with her. The orphanage also plays home to a number of elderly residents who sat around the perimeter of the court yard and seemed to enjoy our presence as well. They had a lot of direct interaction with the children and seemed to have a calming effect on some of the more difficult kids in the group.

After the larger group of 3 year olds finished with their snack time, we were pretty much immediately mobbed by about 30 of them who all wanted to be picked up. They had all been given balloons (not the greatest idea as I had to extract several pieces of popped balloon from various kids mouths), and they were running around in a chaotic path from one of us to another, in the hopes of being tossed up in the air or spun around. I tried to carefully select which kids would get a ride, as several of them had soiled themselves and the smell of urine clung to almost all of their clothing.

The visit was heart wrenching; There were so many children who seemed so happy and so vibrant, but you also realized that many were developmentally delayed and that it was impossible that they were all receiving the attention that they need at that age. In the same moment you imagined a worse situation that could have befallen them, and then everything that they were deprived living there. You leave a place like that thankful that they are fed, housed and dressed, but wishing that they could have more than those basic needs met.

Bumpity Bumpity Bump

An insane downpour woke many of us in the early AM. We all still had the pent-up energy, however, to hike up to Virunga Lodge: a 5km uphill trek. There were beautiful views, and many children to hike with. After relaxing a bit at the Lodge (no, we didn't spend the night there: we're college students), we left for the lake. As we headed west towards Lake Kivu, I fell in love with the Rwandan donut. Supposedly, the delicious ball of fried dough taken with tea or bagged milk is a typical breakfast, at least based on the word of our driver, Abdul.

After a nice bumpy tour of Gisenyi ("this is African road"), we got onto some pavement and arrived at our home for the afternoon and night that is true to it's name: Paradis Malahide. A relief to our budget, the Paradis was a better place than any we had been to yet. Owner Odette and son Mucyo were welcoming an accomodating: I could not have asked for anything more. In addition to the excellence of the lodging itself, the sounds of the water and songs of the fishermen were an experience in and of themselves.

We left Paradis Malahide to drive along the lake to Kibuye, another town bordering the lake. There, I came to appreciate our previous night's accomodations even more: a decent hotel on the water costs four times what we had paid the night before. Finally, we drove back to Kigali, where we rested and recovered from our days of traveling.

Sunday 1 June 2008: Akagera National Park (Day 2) to Kinigi Guest House near Parc National des Volcans

Today we went on a short, early-morning safari back to the lake area. We saw impalas, baboons, hippos, warthogs, an African fish eagle, a heron, guineafowl, and other unidentified birds. We also saw some interesting plant life, including cacti and water hyacinth. I was particularly interested in the hyacinth, because I’m studying how it moves throughout the San Francisco Delta. The plant is native to Brazil, but has spread throughout the world, causing problems for the water bodies it invades. It was pretty cool to see it in Rwanda because it inspires me to try to do something about it. But enough of the geeky science stuff…

We were not graced with the presence of Mutwari the elephant today even though we went back to the same location we saw it yesterday. We saw a lot of elephant dung, so we were probably really close. The brush is so tall and dense that even an elephant can hide. We climbed back up to the ridge, got one last look at the huge lake with Tanzania in the distance, and headed back towards Kigali. We gave one of the park rangers a lift to a town along the way. As we neared Kigali, our driver Abdul showed us the house in which his family sought refuge during the genocide in 1994. He was only 12 years old. We were extremely grateful that he shared his story with us, because we were all curious but didn’t want to ask. It’s so hard to believe we are now in the same place that was the center of such violence and horror just 14 years ago.

In Kigali we had lunch at a Rwandan-style buffet which was very good. Back on the road, we headed northwest out of Kigali toward Musanze (formerly Ruhengeri). The road out of Kigali was a nice climb that we all wished to bike up rather than sit in a car. The drive was beautiful with green hills abound; most were covered with banana trees, beans, potatoes, cassava, and other crops. As we neared our destination, Abdul gave us a test: he wanted to see which of us would see a volcano first. We rounded one turn and suddenly a dark behemoth appeared, unlike any of the hills we’ve seen so far. It was Karisimbi, 4507 meters of sleeping volcano. The top third of the mountain was obscured by the low clouds. It was huge! All of us saw it immediately, so there was no clear winner of the game. As we got closer to Musanze, one of the volcanoes emerged from the clouds. It was Sabinyo, a name that means something like sharp teeth. Sure enough, the top had tooth-like spikes. We headed to the park headquarters outside of Kinigi Village. We were looking for information about trekking Mt. Bisoke, a seven-hour hike up to the 3700 m summit. It was Sunday so no one was around. Later we decided to skip the trek because of the $75/person fee, which we all agreed bordered on extortion (though it’s nothing compared to the $500/person fee to possibly see the gorillas).

In the evening we went a local soccer game with children from two villages playing against each other. The locals were excited when Josh A. and Josh J. wanted to join the game. They had a tough time, partly because of the high altitude, partly because of the excellence of all the local players, but mostly because the playing field was a lumpy cow pasture with ponded water and a general slant toward one goal. The mini hills gave the ball an unpredictable bounce, which made ground passes very difficult. The threat of an ankle sprain was very real. The locals were well-adapted to their field, and many played without shoes (likely not by choice). They ran fast and had very strong, accurate kicks. Josh and Josh survived the game with no injuries and even had few good plays. After the game, we had a mini team photo-shoot. Josh A. ended up buying his team a new soccer ball, much to their delight. All of us had a fun time. We got some dinner at our guest house, showered, and got some sleep.