A Day At Workshop

After a lovely breakfast (special thanks to Gaby and Kate!), we traveled to Suame magazine by tro-tro. Tro-tros are not exactly as nice as the van that took us from the airport to KNUST yesterday, and it was merely an old van whose seats are torn out here and there and seatbelts are nowhere to be found.  (See picture 1)  Also, these tro-tros are often shared with multiple others, perhaps going to various locations. Given the weight of our grater machines, the next business team might be able to come up with a better plan for individual salespeople to carry our graters to different villages because traveling by tro-tro with no bag on hands was challenging enough.

Suame magazine is a large site where hundreds of workshops and technicians manufacture products or sell parts.  (See picture 2) Out of all the shops in Suame, we went to ITTU that is administered by Crossman to build our grater. There we met several people, such as Amy, Crossman, and Francis.

                At ITTU (See picture 3), we took some time to check materials we have, tasks that needs to be done, and other supplies to be purchased. Below is a list of things that we did today:

·         Grinded three bars of plastic and fit them into the rectangular hole on the body of the grater

·         Grinded several smaller metal plates and more longer pieces of metal parts

·         Drilled holes on the ends of those longer pieces

·         When it was around noon, Ben, Irene, Gaby and Kate went to purchase additional supplies

·         With a help from Francis, molded two pieces of longer metal bars together for all three graters, which will be vertical legs

As a business student from Babson College, it was a whole new experience. I came to appreciate how much manual work, time, and effort building one product requires. At the end of the day, everyone was not only exhausted, sweating, and covered in dirt but also proud of what we accomplished today.  Though I think I had enough of such experience to appreciate the process, we have more mechanical works to get done on the list for tomorrow at the workshop! I am already longing for the beautiful moment to see our graters running successfully.

Below are more pictures and brief explanations of them: 

Tro-tro

Caroline working

Awww Irene