Packing!

With just a few hours of restless sleep during our last night in Boston, we are vigorously packing up all the odds and ends that we need. There are piles of clothes, stacks of lab equipment and bags full of trail mix, all waiting to be packed...time crunch to get everything done. Here is a picture of Bernie amidst the piles of our stuff with the Boston skyline in the background. Will write again from Rwanda!!!

Itinerary

With an awesome 32 total hours of flying time (not including pre-transit to get ourselves back to Boston) we will be headed from Boston to Amsterdam to Nairobi to Kigali (and back!). Our complete itinerary is below, for anyone that wants to follow the traveling craziness halfway around the world.
*the 'à' symbol was supposed to be an arrow, but the formatting didn't carry over.

Itinerary

Rwanda 2008

Going

Kelly:
Dec 19, 2007
Amtrak Train 175 Regional
Boston à Metropark
3:20pm à 8:08pm
(4hr48min)

Bernie:
Dec 21, 2007
American Airlines Flt 1704
Chicago à Newark
9:15pm à 12:15pm
(2hr0min)

--Spend Christmas at home--

Dec 27, 2007
Amtrak Train 174 Regional
Metropark à Boston
12:08pm à 5:03pm
(4hr55min)

--pack--

Dec 28, 2007
Northwest Airlines Flt 38
Boston à Amsterdam
7:15pm à 8:10am
(6hr55min)

--layover 2hr 10min--

Dec 29, 2007
Northwest Airlines Flt 8565
Amsterdam à Nairobi
10:20am à 8:10pm
(7hr50min)

--sleep in Nairobi airport 12hr50min--

Dec 30, 2007
Kenya Air Flt 1108
Nairobi à Kigali
9:00am à 9:15am
(1hr15min)

Dec 30 or 31, 2007
Car
Kigali à Musanze
---------------------------------------
Returning

Jan 18, 2007
Kenya Air Flt 474
Kigali à Nairobi
1:50pm à 4:15pm
(1hr25min)

--layover 6hr55min--

Jan 18, 2008
KLM Flt 566
Nairobi à Amsterdam
11:10pm à 5:30am
(8hr20min)

--layover 2hr55min--

Jan 19, 2008
KLM Flt 6059
Amsterdam à Boston
8:25am à 10:25am
(8hr0min)

Bernie:
Jan 20, 2008
American Airlines Flt 2003
Boston à Chicago
9:10am à 11:00am
(2hr50min)

Press

There has been quite a bit of press surrounding the gorillas in Rwanda, which is immediately related to the work we are doing.

An article about the work we did last year is on the Dian Fossey Gorilla Fund Int'l website:
http://www.gorillafund.org/conservation/fieldnews_item.php?recordID=99

A You Tube video shows the health clinic that we are working at:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CyAs9e7YSVc

CBS on 60 Minutes just aired a special about Congo and Rwanda and the plight of the mountain gorillas. It is about 12 minutes long and the gorilla tracker that takes Anderson Cooper into the forest is the same guide that I had last year!
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2007/12/07/60minutes/main3591264_page2.shtml

Other gorilla news:

http://www.scienceinafrica.co.za/2001/july/gorilla.htm

http://www.wildlifedirect.org/blogAdmin/gorilla

Stuff fromlast year

This year's work is a continuation of my masters thesis from last year. Two classmates and I spent 3 1/2 weeks in Rwanda last year assessing the water situation, doing water testing, visiting villages and understanding the area. We then wrote 3 theses about our work. Pictures from last year and our final reports are available at web.mit.edu/kdoyle04/Public. This year, Bernie and I will return to the same village to test the water quality in the newly installed tanks and to test the quality of water running off the rooftops. This work will be used in my final thesis and to provide guidelines for the installation of "first flush" devices throughout the village.