Week Two

Hello my friends! I have been very busy. My usual work day this week has been 6am to 6pm and 1/2 day today. Very good progress on site. About 90% complete with structural excavation. Foundations are now in progress. Column footings are similar to ours in concrete with rebar although not as substantial. All other foundations are made of stone and mortor. The attached pictures give a good representation of this work. The stone foundations are called walling. Prior to setting foundation they place motor on top of excavated ground for leveling which is called blinding. Layout is called setting out. They do a great job with batter boards and string lines. after they set the stone foundations they place a reinforced concrete ground beam on top to tie the base in. Reinforced columns are then placed/extended and then a reinforced concrete ring beam is placed on top of columns around the entire perimeter. Un-reinforced hollow concrete block is then infilled between the ground beam and ring beam. They will build a mold and fabricate blocks on site.Reinforcing appears to be the size of a #3 bar.I am anxious to see the block mfg process start to observe quality. I am very pleased with the progress on site.
The contractor is struggling with completion of design build plumbing, electrical, and structural drawings. They got a taste of the real me in a meeting Friday. I have been assured their design progress will get better starting next week.
I have not found time venture out for anything but work. Finding it no different here than in Seattle where you have to constantly push the issues. Much more difficult here though with the cultural differences and language barrier. Tonight though I am planning to have dinner out at a place they call Heaven. Hopefully it will be a good venture. Would be nice to meet some lady ex patriots there!
The project located in Gashora is very rural and is a major farming area, supplying Kigali. It is amazing to see how they transport these goods on bicycles. I have attached a few pictures. You see everything from bananas, bags of produce, lengths of pipe, doors, etc hauled on these bicycles. If not then they balance on their head.
Can someone please fill me in on Seattle and important national news. The Internet is so slow it is impossible to view the times on line. files take 10 to 15 minutes to open each time you click to a new one! If I have not responded to one of your emails it is for this same exact reason. All for now. Hope all is well with you. Take care.

Week One

Arrived in Kigali Saturday 30 hours after leaving Seattle with stops in Wash DC and Brussles. Have had a very busy first week getting the download on the project. Many thanks to Al Bergman who has been here for the last few months for bringing me up to speed on the project and filling me in on how things work here in Kigali. alot to absorb in one week! Al has done a great job setting the table and has returned to Seattle.
The project is about 1 hour south of Kigali and I made 2 trips to the site this week. first meeting with the Rwandan contractor Hygebat on wednesday. they appear to be a good sound contractor. i am keeping my fingers crossed. I hope to attach some pictures of the site when i post this update as long as i can find time to upload my camera programs tomorrow and if we have power. the site is being graded with a D7 CAT and foundations are being excavated by hand. labor is very cheap here and so most work is done without machinery. one of the attached pictures was taken on the way to the project and is of men digging a trench to install fiber cable. you can see many men digging which was the same scene for miles.
I am very pleased with my housing accomodations. RGI has rented a nice 3 bedroom house in the Gacuriro neighborhood. I am sharing the house with the school headmaster Peter Thorpe who is here from San Francisco on a 3 year contact. We are fortunate to have a attendant who also lives with us and does the cooking and cleaning. The usually call them houseboys but Paul is a older gentleman and so i would rather not use the term. Paul has done this type of work since 1969 and is well versed in many different types of cooking which is very good! we told him we would like chicken for dinner and to my surprise he came home from the market with a live chicken which he killed in the back yard, threw in some boiling water and then plucked the feathers! suppose to have for dinner tonight. Paul just replaced the original houseboy John Baptise this week as John was caught exchanging Al's $100 US bills with conterfit bills. when confronted John ran off knowing the police were on the way. Very unfortunate. He made off with $900 dollars of Al's money. we have no concerns with Paul.
The people I have met so far are very nice and have been very accomodating. except for the memorials you see no evidence of there past troubles. The pace here is very much slower than the US which I must adjust to. The internet is extremly slow and alot of times does not work at all. as a example it may take 5 minutes to log on to a website and then not be available. I tried loading pictures to shutterfly last night for 1 hour and then system failed and time was wasted. all service is from cell towers. power is also not dependable as we have lost power 4 days in my first week. I am typing this post from a very nice coffee shop as we are out of power again today.
Many things are expensive here, especially imported goods. the conversion is about 585 Rwandan Francs to the US dollar. I travel everywhere by taxi which is also expensive.gasoline costs about $6.50/gallon. you pay as you go for phone, internet, power, tv. you buy cards with time and enter a code into each system. cards are similair to a lottery ticket and you scratch the back of to get your code.
Last but perhaps most important is that the beer here is good and cheap! I have found a liking to Mutzig which cost $1.70/bottle. Hope all is well with all of you back home. My first week has been good. I will talk with you soon.