Ghana 2024

Today was day 1 of a twice postponed and somewhat delayed wind workshop designed to present youth with an impossible task - producing power from a wind turbine they build from scratch. No women came to participate in this adventure this time around, and the young men ages 18 to 30 years who did come around were very pessimistic that they could produce an item few had ever heard of and even fewer could believe would create power from the wind. I sought the approval of the elders in a 20 minute session during which the elderly men sat across from me in a small hut sizing me up. The chief of this tiny village west of Karaga in Upper East Ghana handed me a kola nut. When I bit down and shared the other half with him, I was vetted. The wind turbine  workshop would continue. I look forward to sharing with you the results of Day 2. Today we had only 3 hours together but that was enough to get a lot of work done. The youth were extremely enthusiastic and the activity brought members of the two main ethnic groups together to challenge each other to accomplish this task. Most had never wielded a saw before or had to tackle math problems. in the end, everyone was on the same uneasy footing. Learning to be vulnerable together and putting something no one could envision together. On Day 2, things will start to take shape

How to describe day 2 in Karaga, (Northern region Ghana). My workshops are designed to be challenges and require a lot of faith in someone who nobody has met before and to complete tasks that appear totally abstract and unrelated. But it also requires collaboration, humility, and patience. It was fun to catch individuals smiling to themselves and sharing laughs at their own expense, as they try to figure out how to use a handheld drill, how to cut wood, or to splice two wires for the first time. We all grew accustomed to belting out what has become our new group mantra "we are all learning." But enthusiasm can have its limits without a glimmer of what we were doing. Today we ran the rotors across the coils and produced 30volts DC without a load and 10v DC when hooked up to two motorbike headlamps in parallel. Then, quite literally a light went off to the potential of what we were doing. Suddenly the same group of young men who had bid me farewell for the day were staying late to ask the how'sand why's of what they just built. I was exhausted. The entire activity takes place outdoors. It was 40+°C  and I'd been on my feet all day, but this was interesting. I rarely get villagers interested in the theory. We spent the next 30 minutes discussing power, energy,  AC DC (not the band), parallel and series, amps, and design. I think my face is still hurting from the grin that lasted the entire 30 minutes ride home to my hotel. Day 3 will be a blast and a challenge to keep everyone interested now that the cat has been let out of the bag. I have a few ideas...