One of the main reasons I was
interested in coming to the University of Illinois involved the work that some
of the professors there were starting in Uganda. They have been planning some projects with a
Ugandan man named Peter, who runs an NGO in Uganda that focuses on supporting and
training farmers, and which has begun to work on recovering resources from
agricultural and human waste. Peter
already has a model farm, not all that far from where I had been living in
Uganda, and the eventual goal is to set up something similar on a piece of land
near Oruchinga, a refugee settlement in the southwestern part of the country,
where we could work on a number of projects that would connect with the refugee
community and the surrounding host communities.
Now, every year, a senior-level civil
engineering class sends a team of
students, along with at least one professor and several graduate students who
act as teaching assistants (TAs), to another country. Last year, the destination was Uganda, and
the original idea was that Uganda would become a recurring destination, given
this great connection with Peter.
Unfortunately, a trip to Uganda would not work this year, because the country’s
presidential elections were being held during this past week, when the trip was
scheduled to take place. In Uganda (as
in some other places), there is often a greater possibility of protests, riots,
or something unsafe happening on days surrounding elections. So, as an alternative, this past week, that
class went to Rwanda, to visit Gihembe, a refugee camp in the norther part of
that country, which is fairly close to the Ugandan border and Oruchinga.
Although I’ve not been directly
involved with the class (I’m not one of the official TAs), I was given the
opportunity to go along on this trip, because part of my research will involve
working with Peter to design some of the sanitation and resource recovery
systems that we think will be beneficial in these types of settings.
Although I was certainly looking
forward to this opportunity to return to East Africa, I admit that, apart from
a few meetings with my adviser, I was not thinking too deeply about this trip
before going. I had not talked about it
with very many people. Maybe it was
because I wasn’t involved in planning the class and hadn’t really known or interacted
with any of the twelve students going on the trip before we drove to Chicago a
little over a week ago. But, once we
started our two-day travel marathon, I started to feel some anticipation.
After our flights, we arrived in Kigali,
the capital of Rwanda, on a Saturday evening, and met the four drivers (Moses,
Moses, Ali, and Emma) who would be taking us everywhere in the coming
week. These guys were actually from
Uganda, but they do safaris throughout East Africa, so some of them knew Rwanda
fairly well. They took us to a very nice
hotel in Kigali, where we would be spending the night.
Sunday morning, we met Peter, had
lunch in the city, and then drove north for about two hours to Gicumbi
District, where Gihembe is located. I
spent the whole drive looking out the window and watching the countryside
breeze past. As we left Kigali, we
passed by a network of wetlands, where rice was being grown, and we soon began
snaking through the large green hills that characterize much of the
country. The look of rural Rwanda is
very similar to that of Uganda – lush, green vegetation; dusty, reddish-brown
soil; some houses made of bricks and mortar with metal roofs, and others made
of dried mud and sticks; many people engaged in small-scale, rainfed
agriculture; crops that include bananas, potatoes, maize, sorghum, beans,
assorted vegetables, and tea. I saw lots
of terraces cut into the hillsides for farming, which was one difference with
Uganda – I typically didn’t see terraces, even when people were farming on
steep hillsides. We ended up at a hotel
in Gicumbi, several kilometers from the refugee camp. The students and TAs spent the evening preparing
the lab equipment that they had brought to test local water sources, while I
grabbed a bunch of mosquito nets and hung them up for myself and the five male
students on the trip – we were all sharing a place, and the ceilings were too
high to reach, even for a tall guy like me standing on a bed, so hanging these
things took a little creativity.
Over the next two and a half
days, we visited a number of different locations – communities surrounding the
camp, a school, a health center, and various water sources used by people in
the camp and the surrounding communities (springs, a lake, a water treatment
plant, and a set of storage tanks in a nearby valley where large tanker trucks
are filled before driving up to the camp).
At these sites, the students would split up into groups, with some
people using the equipment we brought to conduct field tests and collect
samples of the water, which were taken back to the hotel where the students
could do some more complex and time-consuming tests. Other groups of students interviewed
people about issues surrounding water, sanitation, agriculture, and food
security. Obviously, there was a pretty
significant language barrier. The local
language throughout the country is called Kinyarwanda, which is a Bantu language
and does have some similarities with Luganda (but not enough for me to
understand much of anything). We
typically had two to three people with us who could act as translators, so we
could only do a couple of interviews at a time.
Given my interests in sanitation
and agriculture, I typically shadowed the students doing the interviews, and
occasionally added a few questions of my own into the mix. I also did some very basic soil
classification tests at one location, the results of which suggested that
latrines in the area might be prone to collapse. I quickly moved over to where two students
were interviewing a group of men and women and asked if anyone had issues with
their latrines collapsing. Many people responded
in the affirmative. This is obviously a
serious issue, but it was also a nice example of two different types of data
agreeing with each other and showing me that the work we want to do could have quite
a bit of value here.
The one place we didn’t visit was
the refugee camp itself. This may seem
odd, given that the camp was our primary reason for coming to this place. Indeed, we had planned to spend quite a bit
of time in the camp, doing the same things we had been doing in those other
locations. The problem was that we
needed a permission letter from a government ministry in Kigali, and we had not
yet met with this ministry. So, we
couldn’t enter the camp. Although this
was disappointing for the group, it is also understandable – you probably wouldn’t
want any random person or group to just walk into a refugee camp, where there
are a number of complexities and social dynamics that may not be fully
understood.
Personally, the major purpose for
my tagging along on this trip was to see the camp and come away with a better
understanding of that context. So, the
fact that we couldn’t enter did disappoint me quite a bit. At the same time, though, I enjoyed the work
that we were able to do. It felt very
good to be out in the field again, talking to people about their lives, experiencing
a small portion of this reality. I also
had a few really interesting brainstorming sessions with Peter while we were
riding in the cars. It’s so easy to get
wrapped up in the nuts and bolts of the more globally-focused research I often do
in my office in the civil engineering building at the university, and I do
enjoy that work. I find it very
interesting, and potentially very impactful.
But the work that I can contribute to in East Africa – now with the
added focus on refugee communities, which are full of extremely vulnerable
populations – I think that is where my heart truly lies. I can get excited about either type of work,
but I am more emotionally tied to one, even though it is not as broad in scope.
After our time in the northern
part of the country, we returned to Kigali on Wednesday afternoon, back to the
same hotel we stayed at the first night.
After arriving and eating dinner, the students did a few more tests on
the water they had collected, while I worked on some other work not related to this
trip.
Thursday was our safari day. We woke up very early and left the hotel around
4:30 AM, so that we could reach a national park near the country’s eastern
border with Tanzania when it was still relatively early in the morning. Our drive through the park started very
slowly, seeing the occasional antelope, warthog, buffalo, or zebra once in a
while. Right before stopping for lunch,
however, we came across a single, extremely large elephant by a lake. We ate lunch a little further along the
lakeshore, near where a group of hippos was hanging out in the water. After lunch, we hit the jackpot. Our drivers did not expect to find any big
cats, but we came across two lions, one female and one male, resting under a
bush near a mound of soil. This was the
first time I had seen a male lion in the wild.
Very soon after that, we got pretty close to a group of about eight
giraffes, some of which were obviously paired up in couples. For the rest of the afternoon, we saw fairly
large groups of zebras and antelopes. I
always love seeing wildlife in the wild, and this was a great experience. But, it was a very long day. We got back to the hotel around 6:00 PM,
meaning that we had basically spent about thirteen and a half hours in the
cars, and most of that driving was pretty bumpy and very dusty. Everyone got out of the cars and immediately
headed for the showers.
Friday was our last full day in
Rwanda. All of the students and some of
the TAs visited the genocide memorial and then went to a craft market, while
Peter, Benito (the professor teaching the class), Lauren, Aimee (two TAs), and
I went to several meetings in the city.
We met with a few people working at USAID (U.S. Agency for International
Development) at the U.S. embassy, with the Rwandan government ministry that handles
refugee populations in the country (and the ministry from which we would need
to get permission to enter the camp), and with UNHCR (the UN refugee agency,
which runs the camps and registers refugees when they enter the country). I think all of the meetings went really well,
and future groups shouldn’t have a problem getting access to the camp, now that
our leaders know the process that needs to be followed. We were all especially happy with the UNHCR
meetings. We actually had two meetings
with this agency, one in the morning with technical program staff, and one in
the afternoon with a few people who hold leadership positions. All of these people seemed to be very
interested in the projects we have planned in Uganda, and they definitely saw
potential connections with the camps in Rwanda as well. For example, one of the program staff
mentioned that latrines were a significant issue in the camps (due to soil
conditions that can increase the chance of collapse, which, again, agreed with
the data we had been collecting), and that firewood for cooking is another
major issue. We were told that the UNHCR
spends about $1 million per year just to provide firewood for all of the
refugees in the country. One of the
technologies we will be researching can provide an alternative source of
cooking fuel using energy generated from human and/or animal waste. So, we could potentially help the UNHCR to
save some money, a prospect in which they were particularly interested. The less money they spend on firewood, the
more they can spend on other critical needs.
I think we all came away from these meetings very encouraged and
excited.
Friday evening at dinner, Benito and
the TAs spent some time talking to the students about possible design projects
that they might do for the class, based on the data that had been
collected. Benito also thanked Peter, two
members of Peter’s staff who had accompanied us, and our four drivers. I had been feeling a need to say some words
of thanks for a while at this point, so I spoke up after Benito finished. I also thanked our Ugandan colleagues –
fortunately, I had been remembering more and more Luganda throughout the week,
as I listened to the Ugandans converse with one another. So, I expressed my thanks in Luganda. I also thanked Benito and the TAs for their
work putting the trip together, and for letting me tag along. And finally, I thanked the students. Over the past week, it’s been wonderful
getting to know these people – it was actually my favorite part of the trip. And, maybe, I was able to provide them with some
small insight once in a while. I thanked
them for letting me share this experience with them, and I suggested that,
either before we left the country or during our flights back to Illinois, they
each take some time to reflect on the experience, to think about what they saw
and heard, to try to understand in some small way the lives of the people they
met – how those lives are different from ours, but also how they are similar
and connected to ours.
Saturday morning was a relaxed
day, as we slowly checked out of the hotel, got all of the luggage together and
went to the airport. The airport was not
a relaxed experience, unfortunately – there were many questions about the
equipment we were carrying, and checking in took much longer than it should
have. But, everyone made it (except for
my water bottle, which I accidentally left behind in the chaos), and we had a safe
flight to Kenya, and then on to Amsterdam.
We are now sitting in the Amsterdam airport, waiting for our last
flight. Our long layover here has given
me plenty of time to write this extended summary of our trip.
Overall, this trip was not
exactly what I expected, but it was certainly an enjoyable, enlightening, and
enriching experience. Besides the
research ideas that have come out of my time here, and besides a slightly
greater understanding of the lives of people in Rwanda, two key messages have
come out of this trip for me:
First, as I’ve already said, East
Africa needs to remain a part of my life.
This was my first time back to this area of the world since leaving
Uganda at the end of my Peace Corps service, and it cannot be the last. This place holds too much of my heart behind
whenever I leave. I find a piece of
myself when I return. Fortunately, I
think my research will bring me back in the coming years.
Second, I love interacting with
students. Like I said, my favorite part
of this trip has been getting to know these young people. Hopefully, I provided something useful, and I
would like to do that for more people. A
career path that involves teaching is becoming more and more attractive, even
though I still have little actual experience with it. I need to get more…
Can these two pieces work
together as I move forward in my life?
I hope so. I think it’s possible…
