[This is part five of a diary that John Mutter, co-founder of the Bamboo Bike Project, kept on a trip to Ghana in January 2011]
It’s Saturday, and we are picked up at 7 am from the hotels and went to an intermediate site where the semi holding our container from Brooklyn was parked at a gas station, and where the BBL blue truck was also parked. We all worked to off load the container into the blue truck and pickup. Didn’t take long at all. Most of the crew came out and we moved things along quickly. We drove to the factory and unloaded there. Everything was done by 9 am, much sooner that I guessed would be possible.
Truck owned by BBL moving the jigs and tools to the factory
We spent the rest of the morning getting things out of boxes and setting up for the start of training using the jigs and the tools and machinery on Monday. The band saw was assembled as well.
Everything seems to have arrived intact and nothing forgotten. There are few things that will need to be obtained from local providers but everything is set to go for training in frame building using the workstations with that will be the center of the production when things get rolling.
Ten workstations set up with jigs ready to start the first production of bikes at scale in Ghana
By the end of the morning the space looks nearly ready for serious production. The equipment that came from US is extensive, including a large band saw, grinder, full Park Tool kit (I’m jealous), drill press and system for making injection molds. Very impressive.
Hi, l live in canada and l saw your bomboo bike, lm interested buy some and lm coming to gahana in 6 days . here is my ghana number ( 0244666875) and l would love to hear from you thank you.
Hi John Mutter and Bamboo bikes Ghana,
I’m from Ethiopia where there are bountiful quantities of bamboo.
I’d be interested in talking to you about setting up something here.
Who should I speak too?
Yves