preparation progress

Exactly 1 week until my departure!

This morning I had the privilege of video chatting via Skype with Auntie Renee Neblitt, the founder and director of the Kokrobitey Institute, where I will be having my internship and living for the next three months. We went over some of the duties that I will have during my time there, as well as some basic supplies that are harder to find in Ghana that I can purchase in the US and bring with me. We had been trying to coordinate a time to video chat for a little while, but it can be difficult with the four hour time difference and busy schedules!

Speaking of my internship duties, I figured it's about time I give you a description of the program I will be helping out with. Here is the description given to me by the institute when I was invited:

"The Design Center of the Kokrobitey Institute has developed a new product, the Ghana School Bag (gSB). The project is an educational, environmental sustainability and job creation opportunity. The goal is to provide jobs for unskilled young people by launching a sustainable green company. The project will build capacity by training local youth in basic sewing skills.

The training will target low-income youth ages 17 to 26 and focus on recycling and design. It will be distinguished by its training curriculum. A curriculum focused on building basic competency skills, which are essential in today’s modern work place: good communication (asking and answering questions), time management, problem solving, categorizing and team building skills. 

At the end of the three-month training all successful participants will be guaranteed a job in the company producing the first set of bags. The production and donation of the bags to Ghanaian school children will be sponsored by Ghanaian businesses committed to bringing the culture of recycling and waste management to Ghana’s youth.

The training model will serve the long-term growth of the company by allowing the trainees to progress to management and run their own decentralized production units.

This decentralized production model allows for the bags to be sewn at home or venues away from the central production area of the Kokrobitey Institute. A unit consists of 5 machines. The manager will collect kits from the Institute, consisting of the materials and parts needed to assemble the bag. The completed bags are then returned to the Institute for distribution.

An ambitious trainee can oversee as many units as they are able. Two units make a company. The head quarters at the Institute is called the Adinkra Hene. Two units or more make a company. The manager of two or more units can name their company after the Adinkra symbol of their choice.

The emphasis of the gSB initiative will focus attention on the country of Ghana. Providing Ghana’s school children with an well designed, durable, Ghana-made school bag brings the world of environmental sustainability, recycling, waste management, creativity and social entrepreneurship to the Ghanaian population."

So, as a design intern I will be assisting with the Ghana School Bag project. I am still not sure as to what my day to day responsibilities will be, but I will certainly learn what they are in a short time!

On another random note, I picked up my anti-malaria meds from the pharmacy today (note: wal-mart's pharmacy has really great prices when it comes to generics!). I will be taking doxycycline, a daily antibiotic. I will start taking it the day before I leave, and continue to take it for a month after I return. This is definitely the biggest pill bottle i've ever gotten!

Visas and iPhones and Meds, oh my!

Hey hey,

These past few days have involved lots of busy travel preparations... it feels really good to be getting things done. On Tuesday I finally mailed out my Visa application, after going to AAA for passport photos and doing all the things necessary to have it expedited. Lets hope they are prompt! As of today I have 11 days before I depart... it's hard to believe.

My next project has been my cell phone. On my trip to Ghana last year I learned that you can buy a SIM card for one of their networks and load money on it as you go. I think that's a good system, and it ends up being cheaper than getting AT&T's international plan. I also won't have to worry about the random fees and charges international plans always seem to tack on.

Warning: If you don't want to hear about the laborious process of hacking my phone, skip over the next few paragraphs!

SO, in order to do this with my iPhone I would have to jailbreak and unlock it. The unlock is what allows me to use a non-AT&T SIM card with my phone, and I can't unlock without jailbreaking. I learned a lot about this process from my good friend Jaren... it can get so confusing!

I learned that the current firmware on my iPhone (4.3.5) can only be jailbroken if it is tethered, meaning that every time the phone is turned off or runs out of battery, it has to be plugged into the computer and go through the jailbreak process all over again. Not fun. We tried to downgrade my firmware to a version that would allow me to do an untethered jailbreak, but to no avail.

At this point I decided to just deal with it and try the tethered jailbreak. I was finally able to jailbreak using the program Redsn0w, but when I went to unlock my phone, I learned that my iPhone's modem firmware, or baseband (05.16.02), cannot be unlocked. Great. I then learned that you can change the phone's baseband to the iPad (thats right, iPad) baseband 06.15.00. However, doing this will kill GPS functionality and drain my battery life. Oh, and its irreversible. Not worth it.

While banging my head against the table, I realized that my best option at this point will probably be to buy a cheap jailbroken and unlocked phone on eBay. Enough of this madness. Then, my mother swept in to save the day by handing me my brother's old 1st generation iPhone. He upgraded a while ago, and the phone had nothing wrong with it! From there, the process finally went smoothly. I found this very helpful guide that led me through the process step by step, and it actually worked! Now I have only to find a friend with a non-AT&T SIM card and test it out.

Whew. Next challenge: getting my pharmacy/insurance company to give me three months worth of malaria meds at once.

Thanks for reading!