Shop till you drop!

Suame Magazine

Last week was a rough week for all of us- Monday through Friday, 9 A.M to 5 P.M,  whether you’re studying business or engineering, all the team members put in 110% effort into the fabrication of our graters and press prototypes at ITTU, a shop located in Suame Magazine working for our partner institution KNUST. The shop was impressive in its own way- from a gigantic hand shear with the lever arm the length of my height and the workers who can chisel faster than I can use that shear. Our goal for the week was to produce three working graters and three different press prototypes that would be used in the co-designing session with the gari producers in the village over the weekend. Even though we had most of the grater parts made at Olin and purchased the main mechanisms for the presses, the assembly of the machines required more creativity and much steeper learning curve than expected.

There were times when the 96 teeth that were punched out (times three for three graters!) individually with a sharpened masonry nail seemed to only increase in number as you go. The sun was scorching so hard that the sheet metal that was left out for barely 10 minutes became too hot to touch with bare hands. Shopping was no longer a fun ordeal but a physically strenuous chore that required intense haggling and balancing massive metal sheets on one’s head. There were times when we were genuinely concerned for the safety, not of us, but of the workers, who were welding with no type of eye or skin protection at all. But through all the chaos, greasy fingers that never seem to get properly cleaned, late night motor rewiring workshop, and many, many delicious but expensive juice boxes, we managed to get things done just in time for our village visits.

It was definitely challenging to work with half-broken-down machines that didn’t exist in a great quantity in the first place. However, a successful collaboration, both amongst ourselves and with the shop workers, kept us motivated and focused through it all. It was a valuable experience for the team to not only work together as a team under a tight deadline, but to learn to be flexible and understanding in an environment where anything can go wrong.

The grater motors after 3 hours of rewiring workshop in the dorms after a long day in the shop. More importantly, our life source, the juice box Don Simon!

Rainey, a business student from Babson, became an engineer for the week! She successfully demonstrated the prototype that she designed and built to Auntie Howe over the weekend.