UC Davis Blum Center for Developing Economies

As noted in my previous post, this has been a hard week but this morning I woke up to find out that three more of our orphans have gotten sponsored. This is such good news, and brings a little bit more balance to the week on a whole. Life here is very challenging, but there are still so many things to smile about:  This is Aaron, he is two and already has dreads, such a cool cat. Aaron is very shy at first, but he and I have become good pals, it is now a daily ritual for me to pick him up and tickle him silly, as seen here :)  This is Nathan and Blessings, they are cousins and love to play keep away soccer with me. They are both incredibly sweet and funny.  Photo bomb! The kids all love to be photographed. Angela and Angel. Angel is Mary's one year old grandchild who comes to school and stays on our backs while we teach. She is possibly the cutest baby in the world.

Posted on August 15, 2012 On Wednesday the 8th, we started early to meet with the Director of the Energy Development Division of EWSA in Kigali.  He also responded positively to the idea of using small locally-built systems and encouraged us to continue our work. From his previous time in Rwanda, Kyle knew of a young man who developed his own picohydroelectric system for his village, using homemade/salvaged parts and some serious dedication.  His umudugudu (Shyira) is very remote, but given the nature of this trip it was definitely worthwhile seeing. Furthermore, we could use this site as a training site to teach site-surveying to the interns, and to get a practice run in before heading to the prospective communities. So directly from the EWSA office, we went down to Nyabagogo (the main-but-not-centrally-located bus depot in Kigali) and took a bus to Musanze.  After dropping some bags at a friends residence in Musanze, it was a bone-jarring and beautiful 1.5 hou...

As week two begins the hardships that we see and experience seem to occur more and more. I feel like I have aged ten years in these past two days with the intense things that have happened. Poverty is something that is so easy to disengage from. When you live in a place like America, it’s very easy to see pictures of starving children in Africa and feel bad, but then very quickly forget about them. It is a simple thing to lose touch with those who are suffering from any types of poverty when you avoid it, or try and stay away from it. I am not saying this is a bad thing, but it is a very dangerous thing because once you become disconnected from people, compassion and the drive to help them can dwindle. Anyways, what I have come to see here is that poverty, in whatever form it may be in, becomes so much more personal, and so much more heartbreaking when you start forming connections with the people who are suffering. In Zambia the unemployment rate is about 70% and I would guess i...

Posted on August 14, 2012   Here's a brief photo of us with the Cell leader of the Nyakeru site in Rushaki! Very promising site, both socially (very interested people) and technically (just under 3kW potential in the dry season).     Posted on August 15, 2012   Had a great turnout at the Energy-Luncheon Meeting on Tuesday, August 7th!  The goal of the luncheon was to bring together people from various backgrounds (SMS, energy, water) in Rwanda and exchange ideas and lessons learned in their particular area of expertise. Planning ahead can be somewhat difficult in Rwanda and sometimes plans change last minute, so we were a bit skeptical about how many of the 20 confirmed attendees would make it. We were overjoyed by the response: 18 people came from 8 different organizations! The groups that presented were: EWSA:  The company that works on the national energy grid in Rwanda.  Talked about how they welcome any/all help in meeting...

On Friday we made about a 7 hour drive through the African bush, passing only remote villages along the way to go spend the weekend in Livingstone. This weekend probably contained more adventure than I have experienced in my entire life, okay, maybe that's a lie, but here is a little taste of what happened: We camped in a campsite that had monkeys roaming all over it. I got chased by a monkey. I got chased by a zebra. A baboon jumped into our car. We ate caterpillars and crocodile. We went swimming on top of Victoria Falls, one of the world's seven natural wonders. We watched the most beautiful sunset in the world over the Zambezi river at the Royal Livingstone. We walked into Zimbabwe and watched bungee jumpers fly down the falls. We drove to Botswana and had a river safari that went in between Namibia and Botswana, and during this safari we saw elephants, hippos, crocodiles, water buffaloes, tons of birds, and those African animals that look like deers... they have a real na...

First week at the school is just about finished, and what a week it has been. In the words of Ken, working with these kids is like working with kindergarteners who don’t really speak English and who range in age from 4-16, in other words, exhausting. Angela and I both came down with some sort of illness that we are attributing just to the overall fatigue of the high energy level that is required. That being said, this week has also been phenomenal.   The kids at Appleseed are so incredible; most of them have stories that are unspeakably sad. Some are orphans, some have faced abuse, all live in the throes of poverty, and yet they all come to school with these big smiles, just so happy to be there.  Appleseed only started last year and most of the children who go there have never had any education, so even the oldest kids are still learning how to read and do simple math equations.    This week we have done a lot of assessments to see where the kids are a...

We have been working with the community of Quincucirca to develop a potable water supply system for the town, with distribution to each household. This will be Engineers Without Borders-UC Davis' second assessment trip to the community and the immediate surrounding area. While significant data were gathered on the first assessment trip in 2010, the political landscape has changed in Quincucirca requiring the community to renegotiate their water rights. Subsequently, new information is needed to design the potable water supply system.  In assessing what we had to offer, we outlined four possible courses of action. With the potable water pipeline being the most expensive part of the project, designing a system that will work is crucial and particularly important to engage the community so it has a clear sense of it's own needs and priorities. Through communications before this trip, the community decided to move forward and construct a potabl...