Ghana, Meet Recycling

Another update!

The last two days have been fairly recycling-heavy. Yesterday morning we met to finalize our plans for the waste bins that had been donated by ZoomLion (the local waste collection company). Some of us went to get supplies to paint the bins to distinguish them from regular trash bins. The rest of the group tracked down some computers and made fliers to hand out to vendors and customers around the bins. This took a little longer than we had planned because our T.A.'s abandoned us at the computer lab and instructed the man working there not to let us leave till they got back. At one point he told us he would lock the door if we tried to leave. Naturally, we used this valuable down time to sing Simon and Garfunkel songs and talk about Harry Potter and cheese.

Once the T.A.s got back, we walked to the Guest Center and began painting the bins. (Side note: it is currently the rainy season in Ghana and has rained just about every day since we got here except for the one day when we were doing physical labor outside- yesterday it was about 90 degrees and sunny.) The girls expertly painted and adorned the bins with recycling symbols and pictures of water bottles, while the boys found any excuse they could to use Kristen's Swiss Army knife. We labeled all ten bins, and no one lost any fingers.

By the time our artistic endeavor was finished, it was too late in the day to set the bins in their designated spots, so we called it a day with high hopes for the remainder of our time in Kumasi.

Today was equally productive. We managed to put all of the bins in place, hand out tons of fliers and talk to a lot of people about our project. We even saw some real live Ghanaians recycling without being pestered or threatened into it by one of us overzealous Obrunis (Twi for white person). We ended up adding a few extra bins onto the ten we had originally set out because there was so much interest and support from ZoomLion. It was really great to see some concrete results after a lot of planning and hard work. Hopefully this is just the beginning of a comprehensive recycling program at KNUST.

We had our last dinner at the luxurious(ish) Treasure Land Hotel, where we've been enjoying the finest in the cutting edge arena of Ghanaian-Italian fusion food. Our fearless tour guide, Linda had promised to take us out one night, so we are about to leave for a night of dancing and live music. Let's call it "cultural immersion."

Tomorrow we return to Accra for our homestays, and hopefully the completion of our project at the University of Ghana. We'll try to post another update soon. In the meantime, the 15 of us will be over here, navigating the "selectively paved" roads in our bright yellow, 12 person van, often mistaken for Scooby Doo's Mystery Machine.

Hope all is well stateside.

-Ellie and Kristen