Knoch alumnus spends summer building bridge in Eswatini
Former Knoch High School student Justin Tristani came back to Pennsylvania this summer with plenty of stories to tell of what he did and where he went during his holiday. For seven weeks, he and nine other engineering students dedicated themselves to making life easier for a rural community in Eswatini, a country on the border with South Africa.
Tristani, who graduated from Knoch High School (then known as South Butler County High School) in 2020, is pursuing a major in mechanical engineering at Penn State University’s main campus and is on track to graduate after this school year.
For the last two years, Tristani has also been part of the group Engineers in Action, a volunteer program consisting of thousands of up-and-coming engineering students at more than 40 colleges, including Penn State. One of the group’s main functions is to build bridges for rural communities that especially need them, particularly in Central America, Bolivia and Eswatini.
This trip, the people who needed a bridge were the Nkwene community in the town of Nkambule, which is effectively split in two by the Mkhondvo River. Villagers would have to cross the river on foot to get to school, church or the market. During rainy season, this task becomes a dangerous endeavor.
“Basically, in order for the community to go to the school on the other side, they would either walk through the water every day, or it'd be a mile and a half down to the nearest vehicle bridge that they could walk across,” Tristani said. “We were there in the dry season, when the water was between waist high and chest high. In the rainy season, it’s virtually impossible to cross there.”
Tristani served as construction manager for the project, overseeing a group which featured three students from Penn State, five from the University of Colorado-Boulder, and two from the University of Virginia. The group planned the journey for months, sketching plans for the bridge before even setting foot on the site in person.
As construction manager for this project, Tristani relied on the experience he’d built in both engineering and public service as an Eagle Scout. For his Eagle Scout project, he completed both an ADA-compliant pathway and a wheelchair porch swing for Holy Sepulcher Catholic Church in Middlesex Township, part of Saint Mark the Evangelist Parish.
The Nkwene community provided housing for Tristani and the other participants throughout their stay. For Tristani, communication with his friends and family back home was limited throughout his trip, as Nkambule had no cellphone connectivity. Despite this, Tristani cherished his time half a world away from home.
“I definitely missed home, but I was also looking forward to not being on my phone,” Tristani said. “Being able to like disconnect was also nice. I think I sent, like, two text messages the whole time.”
“We didn’t have any communication at all with him until they went into one of the bigger towns to get supplies,” said his mother, Kathy. “We went weeks without hearing from him.”
By the time the bridge was finally finished, Tristani was so embedded in Eswatini that he scarcely wanted to leave.
“It definitely was hard to leave at the end,” Tristani said. “It became a virtual home as well.”
