Dancing the Night Away

Hey y'all, it's McKenzie again! I hope everyone is having a wonderful start to their week, because we sure are here in Ghana. With three days left, we are stuck between wanting to return to our families and wanting to turn in our tickets so that we can stay here another two weeks (just kidding y'all, we are all coming home soon and can't wait to see everyone). Today Sam told me that he promised y'all that today was going to be an exciting, productive day and I am happy to announce that it most certainly was. We even got pictures to prove it because, as you all are aware, the common perception is that if you do not have pictures of what you did then it never happened.

This morning started bright an early with a two and a half hour drive to Heritage University to meet with the president of the university as well as some of their professors. Bryant, Caleb, me, Sam, Noah, Kyle, and Hayden all took the journey to Accra. It was a very long drive consisting of Hayden laying his head on my feet, Kyle laying his head on one of my shoulders while Sam laid his head on the other. Needless to say I was smothered and sweating by the time we arrived, but was totally worth it when we found out that there was air conditioning in the conference room. We entered the conference room and Caleb proposed his idea. He pitched the idea of a potential senior design project for our engineering students. The wastewater system that we are designing is going to be able to be improved next year. Caleb would like for the project to be a senior design project that would have the capability of being implemented in several places. He has a vision for the senior design group to partner with some of the business students at Heritage so that they can give us information we would need to locally source the parts and in turn they have the challenge of making our idea and design into a business proposal and would need to examine the current market with great detail. When Caleb explained this to the president of the university, Sam, he immediately said yes. We believe this immediate "yes" stemmed from our Sam telling everyone that he ate Fu-Fu, a native dish to Ghanaians. President of the university Sam called our Sam a brave man and told us that he doesn't feed his American guests Fu-Fu because it typically makes Americans sick. Go our Sam for sealing the deal! Sam said that their University was in need of a solution as well and anything they could do to help, they would. It was a very successful trip there and was worth all the smothering and sweating. Another plus was that on the way back we got a case of Cokes (score!!) to give us the caffeine boost we need to finish the week strong.

When we arrived back home the rest of the gang had just finished lunch and was working on "Dump #3" a.k.a the third model of the flow meter. Apparently yesterday Sam told y'all that "Dump #2" worked.... apparently there was some sort of hiccup in the process which led them to this. Stephanie led Taylor and Salah to the design of making their own capacitor. In case y'all didn't know (heck, I didn't know), is very difficult. Not only was the concept challenging, they made the capacitor out of spare things around the house (aluminum foil, bottle caps, etc). Bottom line is that the team got a lot accomplished while we were gone and are total smartie pants for coming up with the idea in the first place.

Looking back at old posts and pictures that we have taken the past week and a half I realized we only post the glamorous, exciting things we do. A lot of what gets done, besides getting on the roof, digging holes, or measuring sewage, is done on the computer. Bryant and Caleb may not always be pictured doing the "cool" thing, but they are always hard at working researching, emailing, or recording so that the correct information and materials are provided to get everything done efficiently and effectively. While Salah, Stephanie, and Taylor were working on "Dump #3" these two were hard at work recording data of the sewage system and analyzing Excel spread sheets. Nothing could be done unless these two were so on top of it!

Caleb loves to build something cool out of nothing, so to take a break from the computer he helped Salah, Hanleigh, and Stephanie in building the capacitor. Y'all notice how the electrical engineering students and electrical engineering professor are the ones building this? Yeah, it's because they are super smart and can visualize things like making capacitors out of aluminum foil while the rest of us just sit there and scratch our heads trying to remind ourselves of what a capacitor is (or maybe it's only me... I didn't really check with others on that).

Anyways, they eventually got it to work through Hanleigh's soldering skills, Salah's programming skills, Taylor and Caleb's construction skills, and Stephanie's overall skill. It was a huge accomplishment and made all the hard work worth it. All that is left to do is to calibrate it and test it. Stay tuned tomorrow to see if it worked.

While the building of the capacitor was finishing up, Hanleigh, Billy, Sam, Hope, and I headed over to Hope College to climb the roof one last time and patch up their roof with silicone. After we patched the roof we started the journey of taking the ladder back to its rightful place (mom and dad, you taught us well to put things back where we found them ). Of course carrying a ladder is boring, so we decided to spice it up. With Sam at the front of the ladder, me at the back, and Hanleigh waiting to watch us fail, we hoisted Billy up. It was quite an adventure and tested my strength for sure. It all gave us a good laugh. Luckily, Hope was able to snap a picture before we made Billy get off.

Several of us were exhausted in the afternoon and we took a cat-nap. Caleb woke us up to tell us that Arraba had texted him telling us to be ready at 4:30 as we had a surprise waiting. None of us knew what to expect. When the time finally rolled around to fins out what it was, we heard the faint beat of drums in the distance. Arraba soon enough came to our house to lead us to entertainment that the village had hired for the night. Traditional African dancers and musicians. Several of the children and parents were gathered waiting for it to start. None of us knew what to expect. When it started we were most definitely not disappointed. The group did several dances and I got front row and was able to get pictures and even a video of it all. It was so neat to be able to see the culture and the roots of Ghana through their music and dances. There were several costume changes and several dances. The dancers had so much energy and passion for what they were doing that anyone watching couldn't help but smile.

At one point of the entertainment the group invited the guests (aka us) to get up and learn some of the dance moves. All 12 (Caleb was off measuring sewage) of us got up in a circle and started learning. Once we did the group made us show our "signature move." Stephanie went first, followed by Sam, and then Kyle, and then it got to me. I didn't want to go up alone because those who had gone before me had much smoother moves than I, so I dragged Hope in the circle with me. I figured we would get both of our turns out of the way. One of the older students from the village had my camera and took pictures of everyone dancing. It was a ton of fun to be able to see the culture and dance a little ourselves.

After the group finished, there was music on a loud speaker. This begun a dance party amongst the younger kids and us. All of the children were gracious enough to not laugh too hard at our dance skills because, and let's be honest with ourselves, we're engineering students (and a biochemistry student) that spend all day in the engineering building so who has time to learn how to dance? We danced until we basically all fell on the floor of exhaustion. Tonight was definitely the highlight of my week because it allowed us to take a break from all the technical work and continue to build on the relationships we started last week. Everyone had children jumping on them, asking to be held, and wanting to dance. It burned a lasting memory. To be able to make connections with people across the world and carry that with us when we leave is something so amazing and that we wouldn't be able to do without the power of God.

Well y'all, that's all I have for today. Overall it was a great day filled with traveling, hard work, and fun. Leaving on Friday is without a doubt going to be a tough thing for all of us because we have made so many connections and friendships here, but also want to get back to our families. These next three days I would really appreciate it if y'all could pray for a productivity, our energy level, and a peace of mind when it comes to leaving. We all really appreciate y'all reading these blog posts and continuing praying for us. We hope you love reading them as much as we love writing them. Y'all have a wonderful night and we will see all of you soon!!

Note to my mom: I have decided to stay another two weeks. Caleb and Stephanie already said yes. Haha, just kidding :) I know you might come here yourself and stay with me. But seriously, I miss you and love you and can't wait to hug your neck on Saturday. I miss our 5 calls a day and fully expect to share cheese puffs and a coke when I see you (sorry to those still reading, inside joke)! Thanks for being the Lorelai to my Rory.

-McKenzie