During the past weeks, things were initially moving a bit slow. with work I was sick for a while, and when I could go back to work there was barely WiFi in the office. It is actually “unique” that we have WiFi. Everyone has internet on their smartphone, but public WiFi spots are very rare. However, when it rains heavily here, which happens quite often, the power often shuts down. So after this slow week, we (me and the other two American girls) decided to go to Busua for the weekend, where we were also meeting an English guy we met earlier. I had heard about the place, but it was even more impressive than I thought when we got there. Literally a small paradise on earth. As pictures describe more than words, I tried my best to select some of my favorite pictures from the weekend (an impossible task). We did a beautiful hike over the beach, through the bushes and a small village, to an old abandoned fort on the top of a hill. The “barman” of our little hostel came with us to protect us against any men from the bushes, because apparently some German guys returned without their cameras and phones last time they went… Luckily we had no issues, other than feeling extremely dehydrated since our average activity level in this humidity is extremely low haha. I realized my blogs describe mostly things outside of work, even though I spent most time at work and in Kumasi, so I figured I should tell something more about that too. It is also a good time to share something about it because this past week has been really exciting: we started building our bamboo wheelchair prototype!! During the week I spend some days at our (small) work office, and some at the (bamboo bike) factory. I love going to the factory the most, but for the first steps I spent most time in the office doing background research for the bamboo wheelchair that we’re building. The office and the factory are in complete opposite directions and environments. The office is in the busy center of Kumasi, where people wear business style outfits, the streets are full of people selling all different kind of stuff, and the bank and supermarket are right around the corner. The factory however, is outside of Kumasi along a side street away from the main road. There is no bathroom, no food selling places other than some women or children walking by selling things “from their head”, and you want to wear old clothes because you usually leave covered in bamboo dust. After I understood clearly what our goal is for the bamboo wheelchair design I could really start. It is interesting because the whole design process is so different from how I “learned” it. Here the strategy is more like let’s build it and then we will test if it works. I am used to let’s analyze if it will work first, and then we build a prototype to test. Initially this made me feel very pressured and hurried. It felt like their expectations of me were very high, like I could just magically come up with something that would work. After talking more about it, it was fine though, and now, after a few weeks, I was so excited to start making our first prototype! So far so good, all dimensions worked out, but we are working on finalizing it before we can test it in use. If I say we, I mostly mean the main technical guy at the factory and me. We make a great team, I love working together. He is so experienced in working with bamboo so he has great ideas on how to make certain things work, and he is super enthusiastic and passionate. Here are some pictures of us at the factory! Time to get back to work now :-)
1 Comment
Janice Rhodes
11/21/2017 04:23:49 am
MJ, I absolutely loved reading about your experiences in Ghana and the incredible work you are doing there! How inspiring!! I look forward to hearing more!!
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