(ill add pictures to this post when they are online)
Saturday 31s of July, 2004
Showing up at the office in the early afternoon has sort of been a trend for us on the weekends. It isn't expected of us to be here on Sundays at all, and on Saturdays we usually come in during the afternoon. I thought this would be just another Saturday afternoon, but I was wrong. We showed up at the office around 1pm and after only being there for about 20 minutes, we received a phone call telling Sean and I to go to the airport ASAP for a flight to Gisenyi. In Gisenyi was an opening party for the new Kivu Sun hotel that the president built. So Sean and I left right away to go to the airport. Right before we left the office we got another call saying that there was only room for sean because they couldn't get a hold of Sal, the other heli pilot, so Greg was going to come back to pick us up. I decided that I would go on the trip to the airport anyways because nothing seems to be final around here, and I had a video camera, and wanted to get some video from around town too, so I decided to use that opportunity to do that as well. Sure enough, just before we got to the airport Patrick got another call saying there was enough room for me too.
We got in the Heli and did our 'taxi' thing to the runway, as I described in an earlier post, this process just seems silly to me and I don't know why they require us to do it. Once we were in the air I took lots of video of the terrain in Rwanda on the way to Gisenyi, which you can see by downloading the 'heli_and_kivu_sun.wmv' video linked here and at the bottom of the previous post. When we arrived in Gisenyi in the chopper, we did a flyby of the new hotel, and then flew over to the airport. The airport was very small, with a building about the size of a large Starbucks. There were two small planes parked on the small tarmac and another Akagera Aviation heli that Greg had taken to get there. A driver was already waiting for us at the airport, we just hopped in and he took us through the city and to the new hotel. Since the president was at the hotel, there was an insane security checkpoint to get inside. It was one of the better security checkpoints I've been through, checked up and down, through a metal detector, and made us open our pocket knives, which they let us take, and they made us turn on our cameras. Once inside it was just like any other nice hotel, large ceilings, fresh flowers in the front, and nice little 'things' everywhere. There were lots of people there and the same dance group from the wedding I went to was there performing on the back lawn. It looked as if the pool was not yet finished, but the hotel was located on Lake Kivu so even without a pool, people could swim.
After checking out the hotel, we got to meet with the president, or otherwise referenced as 'HE' for His Excellency. It was very cool to meet a president, and in such a calm and laid back situation. We sat in a small bar on the couches and talked for like 20 mins about what we have been working on and how we see the future of Rwanda with the infrastructure that's being built. Was yet another experience that ill remember and I've got the picture (below) to prove it.
On the way back to the airport I got some decent video of what the city of Gisenyi looks like, so check that out. More poorly paved roads and tons of people in the streets, but the look and feel I got in that city was very different than the feeling I got in Kigali, don't quite know why, but it was very interesting.

Sunday 1st of Aug, 2004
Sunday, always a restful day, unless stuff at the office doesn't work. We woke up and were not connected to the internet, so to the office we went. We ended up replacing our main router three times because it was having issues, good thing we had some spares in our stock. We ended up working all day

Monday 2nd of Aug, 2004
Today I walked too much, ended up walking from the office to kist and back in addition to the multiple round trips to the office from home. We also got the ministry of education hooked up onto our fiber network, they are our first customer to be connected to fiber.

Tuesday 3rd of Aug, 2004
Rested today, stayed home almost all day. Did a little work on the site from home, writing some knowledgebase articles and did some research on weather stations. BTom came over in the afternoon and I started to show him some of the basics of video editing on the computer using premiere. I don't know if he followed or not but I think he thought it was cool. I also worked and finished the four videos I had been working on, they are now all online on one of the previous posts and on the lglan.net forums. Havana was our restaurant of choice for the night, it's a nice little pizza place across town. They have a cool oven that seems to glow through the restaurant. This time instead of having a pizza I had a calzone which we had all been craving for a while. I wasn't able to finish mine, but I saved half of it for tomorrow's lunch. After dinner we all went to the office and played a little battlefield 1942 which we haven't done for quite some time. I think I've been battling a slight cold, I don't seem to have much energy and I don't want to do anything, nor have I been very hungry. Hopefully it will pass soon.

Wednesday 4th of Aug, 2004
Researched weather stations and remote GSM Terminals today, trying to find a way to get weather data from a remote location, actually mount Karisimbi, the volcano we climbed last week. Finding a way to get real-time weather data back to our office from there is really the next step for planning what we want to do there. On a perfect day at the top the heli can land, but right now there is no way to identify the 'perfect day' without actually flying there to see. Today I still felt a little sick again, no energy and no will to do anything, though I made myself go to work and I did get some things done, great progress was made at mineduc today too. Minar was our choice of restaurants for tonight. Minar is probably the only Indian restaurant in Kigali, and even though its expensive, it's worth the price, they have some of the best food we've had in Rwanda

Friday 6th of Aug, 2004
Food poisoning is a bitch. I ate something last night that didn't agree with me. Going down it was excellent but in the morning I woke up to go throw it up. I then again threw up a few more times through the course of the morning, but by 2pm I had taken some medicine and it along with the water I drank stayed down, so I ate a little lunch and headed to the office. By the evening I was feeling much better and we went with all of us now, joel included since he is now back from paris, and mike, to minar for dinner. It was again expensive, but very good indeed.

Wedding (part II)
After visiting the parliament building, we drove to the stadium where we met Sal. Sal was there with one of the helicopters waiting for a newly married couple to come board and travel to their reception. The reception wasn’t very far, but it was cool to use the helicopter as a method of transport in this situation. We waited with Sal for a little bit, and eventually they arrived. We watched them take off and then drove ourselves to the reception. We actually got there before the helicopter but that was because they were killing time in the air, waiting for the photographers to drive there so they could get footage and pictures of them landing too. When we arrived we went to the landing site and waited. Soon enough we saw Sal and the helicopter flying in the distance. They flew around the reception site a few times before attempting to land. He had to abort his landing attempt a few times too because the wind was strange, and the landing are was very small. After they landed we spoke with Sal a bit and he was a little frustrated with the control tower but that’s another whole story within itself. They landed the helicopter on a small strip of land between the parking lot and a small park that was in the area. While we were waiting for him to land, we went and played with a teeter totter, sort of using it as a balance and seeing how hard it was to balance it in the middle with people on either side. The wedding itself was very interesting. Freddy was our connection to the wedding, it was his brother that was getting married, and Freddy is the head of the fiber project for our company here. The wedding was very different than what you would see in the US. It was organized into four parts. The first part was sort of a stage in the middle of a large lawn, where the bride groom and first man and lady sat. On either side of them was a tented area for the two families of the married couple. And facing the bride and groom’s area directly were all the chairs for the guests. At this wedding they had about 800 guests and the area was just huge. The first thing that happened was some guy came onto the speaker and said something in kinyarwanda that we didn’t understand, but as Patrick explained it, the groom’s family had to accept the bride’s family to join them as one. This process was done by inviting the fathers of both families into the front and they shared some drink out of a huge container that looked like one of those woven baskets that can hold liquids, that you often seen made in tribes from Africa. After this happened everyone clapped and then the drinking was passed onto everyone. They had a huge staff that served drinks to everyone on both sides of the family first, then everyone in the audience too, and they would give you anything you wanted from like three different types of beer to soda and water. There was one guy sitting near us that clearly wasn’t invited but was instead there to get free beer. He was quite the character and he seemed to warm up to us and think that he could speak to us in English as he drank more, but he clearly couldn’t speak English at all. The next part of the wedding was a dancing group as entertainment for the audience and families. It consisted of several female dancers, a few male dancers, and a male drum line that had very cool looking African drums. As Patrick explained it, they did a dance, where the ladies would sit in a circle with a man behind each of them except one, the man that was missing from the lady sitting was actually dancing in the middle of the circle trying to ‘win over’ one of the other ladies, and the man behind the lady would have to defend her, by out dancing the offender. It was sort of a game that they played and each guy tried to win over the girl that he wanted, and the girls could reject him if he couldn’t dance. After the dancing they went to gift opening, many of the family and friends would come up to the front and present gifts to the new couple. We didn’t wait for this to finish before we left, but we were at the wedding reception for at least two hours before we left and it was a lot of fun. It was quite a different experience than going to a wedding back home and im really glad we got to go. The location for this wedding was very cool; it was located in the basin of two larger hills, and the facility could handle about 4 weddings at the same time. It was quite the tropical setting and Patrick said that the location was full, with at least two weddings every Saturday.

Wednesday 28th of July, 2004
Today we woke up around 5:30am and picked up Greg at the intercontinental at 6:15, we then drove to the airport to get a 6:40 flight to mount karisimbi. At the airport people were a little confused that we were waiting for a military flight, and after waiting for over half an hour for the helicopter to come to the terminal, someone showed up to tell us that the flight had been canceled because of weather at our destination. This really disappointed us because we were all looking forward to going to the volcano and hiking to the top to see what shape the tower on top was in. Instead we got to go back to work. And we went much earlier than usual because we were already up. This was one of the longer weeks I’ve had while here, infact I think it was the longest week. Greg was here this week and we just had tons of work to do. Our departure time is coming closer to reality and there is still much work to be done. At the end of the day we got word that the flight and hike was rescheduled for tomorrow and that really cheered us up, but tomorrow the flight was scheduled for 5:40am so we had to be up at 4:30, which is just WAY too early for any practical purposes. And of course none of us went to bed early.

Thursday 29th of July, 2004
Rwandans start their days very early, but when we drove to the intercontinental and then to the airport at 5am, none were seen anywhere. The airport also seemed deserted, with only a few guards. It took a little while, as most things is Rwanda do, to get out to the tarmac where the RAF (Rwandan Air Force) MI-17 came over to the terminal to pick us up. There were a few Rwandan military personnel onboard and three pilots for the helicopter. After we were all onboard, the chopper drove over to the runway and took off. This was a very large helicopter and can hold 2 tons of cargo, be it passengers or other ‘things’, but the thing had enough seats for 24 people.

Friday 30th of July, 2004
Today was supposed to be just another day, but as it turned out, after our hike, it was anything but that because we were so tired from the hike. The first thing that was different was that we didn’t walk to the office when we woke up because we were too sore, so we had the driver come pick us up. It wasn’t until the morning when I got to the office that I realized how bad my sunburn from yesterday’s hike was. My face was very red and it hurt a lot to touch it, and to make matters worse, I really needed to shave, and that was going to be painful.

Mount Karisimbi, this was the challenge for the day, and it took two tries to actually get here too. On the 28th we woke up at 5am and drove to the airport with everyone, but after waiting there for like 35 mins we were informed that there was no visibility at the landing site so we were sent home. The next day we woke up at 4:30 and did the same, but this time we were able to go.

Saturday July 17th, 2004
Today we visited the current parliament building in Kigali. This might not sound like too much fun, but back about ten years ago, this building was a very nice hotel. It lays on top of a decent sized hill, and has a nice view in all directions. This also just wasn’t any hotel, it was the one piece of land where the current Rwandan military was allowed to be after some piece treaty or something like that. What makes this building of any particular interest now, is back in 1993, the previous president of Rwanda dies, and thus started a chain reaction where the current government started to regain their country. Since at the time there were over 600 troops living in the hotel, it became a big military target when the previous president died. This building now still stands as a reminder of what happened back at the time of the genocide. This hotel is just completely destroyed, though it is still standing. When looking at the building from a distance, you can see multiple RPG hits and thousands of bullet holes. Here in Rwanda now, we know someone that was able to get us past the security at the site, and to allow us to explore the rundown hotel with no restrictions.
Just as Sean and Joel have done in the past, we went there to explore this building first hand. We were able to take many pictures and explore all of the 6 floors on the hotel. It had three elevators, and as we climbed up the stairs, every few floors or so we would see on of them with its doors open. We didn’t dare get in one of the elevator cars because that would just be stupid, but we finally made it up to the very top of the hotel, and onto the roof. From the roof there was an amazing view of Kigali, like I said earlier this place was a choice place to make a hotel. Some parts of the hotel were a little scary to me, but I wasn’t that afraid because the building was still standing after it was bombarded over ten years ago. In the group picture below, you can get a rough idea of how badly this place was hit by the holes in the wall to the camera’s right. It was also possible in some areas to trace a bullet or large shell. For example, in the boiler room on the roof you could see where, most likely an RPG came into the building by blowing through an exterior wall, into the elevator control room, through its wall, into a boiler, out the other side of the boiler, and out the other side of the building.

Today we did the one thing Greg told us not to do. I completely understand why he told us not to do it, but we felt we had to anyways because it was an experience we prolly can’t get in the US. Today we went with the radio team and climbed one of the light towers at the stadium to install new batteries. On our way to install the batteries we had to stop at the remote location of KIST and pickup a case that Patrick had them make for all of our equipment that was to be placed there.
After we got the case, we went to the stadium. As we were puling into the parking lot of the stadium, there was a motorbike that didn’t see us coming at all, and he almost died, he swerved, and his motorcycle lost its balance going about 20 miles an hour, he slid almost all the way down and almost ran right into us, but the way the bike slid, it got traction at the last second and pulled him away from us. He then swerved and wobbled around a little bit until he came to an upright stop. I don’t think he was hurt at all, just very shook up. I’m very glad that I wasn’t driving when this happened, but I prolly wouldn’t have pulled out in front of the bike either.
We pulled into the stadium, going past the 1st level of security check points that were setup because the president was coming to the game that was about to start in 2 hours or so, the guy at the gate was a little confused at first but he let us go through. We pulled the cars up to the tower where our equipment was and started to unload our stuff. After it was all unloaded Sean and I tied up the sheet metal case that had to be pulled up the tower first. The case was not that small, but it wasn’t that heavy either. Checkout the pictures below to see what I mean. After that case was all tied up, the radio team started to pull it up the tower one platform at a time. This tower consisted of a large triangle formation, three very tall and large round posts, with cross beams connecting them together. About every 20 meters there was a platform varying in size that you could stand on to climb up the next level of ladders. The ladders on the tower were very nice. They were caged all the way around so you could climb with your back against the cage, to give you more support and to re-assure yourself that it wasn’t really possible to fall back. The three large posts were wide enough that they could have built a decent sized, very tall spiral staircase in the middle if they had chosen to do so, but that would have been a lot more expensive than the ladders.
After the case was securely placed at the top of the tower, on the light catwalks, if that’s what you could call them, everyone came down the tower and we started to tie up the first battery to go up. The batteries, even though they were much smaller, seemed much harder for the radio team to pull up the tower. It took them a decent amount of time to lift it, and they knew they had to do it again too. After they lifted the 1st battery up to the top, Dan and I started to climb, after they had all come down. We got to watch them lift the 2nd battery from above, and that was a completely different experience than watching from below. It was a little scary for me to climb the tower, and it took me a while to get to the very top. I just took my time and went one platform at a time, until I finally made it to the top. The radio team lifting the 2nd battery actually passed me going up the tower.
When we were all at the top of the tower, sean and one of the radio guys started wiring the thing together. It was a great sign to hear that they could access the router from the office after it was all hooked up. We all wanted to stay at the top for a while and watch some of the game, but the president hadn’t arrived at the game yet, and his security guards wouldn’t let him come while we were up the tower. We all started to slowly come down, Sean being the last one as he wasn’t quite done wiring the battery system together. After we were all done, we all went to the Intercontinental Hotel and the bill was on our employer for doing just a hard job on a Saturday, and for doing the job that we had just done.

The new batteries for the stadium network equipment. Sean designed a system to run completely off DC power directly from large deep cycle batteries. This system will give us about 100 hours of run time in an area that has very poor power quality. The location has a generator but its only used when there is an event, which makes perfect sense. they each weigh about 75lbs and are very small and dense for their weight.