On Tuesday morning, we packed up all of our luggage and machines in our tro-tro, leaving KNUST behind to head to the Cape Coast, the Sekondi region of Ghana. The drive was filled with African music and reading the guide book about where we were heading. When we arrived in the Cape Coast we immediately went to a gari association, their location being across the street from the ocean! We hopped out of the car and went straight to work- carrying our grater and whipping our notebooks out to take copious amounts of notes from our interview with them. We met with about 10 ladies who produce gari sometimes together and sometimes individually. We wanted to do a demonstration of our grater for them, but alas the electricity was not working. We had previously realized that nothing really goes as planned on trips like these, so we were quick to think on our feet and decided to show them a video of the grater, and start our interview. We told them that we would come back on Friday to do a demonstration (hopefully their power will be working). We got some valuable information from them such as how many times a week they grate cassava, and who they sell to (secondary schools primarily). They also asked us questions about things such as pressing and whether we could make them a pressing machine. When we told them that this machine has other uses such as making fufu (a traditional dish in Ghana), one of the women jumped up and started dancing, because she was so happy. We look forward to going back to see them on Friday to see if they are as enthusiastic about our demonstration! We are hoping to get at least one order from them!
Tuesday night we had the wonderful opportunity to eat dinner with the other Babson group that is currently in Ghana teaching entrepreneurship. It was great to share a meal and learn what each group is doing, and interact with each other thousands of miles from Boston!
Yesterday we went to a village that was very near the commercial area and pff the main road to meet with a family who does gari processing. They had a grater, and we got to see how it worked and asked them what they liked about it. The grater they were using was not the safest, but the man had a concern with our machine, because he said the cost of electricity is too high. They also had a pressing machine, but it was still very strenuous and took them a long time to use it.
Today we are taking the day to write up all of our notes that we have accumulated this past few days from interviews and to process the information we have gotten from them. We are starting a database for all of our notes so that next semester's team can have an easy time accessing our notes from this trip! It is crazy to think that we are wrapping up our trip so soon! The hard laborious work is over, but we still need to take all the information we got, and put it to good use!
**sorry that there are no pictures at the moment due to computer problems, but will try to post them soon!**
No comments:
Post a Comment