It’s hard to believe that I’ve been in Ghana for an entire month now! The time has passed far too quickly but I’m proud to say I’ve learned a ton and had some incredible experiences throughout my trip. In the last four weeks I’ve gotten to work on trying to create a product that could reduce the number of Malaria cases in New Longoro, Ghana as well as spending some of my free time prototyping a cassava grater for a trial testing in a small village outside of Kumasi. It’s been a ton of work but it seems like we’ve developed a product (a lantern which vaporizes a locally available oil in order to repel mosquitoes) that could really make a difference for a number of people. That being said we’ve only been here for five weeks and that’s nowhere near enough time to fully develop a product. But going through the design process in such a short time has allowed me to learn a ton in just a few short weeks. I’m excited to take back what I’ve learned and use it on Babson’s campus.

Before all of that happens I’ll be attending Maker Faire Africa-Kumasi (a design expo created to allow small-scale manufacturers to show off their wares http://makerfaireafrica.com) and presenting a prototype for the lantern we’ve been working on as well as a prototype for the cassava grater. It will be a great opportunity for us to see what people think of our ideas and how we can improve them. It should be a long and busy day but hopefully I’ll have a ton of photos and even more information to share with you afterwords!