Customer Number 2!

In Cape Coast, right across the road from the beautiful ocean and the tall palm trees, you will find gari being sold in small bags.

Earlier on this trip, we were excited to find that Aunty Howe was able to pay the rest of the money she owed to us for the grater we sold to her last year. She officially became our first customer! This motivated us to convince more people to become our customers as we demonstrated our grater through our social engagements. We went back to the gari association we visited upon arriving to Cape Coast and this time they had electricity! We proceeded to showing them how our grater works and they gave us valuable feedback. The conversation then changed to talking about the cost of the grater, and whether anyone was interested in purchasing it.

After a constructive discussion with us about how the payment for the grater would work as well as safety precautions when using the grater, the gari association decided to invest in our grater! 

Below: Allison shaking hands with Esi - the caretaker of the grater

Below: Our happy customers waving us goodbye! 

It was a bittersweet yet wonderful moment - letting go of a grater that we all felt connected to in some way. The long team discussions about the design specifications of the grater, doubts about how the grater would be received by the gari producers, the sweat we endured under the Ghanaian heat in Suame magazine while assembling the grater, the endless arguments about what color the grater should be - In that moment, all those hardships seemed minute.  In that moment we also remembered that the success in making this purchase was not only because of our effort while in Ghana, but also the effort of the team members that worked tirelessly on the grater project back in Boston. Thank you  to Liz Threkeld and Elizabeth Poindexter, Helene Hachard and Prateek Sethi for being instrumental in the development of the grater both on the tech side and the business side.