After 3 flights and over 14 hours of flight time, we arrived safely in Accra, Ghana! During our layover in JFK, we met with four people from the JSA consulting group who helped organize the learning trip and will help us with further development work.
As we flew over Accra and approached the runway numerous construction cranes were visible, suggesting a growing city but from the air, it was impossible to see the details we came to witness. Our objective here is to better understand how this technology can fit into a sustainable business model. That will come soon enough!
No matter how much we slept through the night on the plane, Monday was all about staying awake to begin adjusting to the 5-hour time zone difference. Most of us were able to sleep a few hours on the plane but Lance couldn’t sleep for some reason making Monday a very long day!
On our way home from the market, we stopped off at a beach on the Bay of Guinea (North Atlantic Ocean) and had some drinks and a plantain snack. The sand beach contained lots of trash but didn’t stop people from enjoying the waves and coolness of the ocean. We also so two vacuum trucks used to empty pits, one was leaking badly as it passed us!
According to the World Health Organization (WHO), diseases transmitted through human waste contaminated water include diarrhea, cholera, dysentery, typhoid, and hepatitis and cause 115 deaths every hour in Africa alone!