The travel team for the Uganda Program left JFK Airport on May 17, 2011

These brave, beautiful, and daring folks include:

Rebecca Ciez
Bethany Schneider
Harrison Chiu
Allison Duh
Rohan Bhandari
David Oh

Follow their adventures and stalk their biographies on their blog! Updated every time they are in contact with internet and featuring a comment box so you can leave them some love

KIRAI EWBCU BLOG – “We Are EWB CU”

Hello all!

So today we met at the Emirates checkin place at JFK and got in all great. It was all nice and smooth until somebody lost his envelope of cash and the security had to make sure that the envelope was his by finding another person of the same ethnicity who could verify that the envelope was indeed the secret team member’s. Anyways, then we chilled for a few hours, after which we got on the plane. EMIRATES IS SO NICE. Great service, highly suggested/recommended for future flights. Food was pretty good and they had tons of great movies to pick from and so we didn’t get bored since we were either sleeping or watching a movie, although we should’ve been reading more on our reports to know what we’re doing.

After we got off, the airport looked like a casino with hundreds of tall/fancy columns. Fancy, modern airport. Then we met up with Harrison who had been roaming the streets of Dubai by himself like a boss for 12 hours and we met up with Rohan’s family who so graciously took us around Dubai for hours and bought us dinner. We got to see some landmarks like:

The Burj Khalifa, the tallest building in the world

The Palm & The Atlantis, artificial island and the crazy hotel (Atlantis) on it

Burj Al Arab, the 7-star hotel that’s literally jutting out of the mainland into the sea; crazy expensive, you need to pay (apparently about 500 bux) to just get in the hotel and look around, not even to get a room

So those were super fun. Lastly, we went to this bomb Arabic food place where we got yummy food. One of the best parts was definitely the pita bread, which we ate with legit hummus and olive oil… priceless.

Finally, we got back to Rohan’s cousin’s place, where we are writing this blog now. On the way, basically everyone passed out in the cars from the massive food coma & jet lag.

Overall, this was an AWESOME beginning to an exciting trip and SPECIAL THANKS TO ROHAN’S FAMILY for all of the hospitality.

Here are some pictures from today:

Keep checking! Much more news to come!

So, we’re all here at JFK (minus Harrison who left earlier today and is currently halfway to Dubai) and now have two hours to kill before take-off. They charge $$  for internet here, so we’ll just post this later.

Super long post!
1. Meet the Team
2. Project Overviews
3. Our layover in Dubai

1.

Rebecca: I’m a rising junior studying mechanical engineering and I’m the travel team leader. Some of the things that I’m really looking forward to on this trip are meeting everyone from Pilgrim that we’ve called/emailed over the past few months and having the opportunity to interact with students at Beacon of Hope and community members at the MFP sites. Can’t wait to finally get there J

Bethany: I’m from South Jersey and a rising Senior in Earth and Environmental Engineering. I’ve spent 3 days in Egypt but never been South of the Sahara, or the Equator, before! Over the past month, we have spent most of our waking hours preparing for finals and preparing for this trip. Hopefully I can get some time to read up on the Word, our pre-trip reports, and some novels on the plane ride (but likely I will immediately fall asleep). Thank you readers for your prayers and interest in our project! Stay tuned!

Allison: Hello hello! I am a rising sophomore from Maryland unofficially studying Electrical Engineering and I am on the MFP team. I will be using my plane ride to watch movies (Yay Emirates movie selection!), read reports and sleep sleep sleep sleep sleep. I’m excited to meet people in the communities and everyone from Pilgrim (the non-governmental organization that our program works with in Uganda) and to thoroughly over-document everything in our trip! We are armed with cameras and flipcams and laptops, so be prepared for the media flood upon our return.

Rohan: Hey! I am a rising junior studying Physics (the one non-engineer on the team!) with a concentration in Math. Though I am excited to be heading over to Uganda, it still hasn’t quite hit me yet. Sitting here in the airport it is hard to imagine that I’m going to be spending the next month in a whole new culture and environment. But I know that once the plane touches down in Entebbe  and I look out, it is going to kick in! I  am most looking forward to meeting all the people we have worked with in Uganda and really just to experience the country and its culture. I am also eager to put into action a year’s worth of hardwork, planning, and testing and to see it all come together and really help people.

David: Hi, this is David and I am a rising junior (I’m old…) studying Earth & Environmental Engineering with a concentration in Sustainable Energy & Materials. This was my first year at Columbia and joining EWB-Uganda was definitely one of the best experiences I’ve had in college so far. Working with fellow students on engineering projects that actually produce something tangible and substantial is really an invaluable experience through which we can apply a lot of our skills and outside of the academic aspects, the relationships I’ve built here are…awesome. I’m really excited to travel to travel to Uganda and Africa for the first time and see, experience the culture. there while making a difference in the community, and keep yourselves updated on our project in the weeks to come! Oh, and we will be taking lots and lots and lots of pictures so do enjoy!

Harrison:  I’m a rising senior, but for real I’m just trying to finish school. Coming from the 3/2 combined plan, I’m finally able to put into use both my economics and engineering degrees on this trip.  As chief health officer and the dude with the atm card, I’m perpetually mentally preparing myself for the duties outside of the EWB trip. Rainwater harvesting has been a passion of mine ever since I learned about the water crisis (high school), and on this trip, I’ll be working with Bethany on it. Jet lag is definitely here, peace out.

2. An overview of the work we’ll be doing in-country:

Multi-function platform: Two years ago we installed two diesel Lister engines (called Multi-Function Platforms) in Usuk and Orungo. These engines can be run on either diesel fuel or vegetable oil and currently power agricultural processing machines while generating electricity (thus, the ‘multi-function’ of the name). Our NGO partner Pilgrim installed two more engines in Tubur and Anyara this past year and we’re hoping to visit those sites and expand our data collection and enhance milling capacity. One possible implementation we’ll be doing is of the COES (Cyclone Overflow Exhaust System), which is basically an exhaust pipe for the cyclone separator attachment to the milling machine. The cyclone separator is supposed to filter out the heavier flour particles from the lighter ones, but right now a lot of is just being spit out the top of the separator, and we’re hoping to remedy that.

Rainwater harvesting: Pilgrim runs a school called the Beacon of Hope College in Soroti, Uganda. Currently, the primary water source on campus is city water, which is pricey, unreliable and often goes out for days at a time. We will be installing three rain-water harvesting systems to provide a reliable and inexpensive source of water for the times when city water supply runs out. We hope that this will enable students to focus on their studies instead of having to worry about walking to the far corners of campus to fetch water. Bethany and Harrison have also been working hard on developing a curriculum on water sanitation and good health practices that we’ll help teach in classes.

There’s more information on our chapter website if you’re interested!

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3.

[21 hours later]

After making heavy use of Emirates’ awesome individual television screen service (each of us logged anywhere from 2-4 movies) –  we’re in Dubai! Rohan’s aunt and cousin are generously letting us crash with them and earlier Rohan’s cousin and her friends took us on a driving tour. The hotels here are ridiculously pretty and the airport looks like Vegas. But tomorrow night we’ll be sleeping in Kampala. David’s writing up a post now, so he’ll tell you more. OOH and pictures – we have those too!

Thanks for reading :]

Flight takes off at 8:25 AM today, which is in 7 hours — ahh, jetlag.