Last minute thoughts and up, up away!

While I was in South Province I experienced Umuganda, the name for the activities on the last Saturday of every month of the year, fulfilling the requirement by law that every able bodied person (from the President down) must perform an established civic duty in their community between the hours of 8am until 11am after which a meeting is held to discuss community issues and to plan the project for the next Umuganda...or the last Saturday of the month. These projects can be almost anything such as helping seniors with difficult tasks, cleaning up road sides. Police are out in full force to enforce this law and it is almost ominous in how highway traffic has almost disappeared in those 3 hours. Apparently participants receive a punch card for their involvement. One could stay indoors and not be seen or helping but I'm told that if for some reason this person would require some personal help they would be chastised and denied any help they had requested.

Departing from Kigali was rather interesting. We walked out onto the tarmack board our plane to Entebbe, Uganda in beautiful hot sunshine. Within 5 minutes of boarding we were engulfed in a terrific thunderstorm and downpour. I looked out the window to see volumous amounts of water flowing past us on the tarmack...I actually thought the plane was moving until the captain told us that we would have to wait out the thunderstorm which then lasted about another thirty minutes.

Landing in Entebbe, Uganda is a real treat to see the expanse of Lake Victoria. It is so huge and of course is also the source of the Nile River.

The rest of my journey home was quite uneventful; from Entebbe to Addis Babba to Frankfurt and finally Toronto in approximately 23 hours I landed at 12:15pm, exactly as planned.

Downpour and a visit to a poor person's home

On the way another downpour of rain. It lasted for about 15 minutes but with the wipers on high it was still difficult to see.

Upon arriving in Kigali it was report writing time to provide the minister of agriculture reccomendations from my assessment of the dairy industry as I perceived it and further to express possible solutions for the experienced issues. If anyone is interested in that report feel to send your request to h2cvink@gmail.com


















This lady lives in this home with her daughter and another lady whom she calls her house guard, i.e. she cleans and protects the home while owner/renter is away. It has three rooms; 2 bedrooms and a dining/sitting. The kitchen/cooking area (3 charcoal burners), a 'toilet' (hole in a concrete floor) and showering area are all outside shared by about six other families. Well water is available but contaminated. She purchases 'cheap' water from a handler but must still boil this water for safe drinking. 'Cheap' water is clean but not purified. Bottled water as we know would cost over $1cdn per litre more than a 1/3 of a daily wage among the very poor.

















Interestingly, pop and beer are however offered as hospitality drinks purchased for the occasion from a nearby vendor.

Back towards Kigali

On our way back to Kigali, we stopped at milk kiosk. These are numerous in every area of the country. They could be compared to Canadian convenience stores but with a twist. They purchase raw milk for resale. This particular store boiled the milk and then retailed it. Others just retail and the consumer is encouraged to boil it themselves.
In this store the boiled milk is cooled in open plastic basin and put in yellow plastic jerry cans that they have washed and sanitized.





























Travelling again towards Kigali, we came upon an accident that we had passed the previous day. I was told that it is not uncommon for that truck to remain as is for an extended period of time. We actually passed another rolled over truck that had obviously been there for a number years! Rust and rotting along the highway.

Nyanza Dairy

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Nyanza Dairy is one of the oldest dairies in Rwanda yet relatively modern with a pasteurizer and homogenizer units and other stainless steel equipment. This receiving scale has a date plate of 1937. They process about 3-4000 litres a day, half comes from Songa Farm and the rest is purchased from area farmers. Cheese, yogurt and other fermented milks are the main products.

More of One Cow Poor Family

After a severe downpour these facilities the animals were significantly challenging. The cows previous calf (a bull) now almost 1 1/2 years old has only mud to lay in. The cow's pen does have some wasted Napier grass for bedding but also very wet.





























Again grass is chopped by hand, this time without pasture the cow requires about 125-150kgs of fresh grass. Still a significant amount to chop with a machete.
On the road again with tree lined pavement.

More of Songa Farm

The mechanical grass chopper needed repair therefore the 'armstrong machete chopper' is currently used to chop more than a ton of Napier grass every day to supplement the ninety milk cows in the barn at milking time.

This final picture in this post is taken at a '1 cow per poor family' visit. An impressive animal that was due to give birth in the next few weeks. Artificial insemination was used for 3 tries but unsuccessful and then the cow was bred naturally and conceived...an often normal result. Looking at the current condition of this animal and recognizing her current status, my guess is that she will be quite thin within the first three months after calving. If this was the case in her last lactation, her reproductive organs would not be in the condition needed to conceive artificially. The first AI service was at about 60 days in milk. After 3 tries, now at least 2 months later the cow would begin to put on more condition and would be in better shape to conceive and therefore the natural breeding would be most successful. Farmers often don't seem to understand that an animal may look good from the outside but still 'skinny' on the inside. An animal always looks after itself for maintenance before any nutrition is put towards production (milk or beef, etc) and/or reproduction.

Songa Dairy Farm

The research farm had a herd of Ankole cattle as a preserve of Ankole genetics. While milk production tends to be very low in these animals, their ability to withstand tropical heat is a genetic trait that can be useful for crossbreeding with Holstein-Friesian cows whose milk production is of course much greater.













Songa Dairy Farm was adjacent to the research station and is operated by the Ministry of Defence or MINADEF. At this farm about 90 cows are milked daily by hand yielding near 20 litres per cow or 1800 litres of daily milk production shipped for processing to a nearby processing plant in Nyanza. also operated by MINADEF.







The cows are pastured but supplemented with Napier grass and ground corn at the of milking in the barn. The milk cans are washed and dryed in the sun and delivered to the dairy after each milking.

South Province...the final visit

I must apologise to those who have been following this blog. It's been almost three weeks since the last entry and almost a month since I left Rwanda. The busyness upon my return to Canada and currently a vacation with Cathy in Texas has slowed down the postings. There will be nine postings in a row which will conclude my Rwandan experience.












On March 26 we set out for South Province for my final provincial visit. Again as we travelled high into the mountains surrounding Kigali, the well paved road ran along the mountain top allowing sights of scenic valleys and mountain sides.
As usual many people are walking and riding bicycles along these roads carrying various loads.
































We stopped at a research centre where artificial inseminators were taking a refresher course in animal breeding. They were using native Ankole cattle. These animals were not necessarily 'in heat', which frustrated some of the technicians in finding the cervix and ultimately the uterus for semen deposit.
I was encouraged however that efforts are made to keep these technicians current with the latest technologies.

Sonrise also had a few cows for a milk supply to the school. President of Rwanda, Paul Kagame, gave the school a cow in early 2000. In the second picture you see the 'matriarch' of the 'herd'. I'm not sure where the Jersey came from. While the structure was typical and somewhat primitive, they appeared to be doing a good job of animal care. Milk production was in the 20 litres per cow range with a very clean environment for the animals.

The man on the right was the farm manager. On the left a teacher and translator for me.

Sonrise Ophanage and School

On the way back from West Province we travelled through Musanze, North Province. A stop here a Sonrise Ophanage and School was a must for me. Bridge 2 Rwanda was the founding organization for Sonrise Orphanage, home and school to some 1500 orphans originally from the genocide. They now have added a secondary school to the primary.

Dale Dawson is founder of Bridge 2 Rwanda (http://www.bridge2rwanda.com/ ) and a personal acquiantance of the Rwandan Minister of Agriculture, the Honourable Dr. Agnes Kalibata. It was thru Dale and subsequently thru Dr. Kalibata that I was given the opportunity to be in Rwanda as a volunteer dairy advisor.

Return from Gishwati, cont'd #2

As the water gathered it obviously found its way towards the easiest path gushing ravenously through a low spot on the road into a well worn washout down the mountain side and field of someone who would have to contend with another major erosion problem.

I continue to marvel why these mountains haven't 'flattened' over the hundreds of years of rains.

Back at my hotel I overlook a mountain stream that has collected all the muddy mountain water to flow into Lake Kivu, a large lake in western Rwanda bordering the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). Workers stand in this river hand shovelling the sand and gravel on shore to be sorted and loaded again on trucks to be used a various contruction projects.

The 4th picture is actually the border crossing into the DRC.