Butaro

Last week I travelled to Butaro, a town in the north of Rwanda which is home to several flagship MASS projects. I was there to begin site supervision on the construction of a new accommodation block for oncology patients.

Already in Butaro are Butaro hospital, a housing complex for doctors, and a cancer centre. The cancer centre has become a hub for oncology patients throughout Rwanda and wider east Africa, and people travel great distances for treatment. Many of these are outpatients receiving chemotherapy at the ambulatory cancer care centre. Until now there has been no accommodation available on site for these patients, and as many cannot afford to pay for somewhere to stay in town they have had no option but to sleep rough in the hospital grounds during their treatment. There is a fantastic organisation called Partners in Health who are very involved with healthcare in the Butaro region, and they have now raised funds to build an accommodation centre for oncology outpatients. MASS designed the building and we’re now providing construction supervision.

The Cancer Centre

Butaro is in an incredibly beautiful part of Rwanda, very hilly and green and noticeably cooler and wetter than Kigali. The journey there was amazing as we followed the dirt road higher and higher through the hills, and had some great views of  nearby Lake Burera. At the moment there’s not much to see on site other than a fairly boring excavation so I’ll spare you photos of that. I’m really excited about spending more time up north as the project progresses.

Beautiful Butaro – looking across the valley towards the Doctors’ Housing, another MASS project

I was also able to attend the project groundbreaking ceremony, which was treated as a very significant occasion and attended by both the Mayor of Butaro and the district Governor. Also there was the co-founder of Partners in Health, Ophelia Dahl, who turns out to be Roald Dahl’s daughter! It’s probably good that I didn’t know that while having tea with her or I would have embarrassed myself by talking about Fantastic Mr Fox.

Traditional dancers at the groundbreaking ceremony, watched by oncology outpatients

In other news, one of the MASS Directors, Christian Benimana, gave a very inspiring TED talk recently. The video isn’t up yet but you can read a synopsis.

Week 1 (almost)

It’s almost the end of my first week of work. Tuesday was a public holiday for Liberation Day which commemorates the end of the Rwandan genocide, so I’ve actually only done 3 days’ work, but it feels like a full week already!

The MASS office is incredible – certainly the nicest I’ve ever worked in (take note, UK engineering consultancy firms!) Given that MASS is an architecture firm and they designed the fit out themselves, I suppose it should be pretty good.

This week I’ve met most of the current MASS Kigali staff. Most of the office are architects, some being full time while others are interns or on the Global Health Corps programme. There’s a mix of Rwandese and international (mainly American) staff. There is also a small engineering team:

• Rosie, currently an Engineers Without Borders Fellow (like me) but just coming to the end of her placement and about to take on a full time contract with MASS
• Christian, a Rwandese engineer who does most of the team’s site supervision work
• Obed, also Rwandese and does lots of design, including mechanical and electrical when necessary
• Shakira, also Rwandese and the newest addition to the team (apart from me!)
• Zani, an engineering student who is part of the African Design Centre

I’ve joined the team at a busy time, particularly as I think Rosie has been storing up geotechnical problems to drop on my desk the minute I arrived!

So, this week I’ve been juggling design work, checking work done by the rest of the team, and site visits. Most interestingly, I’ve been out on two site visits to a new build pre-school on the outskirts of Kigali. Construction is well underway but there are plenty of geotechnical issues still to be ironed out. Rwanda is known as “the land of a thousand hills” and that means lots of level changes are needed on site. On this site that’s being achieved by a mixture of ramps, landscaping and retaining walls. I’ve been advising on retaining wall design and construction, digging a few trial pits to get a better idea of soil properties, and carrying out some impromptu soakaway testing!

The pre-school site (spot the geotechnical “issues”!)

Me poking around in a very small trial pit, and Rosie checking the rebar for the toilet block slab

I’ve also been sampling some of the delights of Kigali. So far this week, I have:

• Ridden a couple of moto taxis – which is terrifying. So far I’ve only done it in daylight but since it’s dark at 6pm every day, at some point soon I’m going to have to venture on one in the dark…
• Been to a pub quiz, a pizza place and eaten (allegedly) the best burger in Kigali (although if that’s the case I’m not trying any others)
• Had a South African braai by a pool
• Found a couple of very hilly running routes

No wonder I’m so tired!