Plastic Bottles, Packed Auditoriums, and Fufu

Since our last blog post, we've really started to make ground on our recycling project. After touring the campus on Monday, we established three distinct locations to focus recycling pilot projects the University of Ghana campus. After much deliberation and discussion, we developed a rough plan for what bins should be used, where bins should be placed, and what educational materials need to be made for this project to be sucessful.

Today, we've worked to set our plan in motion. A few students went to the market today to research materials and itemize possible costs. Another group of students met with administrators from the sanitation department and Commonwealth Hall (the site of one of our projects) to work out necessary details. A final group drafted fliers to post on campus while also beefing up our website with additional information and resources about our project and recycling in general.

On campus, we've been lucky to have the help of two University of Ghana teachers assistants, Ato and Richard. Not only have they been kind hosts, showing us around campus, they've also helped with a lot of the leg work needed to get the project off the ground. We're very thankful for their dedication to the project.

In addition to working on campus, we've also done some education in local secondary schools. Yesterday morning we rose with the sun, venturing out to PRESEC, an all boys school in Legon. By 6:30 AM we left for our trek to the school. We were told we'd be presenting to about 50 students. We were also told the walk was only about 20 minutes from our hostel. 50 minutes later we finally arrived at the school to find an auditorium of 1000 students sitting and waiting to hear our presentation.

After quickly altering our presentation to suit our much larger audience, we took the stage. While presenting, it was hard to gauge just how interested the students were. Many were talking through the presentation and it was clear that not all the students could hear us with the microphone we were given. The students were reluctant to answer questions (Ato later keyed us into the fact that it would probably be embarrasing for us to answer questions in front of 1000 of our classmates too), but we did receive some feedback from the large group.

Perhaps the most popular part our presentation was our singing of "Hail to the Victors" to close out our presentation. The students really enjoyed it and followed our performance by singing their own school song.

After our presentation, the students filed out and returned to their classes. We toured the school and also met with members of the school's science club. The interactions with the students turned out to be the most valuable part of the experience. The students were extremely intelligent and well spoken. They were eager to speak to us about recycling and seemed interested in setting up a program on their campus. In our next week in Accra, we hope to meet back up with the students and determine the feasibility of extending our efforts to their school as well.

In our down time, we've had a lot of time to bond as a group. Much of this bonding has involved food. Everyone is addicted to the fresh fruit sold at the market across from our hostel (thankfully, its totally safe to eat). We've made frequent trips to buy mangoes and pineapple. Usually when someone returns with a black bag from the vendor filled with fruit, its gone in a matter of minutes.

Last night, we also bonded over our first experience eating Fufu. Fufu is a starch made from casava. Traditionally, its eaten with your hands and served in a bowl of soup accompanied by fish or meat. Everyone had an interesting experience last night, dipping their hands into the gloopy, doughy substance. While the Fufu wasn't everyone's favorite dish, eating the Fufu defintitely proved to be a truly unique cultural experience for our group.

As we continue to progress on our project (while also having a great time in Ghana!), be sure to check back with our blog for updates. Pictures are hopefully forth coming.

Best,
Kyra (your friendly student fellow)