Venturing to Volta

Hello Followers of the Fellows! 

Yesterday we enjoyed a relaxed beach day at Bojo Beach and today we got our freshly sun-kissed noses up bright and early with a 6am departure to journey northeast into the Volta Region of Ghana. Our 3 hour drive was quiet as our reliable Toyota Coaster carried us to Zipline, a logistics company that works with drones to deliver medical supplies and life support equipment to rural medical centers. Zipline was founded in California in 2016 and has quickly expanded across several African countries. The location we visited was the 5th location opened in Ghana. It has been serving the Eastern and Volta Regions for a little over a year. 

Upon arrival, we took a tour of the facilities. We started by putting on medical shoe covers before entering into the temperature controlled warehouse where all the medical supplies are stored. One of the pharmacists, Phillip, walked us through the process of how inventory is brought in, accounted for within their system, labeled, and stored. Zipline is most known by the public for supplying rural areas with blood, anti-snake serum, and more recently COVID vaccines. In addition to these, their warehouse was stocked with all different types of medical supplies that could be sent out. Phillip explained how they only recieve an inventory restock about once a month, but help support over 350 different medical centers around the Volta and Eastern Region of Ghana. Next, Thomas, another pharmacist, showed us how each order is received, filled, and checked to eliminate mistakes and complete orders as timely as possible. Thomas also covered how refrigerated packages are put together and what previous testing had been done to assure temperature sensitive products make it to their destination without spoiling. 

After exploring the warehouse processes, it was time to see how the packages get delivered. We all popped on our aviator glasses and strutted into the drone hanger.  Instead of "Danger Zone" by Kenny Loggins, our walkup music was Afro-beat clubbing music blaring from a speaker in the corner. 

As the vivacious beats dimmed, Michael, one of the leads on drone operations, started to explain what the four parts of the drone were to us. Before each flight the body, wings, battery, and nose must all be assembled and the package must be loaded inside. I am an accounting major - not an engineer - so take my measurement guesses with some grace: I would estimate the body of the drone is 5-6 feet long and the wings are 8-10 feet wide. The battery for each drone looks like a car battery. Each package is dropped 20-30m (65-100ft) off the ground with a parachute so it can glide to the ground without damaging any of the products. The drones themselves sense the weather and wind patterns to calculate the best approach for dropoff and landing. They are each programmed with a holding pattern so the drones with the lowest battery life can land first in the most efficent way. Before we knew it, our test drone was assembled, locked into a slingshot, and flung into the air at 100km/hr (62mph). On average, this Zipline distributor sends out 100 orders a day. These drone trips, flying up to 75 minutes one way, replace deliveries that would take 9-10 hours on land. We watched our test package drop and glide gracefully to earth and the drone circle back for landing. The landing process requires the drone to hit a trip wire and swing until it can be caught, dissembled, and put away until its next delivery. Personally, this was one of my favorite business site visits of our trip. The efficiency of the process combined with the innovative technology to save lives in rural communities was fun to see. 

After lunch we visited Lake Volta to learn about the largest (250 mile long) man-made lake in the world. We saw six of the twelve gates and one of the six generators that make up the only hydroplant in Africa. With U.S. funded construction completed in 1965, the plant supplies 20% of all of Ghanaian power. The large lake is also used for transporting people and products such as oil and crops, along with fishing and fish farming. However, as we are all people from the "Land of 10,000 Lakes" we couldn't help but comment on the jetskis, pontoons, and motorboats tied to the various docks. On the weekends, the lake is used recreationally to explore different islands or to enjoy time on the water. As we visited a few other viewpoints of the lake, it settled in just how vast this body of water stretched and how important it is for the transport of goods, suppliant of power, and for the country as a whole. 

After about an hour into our journey back to Accra, we abruptly stopped along the side of the road. Why? Because there was a family of baboons strolling down the side of the road. One was a mother with a baby on her back. When my brother was little, he called baboons "ahah's" and found their red butts absolutely hilarious. Seeing the baboons along the road was a fun taste of wildlife that was not goats or chickens. It also gave me a fun reminder of home as the trip reaches its final days. Additionally, anytime I can take an opportunity to share a potentially embarassing story about my younger brother, I'm going to take it. 

~Sarah