We spent the morning assembling and painting gutters and then left Bigogwe for Shyira Mountain to visit Dr Caleb and Louise King.
Mounting the gutters to the building is turning out to be a bit more complicated than expected because we are creating new a whole new way to mount them. Instead of mounting to the fascia boards, we are cutting a piece of metal and welding it to the pillars in front of the school. I’ll post some pictures later to show what I mean.
Around lunch time we took off for Shyira and stopped at the Les Palames restaurant in Musanze for lunch. Cheeseburgers!!! The food here is great, but it gets repetitive and the burgers were a great change.
We met up with Dr. Caleb at Les Palames and he had with him Caleb, Jr. and a student named Logan from UNC. Logan is spending the summer at Shyira and is studying public health (I think) at UNC.
We also met up with a team of 3 engineers from Memphis who were in Rwanda to help Dr. King survey the areas along a nearby river where he hopes to build some hydro-electric plants to generate power for the hospital and surrounding areas. We drove way up into the mountains to see the sites and spent several hours hiking along the rivers. It was well past dark when we got back to the cars and then we drove to the top of Shyira mountain and the guesthouse where we stayed.
Shyira is an amazing place with a hospital, 3 schools, and a very large church. Conditions there are pretty primitive, however. We had electricity for only two hours per day and no hot water. Still, we had a great time and made many new friends.
