A new location; new stories to tell

It's been almost a week since our last update. We have a handful of new stories to tell, and a new place from which to tell them.

We ended the first part of our recycling project on the University of Ghana campus with a group meeting with Ato. We planned out our tasks and goals for continuing with the implementation of a plastics recycling program within Commonwealth Hall after we return to Accra on Monday, July 20th. We have already written the proposal letter, ordered the bins, and designed the fliers for advertising the new recycling project. We also took a two-hour tro-tro ride across very bumpy mud roads to visit the City Waste Mangament Co., Ltd. recycling site. We were only able to visit the company's temporary recycling site because the main plant is undergoing reconstruction, but it should reopen soon. We saw the Agglo and extruder machines and the final bags of pelleted recycled plastics. Although the recycling facility was much smaller than what we had imagined, it is nevertheless exciting to know that there are working recycling plants in Accra. In terms of our Commonwealth recycling project, we are mainly just waiting to garner the support and assistance of Commonwealth Hall's officials and the local city sanitation department.

We were originally scheduled to leave for Cape Coast on Friday, July 10th. However, thanks to Professor Kathleen Sienko's assiduous work prior to our Ghana trip, we managed to get tickets to President Barack Obama's "Farewell Ceremony" at the Kotoko Airport on Saturday, July 11th, so both our recycling group and the maternal health group went to Kotoko Airport and witnessed Obama's final few minutes in Ghana before he boarded Air Force One back to the United States. The Ghanaian President, John Atta Mills, also spoke.

Sunday morning, we boarded a resilient tour bus (I say "resilient" because it broke down three times during our trip, but managed to start up again each time within less than half an hour) and headed for Cape Coast. We were all thrilled to experience Kakum National Park's Canopy Walk. During the Nature Walk that followed our traipse across the rope bridge, we viewed a myriad of trees and learned about their cultural and medicinal values. Later in the evening, we drove to a gorgeous beach on the Atlantic Coast where many of us played in the waves. We had a seafood dinner by the beachside.

We continued with our tour of Cape Coast on Monday morning, visiting first Cape Coast Castle and then Donko Nsuo, the Slave River. It was a physically and emotionally trying experience for many of us. We went into the dungeons at Cape Coast Castle where millions of slaves were imprisoned before being sent off as another parcel of the TransAtlantic Slave Route. At Donku Nsuo, we were asked to take off our shoes before walking the narrow and seemingly endless path to the river where slaves had their last bath before being sent across the ocean to the New World.

We are now at Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (KNUST) in Kumasi. This morning, two teaching assistants, Mike and Ebeneezer, took us on a tour of the huge campus. We scoped out a busy junction area just outside the campus side gate, where we have decided to attempt to initiate a plastics recycling project. While I was typing up this post, another team of students from our group went to speak to a couple of the vendors and shopkeepers at the junction, to get an idea of how they might respond to us setting up plastic recyling containers near their businesses. They seemed to be fine with the proposal. We also have the full support of ZoomLion, the local sanitation company. ZoomLion has even promised to supply us with ten dustbins. So although we only have a few days left in Kumasi, I do believe we'll be able to make a positive impact while we are here---hopefully it will be a lasting one!

We will send another update when we get Internet access again.

Hasta!

Lo-Hua