Massive Update Number Two: Building a Dam

THE RUKARURA DAM PROJECT



A lot of stuff to catch up on but the weekend before last I spent one of the most interesting days I have had so far in Rwanda. My friend John Harris from South Africa is a civil engineer and has been project manager of a dam-building project not far from Kigeme east of where I am (Alfred: Em, I think you mean west. You know west, like, on the left hand side of the map?). I headed up Friday evening and the idea was to head out to the site, spend most of the day there and then get back in time for the Ireland-Italy rugby match. I had heard John talking about the project so often and knew it was a high-profile one in that President Kagame himself had visited and had personally ordered them to work seven days a week and pretty much round the clock to try and meet the deadline of February 2010.

Anyway, I headed into Butare and got the SOTRA bus up to Gikongoro where I met up with Amy and Christine for a beer or two and a bite to eat at La Fraicheur. John joined us later which was nice inasmuch as it meant I wasn’t going to have to walk home. Actually, he dropped Amy and Christine up to Kigeme too so we all gained on that one.

Back at John’s house Maureen served us dinner and then John broke me the bad news: his DSTV subscription had just expired and we had no satellite TV, so no rugby, but he was sure he could convince the local hostelry, The Guesthouse, to put it on for us!

Next morning off we headed – up to Kigeme and then off for about 14km along the dirt roads. Now, they are far from being the worst roads I’ve been on but given that the trucks and pick-ups have to go back and forth all day I would hate to see them in bad weather. At the site there is very limited space for storage of sand, aggregate, cement or anything else so it all has to be trucked in as needed over about 11km from the storage depot, so when it rains heavily which it does regularly here, everything comes to a standstill.

The scenery around the site is absolutely amazing. The Rukarura river is quite long and no fewer (Alfred: He actually wrote ‘less’ the first time!! Tsk tsk!) than FIVE hydro-electric schemes are being built along various stretches of it at the moment. The basic project is in three parts: the dam that creates the reservoir of water needed, the head-race canal that brings the water 2.3km to the powerhouse and the powerhouse itself where the turbines will be installed and the power generated.

Anyway I spent the day wandering around the site taking over a hundred photos and movie clips: first at the dam, then the powerhouse, then the dam again. I walked along most of the canal route from the dam to the powerhouse and inspired enormous suspicion and distrust among the workers as I took pictures of them working, or not working as the case may be. I remarked to John that he should hire me as every time I showed up anywhere everyone frantically upped their work rate in case this strange muzungu was something to do with Fair Construction.

Fair Construction are the company that have the civil construction part of the contract – they are a Rwandan company and at the moment this is their only contract but Rwanda has plans for hundreds – I mean hundreds – of hydro-electric and biogas electricity-generating schemes so I expect they will be a lot busier in the future.

The most fascinating part was watching the giant cement-mixer at the dam itself – a big rusty red thing connected to a bright yellow cement pump (Alfred: with the wonderful brand name Putzmeister) that had people swarming all over and around it. Teams of people shovelled sand (2 barrows), aggregate (3 barrows) and cement (2 bags) into the hopper which then poured into the machine while a woman wearing beautiful bright-yellow plastic shoes clambered precariously around the machine pouring in water as needed.

Health and safety is an interesting concept generally here in Rwanda – I have to admit the working conditions here were probably a lot safer than I had seen in other parts of the country. But about one third of the workers had proper footwear (shoes or wellies), one third were wearing plastic flip-flops and the final third were barefoot. And the ones with flip-flops usually kicked them off when they actually had to do something so they could get a proper grip with their feet.

Around half three everything stopped for the distribution of sorghum beer – not a whole lot, just enough to give people a psychological kick and get them through the last part of the day. And what a carnival that was – the arguing, the tantrums, the pushing and shoving, the frantic drinking of one’s ration of beer in case anyone tried to argue you had been given too much and afterwards the sullen looks and petulant stances of those who felt they had been cheated or short-changed. One guy stood piteously outside the office holding an empty jerry-can for about ten minutes, obviously hoping someone somewhere would take pity on him!

In a strange way, John’s job here reminded me very much of my job back in Rathdown School (except for doling out the sorghum beer). He spent the day running around checking on things and trying to sort out the myriad problems, complaints and glitches that arose. The ongoing problem was the big blue cement mixer that had not been working for a while and had cut their cement-pouring rate in half as a result. The second (or third) technician who was looking at it said it needed a new 60amp connector (his words, not mine) and he headed off to Butare to see if he could find one (Alfred: He couldn’t and headed to Kigali instead hoping to find somewhere open on a Sunday where he could get one). I chatted to the cement mixer operator, Jacques Kizungu, a Congolese who had trained as a teacher but couldn’t find work so was working construction instead. He was there with his brother Antoine Patric – he had no English at all and was thrilled to find someone to speak French to - but Jacques had both English and French. He inveigled my phone number out of me, something I was to regret later on. (Alfred: One usually does regret that here in Rwanda – not always, but often).

Other than that it was the usual litany of problems. There is no mobile phone reception at the site as it is deep in a valley so it is a pain in the ass having to physically chase around everywhere and look for people. When you send the pick-up into town you have no real idea when it is going to get back and one of the pick-ups had faulty brakes so the other was off to get parts! People whinged about their pay, machinery was not working properly and so on and so forth. And, as we are getting towards the end of the project, no-one was actually trying to kill themselves working because who wants to hasten the end of their jobs?

It was a great day, though it did drag on a bit as John and I sat in the little hut wondering if and when the pick-up would return. By the time it did it was already half-time in Ireland-Italy and as we were both starving we decided food was more important. A bite to eat (during which a massive thunderstorm broke out and all the power went off anyway) and then back to John’s house. A few beers, a chat with Mukesh (John’s colleague who runs the powerhouse end of the project and shares the house with him) and then to bed, all the while listening to the incessant thunder of rain on the roof. The chances of John and Mukesh even getting to work the next day were looking pretty slim.

And then at 0400, one of those moments that so characterises Rwanda for me. The phone rang and when I answered it it was Jacques Kizungu, the Congolese cement-mixer operator from the dam. Now, my French was somewhat scant when I arrived here but by dint of practice, study and hanging around Martine a lot, it has improved, even at 0400. I asked him why he had rung and he chirpily replied it was to say hello (Alfred: ‘Chirpily’ at 0400 is adding insult to injury). When I pointed out that 0400 was a strange time to do such a thing, he fell silent for a minute and then said ‘Peut-être’! And then, of course, he got on to the main issue: he wanted to go back and resume his studies and wanted to know if I would pay for that or else find him someone who would. I deew a deep breath and replied as follows (as best I can remember):

Est-ce ce vous êtes fou, mon vieux? Est-ce tu crois, sérieusement, que tout nous muzungus ont de l’argent à jéter par les fenêtres comme ça? Et si j’avais de l’argent comme ça que je serais susceptible de le donner à quelqu’un assez stupide pour me sonner à quatre heures du matin? Imbécile!

OK, maybe I over-reacted but you do get SOOOO tired of this sort of thing. And it was a pretty stupid thing to do so maybe he will learn from the experience (Alfred: That's got to be the lamest attempt at self-exculpation I’ve seen in a long time.)

The dam will generate nearly 10 megawatts of power when completed, about 10% of Rwanda’s current needs. The big biogas plant they are designing in Kibuye will produce 120 megawatts when finished and between that and all the other projects on line – even allowing for significantly increased demand within Rwanda – the country hopes to become a major exporter of power within five years.

The scenery around here is awesome! Can you see the woman in the middle of the right-hand picture tilling the ground on the steep slope?

The Rukarura River as it flows towards the dam site.

The blue non-working cement mixer. John in the stripy shirt and hat has his back to us, Jacques 'Midnight Caller' Kizungu is standing between the machines.

The actual dam itself being built across the river

Cement-mixer people; note my friend with the yellow shoes perched on the right. The canal snaking its way to the powerhouse.

The first part of the canal is covered as the slope above is steep and debris might fall in.

The powerhouse in its lovely little valley. You can see the green pipes above that feed the water down to the turbines. In the first picture, John and Mukesh (middle) are talking to the site foreman.