Kayaking the Nyabarongo River

 

 

In May 2013, Bethany Ericson and I kayaked the Nyabarongo River. We put in just east of Kigali at the bridge near the Nyabugogo bust stop and paddled about 28 miles. Bethany Gauthier (wifey) was our shuttle bunny. She picked us up at the bridge on the Nyamata-Kigali road south of the city. It took 6 hours to paddle the flat water, meandering river through papyrus swamp and sugar cane. We saw lots of birds, some farmers and one hippo. Hippo was awesome and from that point on every time we saw a swirl of water in the river we expected another hippo to pop up and eat our inflatable kayaks. I didn't get any pictures when we passed it, so I paddled back up river to get close enough for pictures unit it reared up and dove in the water towards me, at which point I back paddled furiously and let him / her be. About half way through the trip, the Nyabarongo joins the Kegera River (or Akegera River, depending on what source you're looking at). Eventually this water makes it to Lake Victoria. Water was kind of dirty and I don't think I'd want to swim in it, but it was a nice paddle. Lots of people were excited to see up inflating the kayaks so we had about 30 people including some police standing on the bridge watching our launch. Despite being so close to Kigali, there is no development anywhere on the river until the bridge at the take out. Next time I'll bring a better camera and my fishing pole.

 

Total Distance:       28 Miles (45 Kilometers)

Start Location:       West of Nyabugogo Bus Station on Rwanda 3, near Ruyenzi

End Location:         South of Sonnatubes on the Kigali-Nyamata Road near Gahanga

 

Birds from My Hammock

Random bird pictures taken today (6/27/2012) from our hammock in the front yard.  I know nothing about birds and unfortunately can't identify any of them.  Took pictures of probably a dozen different kinds, but will only put a few on here.  More will go on facebook.

  

There were a number of the ones below.  I like their mohawks and long tails.

Since I'm red-green color blind, I always appreciate anything blue.  I also really like the long, curved beak of this guy.

Another one with a long, curved beak.  This one was really hyper and kept jumping from one branch to the next, never sitting still for very long.  It also kept going upside down and sideways.

Kigali Electricity

Rwanda is full of things that are familiar to what we had in the U.S., but just a little different.  One such example is electricity.  For the most part, our house and other houses around us are provided with elecricity from overhead power lines.  Each house is lit up at night with incandescent or fluorescent lamps.  A lot of people use linear, 2 or 4 foot, fluorecent lamps as exterior lighting by sticking a single lamp fixture on a pole so that it juts out over their fence or gate.  People have electrical outlets throughout their homes and many have TVs, fans, toasters, etc.  We even have a washing machine at our house, though it just stopped working.  Electricity is much less common in the rural parts of Rwanda, but in Kigali it is commonplace.

Differences in Rwandan electricity include the voltage and frequency. The houses here use 230 volt, 50 hertz instead of the 110 volt, 60 hertz used in the U.S. This means that while many of or U.S. electrical products; such as laptops, battery chargers, our portable projector; can still be plugged directly into the outlets, others; such as the X-Box; require a transformer to work. Generally, things that run on DC and have an inverter to get from AC to DC will work here, with the X-Box being a notable exception with the inverter provided by Microsoft, though we've ordered an after market replacement that accepts multiple voltages. American electronics that run on AC directly; like TVs, DVD players, and refrigerators; will not work here without a transformer.
 
Regarldess of the voltage requirements, U.S. plugs will not go into Rwandan outlets without an adapter. We brought a bunch with us and they're really inexpensive, but if we forget to bring one to a coffee shop we probably won't be able to plug in our laptops. Rwanda uses an outlet that accepts plugs with two round pins (type C). Some outlets have a round pin sticking out that requires a hole in the plug to receive (type E).

Another big difference so far has been reliability. Our power has gone out a lot.  Probably 25 to 30% of the days we've been here have been at least partially without power. To be fair, they're working on our street right now and the power outages are probably more frequent for this reason. Water has been out about twice as often for the same reason. It seems that utility lines aren't really marked and the excavating equipment just digs them up. The picture to the left shows an electric line that has been repaired. The evening before we saw the line just sticking out of the ground, wires exposed, and I wondered aloud to Bethany if she thought it was still live. By the next morning somebody had re-connected it with a couple of short wires and some electrical tape.  We're pretty sure it was always a live wire. Scary to think about when you see hundreds of kids walk down our street every day on their way to school.  I've seen lots of exposed wires sticking out of the ground in different parts of the city where they used to (or expect to) have street lights and suspect that the risk of electecution is greater here.

Besides reliability, power quality is a real issue here.  Whenever I go to the restroom I watch our incandescent lamps (25 watt lamps - I didn't know they made such low wattage lamps for overhead lighting) get brighter and dimmer over and over again as the voltage coming in is constantly changing. All major (expensive) electronics need to be plugged into a voltage regulator to avoid dammage.  We have one for our refrigerator and another for our computer equipment. The one for the refrigerator (pictured below) makes a lot of noise when the refrigerator is running. It is rated for a much higher wattage than the one we use for our computers.

The last major difference in electricity between the U.S. and Rwanda is how we buy it. In Rwanda, instead of getting a bill at the end of the month for the amount of electricity we use, we have to pre-purchase electricity and keep track of how much we have left otherwise we could run out. I really like this system as it is easy to monitor our consumption. We go to any of the grocery or convenience stores that sell electricity and water and then give them the unique code for our electric meter. We tell them how much electricity we want to buy and they give us a receipt that includes a 20 digit code. When we get home, we type the code directly into our electric meter and it instantly increases our remaining balance by the amount we purchased. I’ve only bought electricity once so far and I decided to buy 30,000 RWF worth ($49), which was 223.2 kWh. This comes out to $0.22 per kWh, which is a LOT more expensive than what most people pay in the U.S. as the average residential rate for the first three months of 2012 was $0.1157. The increased cost is probably due to how electricity is generated. In the U.S., most electricity is generated from coal (34% in March of 2012 - though dirty, the cheap cost of coal keeps it #1), natural gas (30%), or nuclear (20%), and most of it is domesticly supplied. Rwanda gets 25% of its electricity from imported diesel fuel and another 20% from heavy fuel oil. The remainder is primarily from hydro-electric, though 20% of the total electricity consumed has to be imported from hydro plants in other countries. Here's a link to the Energy, Water, and Sanitation Authority's website on electricity generation. There are plans for a large methane extraction plant at Lake Kivu, but I don't know when this will go into service. The additional need for infrastructure investment in Rwanda probably also contributes to the higher electric rates.

TVS StaR Sport 125

The little motorcycle Bethany mentions in her post is actually a TVS StaR Sport 125. The bike is made in India and has a 124.8 cc single cylinder, 4 stroke, air cooled engine. The engine is rated at 7.56 kW of power at 7,700 rpm (just over 10 horsepower) and has a listed maximum speed of 93 kilometers per hour (almost 58 miles per hour).  

It has four gears, but they aren't set up the same as bikes in the U.S. Instead of being 1 down, 2, 3, 4 up, with neutral in between 1 and 2, this bike has neutral all the way down, and then 1, 2, 3, and 4 going up. Confusing when you coast into a stop light not knowing what gear you're in and just automatically shift all the way down to what you expect to be first gear.


The bike weighs 118 kg (260 pounds), so you can almost pick it up and carry it up steps if you need to :-) Of course, it is rated for no more than a 130 kg (286 pounds) carrying capacity. Let's see, if I weigh 175 pounds, that leaves 111 pounds for Bethany and whatever gear we're carrying.


The best feature is the fuel efficiency. It is supposed to get 85 kilometers per liter... that is 200 miles per gallon. Our 16 liter (4.2 gallon) tank should last 1,360 kilometers (840 miles). Not too shabby. I wonder if severely over-weighting the bike and then trying to ride up steep hills will effect the fuel economy?


The bike we got isn't on the TVS website (made only for select export markets), but it is supposed to be the Star City bike (http://www.tvsstarcity.com/) with a 125 cc motor. All details above come from the user manual.


I bought the bike from Sameer Hussein TVS at the base of the Kigali City Tower. It cost about $1,700 USD (1,030,000 RWF). That price came with two helmets and a quart of oil.  Since I brought some helmets from the states (and the ones included are cheap, molded plastic), I only kept one helmet and he credited me 7,500 RWF. He also has nice, expensive helmets (around $100), which Bethany might look at later. He let me pay in USD and gave me a 613 Francs per Dollar exchange rate. When I picked up the bike, he threw in a seat cover, tank cover with pocket, a vinyl document holder, and a TVS tee shirt.


Besides the bike, I needed to first get tags and a Tax Identification Number (TIN). This cost a combined 75,000 RWF and the shop was able to handle this for me, but I had to bring two passport photos and it took two days before I could pick up the bike. I paid for the bike when I picked it up from the store.  At that time I also had to get insurance. I got one year of basic insurance (covers other people only, but not our bike) for 40,000 RWF ($65). Insurance actually stays with the bike if I sell it, so if I sell it within a year the new owner would have the remainder of time on my insurance. To get new insurance (which is required by law) I can just go back to the shop where I bought it. They have two different insurance companies represented in the shop. The bike also comes with the first three tune ups (750, 2,500, and 5,500 kilometers), which are done at the warehouse / shop located near the airport. First tune up includes free oil, I have to pay for the oil at the next two (and oil filters at all three).

Almost every other bike in Kigali (95% plus) is a TVS GLX Victor 125.  Most of these are "motos", the motorcycle taxi that everybody uses. Similar engine, slightly different styling. We have a slightly larger fuel tank, the Victor has a disk brake in front (we have drum). http://www.tvsmotor.in/victor-glx.asp