UMAGANDA DAY!

Umaganda Day is the last Sat. of the month in Rwanda where from 8-12am citizens meet in their local neighborhoods/sectors to do their civic duty in order to keep Rwanda Clean!
Jobs on these days vary from picking up trash, trimming hedges, cutting grass, to filling in huge water filled pot holes on the roads.  Anything that the local leader deems important to do... is what gets done.

Our neighborhood has very bad streets (no constructed streets at all) since there is so much construction going on and there really haven't been any proper roads graded or leveled or anything.  So.. our job on Sat. was to fill GIANT Water-Filled Pot Holes... (some 10-15 feet long) with dirt/sandy dirt and anything left along side of the road.

 The young guys started filling wheel barrels full of dirt.
Yes, that is the road with all the water on it.  

Our Leader:  Our neighbor from 2 doors down, Jean Bosco telling us what to do.
He was king on the mountain for the day!



You can see we've already filled in a lot of the water hole.. 
but there is a lot to go!  

This fresh dirt is about 1 foot deep... and still we aren't holding back the water.

 Down the road we pretty much leveled the whole street area with new dirt...
again, quite deep.

 These guys worked very hard moving all the dirt to us to distribute.

 Quality of the wheel barrels didn't make this job easy.
Some of the guys were just standing around so i got them 
to start "dancing" on the areas we had filled to get the dirt trampled down
and to see where we needed more if the water started coming up through the dirt.
  They were all laughing.  It was fun.

In the process a guy named Kenneth... the Dad of the little boy in green
asked me if i would like to join them for a discussion group on Wed. at
Eugene's house.  I said sure. Is it a Bible Study and he laughed and said yes!
He is Ugandan and Eugene is a Colonel in the Rwanda Army.. both very strong believers.  Bruce and I hope to join them on Wed.  Different church but they said that didn't matter.

This is what we ended up with.  Deep, deep dirt
on top of water... and a walled up dam beside it all
to keep it from getting back on the road.  Drainage
was also dug to get some of the water off the street.  At least it is passable now.

This was the leveling at the 2nd site.
 This looked very good when we finished. 

 By 11 o'clock we were very tired, sweaty and thirsty!
The lady drinking sent for some water.
Leoni, is from Canada and has decided to retire here.  Smart lady!
After working ---the community meeting is held.
This is Jean Bosco giving a lecture on how not all people come to help.
"The intellectuals stay home and won't help us", he said. How will we get
others here to work?  I suggested they charge the people who don't come double for the monthly security fee.  They loved the idea and JB
said that the government wants some kind of fined attached to people who don't show
up and that would be perfect!  I don't know what they will do but they all got excited with the suggestion.  And we will make flyers to pass out, too!  

It was really neat to hear young and old discussing solutions
about improving the neighborhood.  Joseph, an older guy said...
"What we are doing today is a waste of time... When it rains this will just all
be one big mud hole."   He is so right!  He wants us to petition the government and all the home owners to put up money to put real streets in.  Each street costs around 3 million Rwandan Francs.  I'm not sure, but i think that is about $500,000.  So, I'll keep you posted if that actually happens.

Seeing Umaganda Day upfront and personal was quite an experience.
Can you imagine if we could do this in Penn Hills?  Or in Pittsburgh or in PA. or all over the US???  We'd have the streets that are covered in trash cleaned up in no time and the cool part is you'd get to know all your neighbors in the process.  
Well, at least the ones who come! 


We told Bruce that Jean Bosco had scolded him for not coming.. ha!  Actually only one person per household is expected to come and 
so we were well represented with two of us there.  


And just to let you know, Joseph was right on.  We had about 2 inches of rain last night and in checking the street today... We now have two more giant mud holes!  


Can't say we didn't try!  
love,
margie