During the second week of our stay near the bridge, for any upcoming problem a solution was found and we could finish the reinforcement. With a lot of help with the local stuff, we also implemented the stress test, which confirmed previous calculations. On the last day we held a presentation to the local authorities and people living close to the bridge about the future maintenance. Everybody joint in a discussion and promised to take over responsibility for the future to take care of the bridge.

After a happy get together with the people we got to know during our stay, we left Gahunduguru on Saturday at noon. After a relaxing Sunday, we are now concentrating on the preparation of the workshop on truss bridges at KIST as well as a detailed maintenance manual for the Kirambo bridge.

Welding on site

Finished construction works

The team

Since Wednesday we are at the bridge site and preparing the reinforcement works. We work together with the students of KIST as well as with local personal. Thanks to the enormous man power on site, we were already able to accomplish almost all previewed maintenance works. During the next week, we are planning to weld the reinforcement beams on the bridge and implement the stress test.

We are accommodated in the little village Gahunduguru, which is about 40 minutes by foot from the bridge. Even though the village doesn´t have any electricity, there is a lot of life going on in the streets. Even in the dark, people walking around in the streets or sitting in one of the cozy bars. We were very warmly welcomed and are accommodated in the house of the local teacher.

The local authorities help us out with personal and supplying us as good as possible with the needed material and tools.

This is the end of our first week in Kigali. We have accomplished a lot of preparation for the construction work on site.

We got in contact with authorities of KIST, CITT (Center of Information and Technology Transfer, department of KIST), Jumelage, Deutsche Welle broadcasting station (Kigali) and Karongi and Nyamagabe District, where the Kirambo bridge is situated. It was a pleasure to work together with this group of interested and supportive people.

For the optimization of the existing Kirambo bridge, we have to fix steel profiles on the upper belts. Supported by Guillaume, an experienced local, we bought all the steel profiles needed at the marked and cut them in the right length. From the workshop facilities at KIST, we can borrow some tools for the time of construction.

On thursday we travelled to Karongi-District to meet vice major and the district engineer in charge to present the project and a suggestion for the future maintenance program. They were very interested and promised support. They also helped us to arrange accommodation while we will be on site.

Together with the Jumelage, we were able to arrange the transport of material and personal to and from the site.

After the first days full of new impressions, we start to get settled here. We were invited to a meeting of active people, who are in the process of installing engineers without boarders, ruanda. We went together to a restaurant where we tried typical Rwandan food and beer, learned Kinyarwanda and had a funny and inspiring evening, before taking the motor taxi back home through Kigali by night.

We have the impression, that the people in Rwanda are active and we can see a lot of effort to work for the future of their country.

After a long journey to Kigali, we finally got picked up at the airport by driver of our cooperation partner KIST (Kigali Institute of Science and Technology). He brought us to the very comfortable guest-house, where we will be accommodated during the time of this project.

On Thursday afternoon we were warmly welcomed by Mr. Kumaran from KIST, who showed us around and gave us primary information about Kigali and KIST.

On Friday we were invited to a presentation on innovative house construction, which is a collaboration of KIST and German institutions. Apart of the participating scientists, we had the chance to meet representatives of the German embassy and the GIZ.

At noon, we visited the “Jumelage”, a partner organisation of Rheinland-Palatinate and Rwanda, who will support our work in the next weeks. The staff of the “Jumelage” are all very qualified and helpful.

To get to know each other we had dinner with the students working with us during the construction at the bridge. Where we also could discuss among other things, the planing of the project.

The first days are passing very fast and we are very pleased about the help and friendliness of all the people we meet.