Note: I started this post Thursday, finished it Sunday and am posting it today as this is the first time I've had internet in a while. Again Darkuman is suffering from an internet shortage, I guess it is better than a water or electricity shortage.
I have just recovered from a head cold. I must have caught it over last weekend. I missed two days of work, but at the pace things move here I did not miss much. It is very odd to catch a cold in this heat, and it really left me feeling drained. On Monday we met with Dr. Yanful from Western, who asked how things were going. He has also tried to get us involved in a couple of waste management problems with Zoomlion. He has us on an e-waste recycling depot that they may be building in the future.
We had a meeting Thursday with a
Spanish company who is interested in working with Zoomlion to develop e-waste
recycling in Ghana. It seems to be a
long way off to me, the people in Ghana are very good at getting the most out
of a product and making it last as long as possible. I also believe that by the time an
electronics product becomes e-waste in Ghana most if not all the valuable
materials will have been removed. As
these materials are one of the main financial motivations behind e-waste
recycling it may be very hard to implement.
I’m not sure if this is the
project for me in Ghana. I was very
satisfied working on the drainage system and seeing the various aspects of
project management that were involved.
The contracts and management systems are very similar to those used in
Canada, which may be because all the project managers have spent significant
amount of time working in America or Britain.
The other students I am here with have their hearts set on working on a
design project. I just feel that the waste
management projects are in such an early stage it is closer to concept
generation than a practical example of building design. I decided to give it until the end of the
week before deciding which of the projects I will finally decide to work on for
the remainder of my time in Ghana. I am
sure that even if I spend most of my time on the sewage plant drainage system,
there will still be plenty of opportunity to keep up to date on the design
project and any interesting things that come up on that project. It may even be
easier with us students split up, as keeping three students engaged at a time
is pretty difficult.
Yesterday the lady who runs that
hostel was getting ready for her mother’s 85th birthday. She was in charge of bringing the fufu for the
party. She spent all day preparing it,
in the early morning she was pealing and chopping plantains and cassava. After cooking the plantains and cassava all
day she had a pair of the local boys take here cooked plantains and cassava to
the local fufu machine. For a small fee
they mash the plantains and cassava for you in a homemade machine built out of
an old lawnmower engine and some wood.
This saved a ton of time and the traditional method of pounding the fufu
with a large mortar and pestle is very labor intensive especially for the
amount “Auntie” had prepared.
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| Cooking the plantains and cassava |
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| Automated fufu pounding |
Last night the whole gang from
the Hostel when out to Accra’s premier jazz club for dinner and drinks. It was the first club I've been in here that
was packed and even charged a cover. I
had a pork chop for dinner, a real treat here, as you do not see a lot of pork
on the menus of Ghana’s restaurants. It
was a very nice place and the headliner, Ebo Taylor, was very good.
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| Club +233, +233 is Ghana's international dialing code |
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| Poster for the Ebo Taylor concert at +233 |
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| Ebo Taylor and his band |
Johnny
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