Week 4: Bamboo, Beaches, and Beautiful People
This week, work continued to move on quite slowly. I kept on attempting to find work with one of the hospitals in the area, but my lack of experience and local connections was a challenge. And, I also had some trouble receiving a recommendation letter for my work as an EMT from SCU, so this exacerbated the troubles I was having locally. However, some progress was made for my locally produced baby food project as I was finally able to get in contact with Magdalene, the nutritionist I was meant to be working with. The information I was given was again fairly ambiguous, but I was able to put a fair amount of information together based off of that. Also, I did some grant research for the foundation that will hopefully be impactful in the future.
One thing that we were able to do this week that allowed us to change up our work rhythm was to visit the factory that produced the bamboo bike frames. This was an amazing experience that gave us insight into how technical the production was. Also, Brooke was asked by Solomon to help him redesign the new factory that they were about to break ground on, so it was cool to hear about the ideas that she had about how the factory could be improved.
Outside of work, we visited the Ghana Military Museum during the week. I had always wanted to check it out since it was so close to the office, so I was excited for us to go. Unlike most museums, we were required to have a guide that led us around because all of the artifacts were not housed within cases. I thought that the most impactful display in the entire museum were artifacts from the Rwandan genocide. The guides were very knowledgeable about the topic and were able to tell us exactly what each weapon was used for. It was heartbreaking to hear about it, but I am fortunate to have gained more knowledge on the issue.
That weekend, we took our first overnight trip to Cape Coast. There, we were lucky enough to run into a young couple named Foster and Mikayla that showed us around. Mikayla is a Canadian while Foster is a Ghanaian. They had met a few years prior through their work and have been married for the past year and a half. They were some of the most compassionate people that I had ever met, and I am grateful that we were able to meet them. We traveled to Kakum National Forest and to Cape Coast Castle while making a host of others friends along the way. And, we made plans to come to the area they lived in Accra before we left in a few weeks.
