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!