Most of our work was in Kumasi, so we stayed on the campus of the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (KNUST). We had a whole dorm to ourselves and we took up three floors leaving the top floor for project work and the ground floor for the guests we had coming through. The dorm had 4 suites per floor (picture an X and the suites are each of the legs, while there is a hallway in the middle where they all meet) and each suite had 3 double rooms plus 2 bathrooms, a kitchen and a common room.
My suitemates were pretty awesome guys, but I didn't spend nearly as much time in my suite as I would have liked. My roommate was a Ghanaian named Mensah, but we always seemed to be on different schedules, so we didn't end up seeing much of one another. The one thing that I could count on was that whenever I walked through in the evening, Sanjeev from India would be cooking an elaborate dish (he complained that all the Ghanaian food didn't have enough spices) for everyone who was around.
I spent a good amount of time on the top floor. Each team took the beds out of one of the rooms and filled it with flip charts and assorted project materials. We also took over the kitchen in our suite to use as our testing space. There was even an area in the hallway with workbenches and tools where people would work until all hours of the night and then pull out the guitar for a quick jam session. There was also one suite for the organizers where we stored extra supplies and took care of things like evaluations and accounting.
The hostel even had a little shop that was stocked with yogurt and soda and other things that people might consume. The selection wasn't great, especially in terms of fresh fruit and vegetables, but you couldn't beat the convenience. The hostel also had pretty good wireless coverage (well, some people from the US might have found it more frustrating) and a back-up generator for the few times that power was cut. The staff in the dorm was generally helpful (though very reluctant to distribute toilet paper for some inexplicable reason) and made our stay really wonderful. There was even a nice patch of grass out front where we had lots of meetings and events. The only real difficulty was when it rained, the hallways were all soaked through.
The building was on the far side of campus, but it was right near a classroom and cafeteria that we used most days. It was also within walking distance of the campus pool and a commercial area off campus where we could get more variety in our provisions. It was somewhat quiet since not many people were on campus for the summer, but the lack of distractions made it much easier to focus on our projects.
The living space is probably one of the most important parts of the IDDS experience and I was really happy with my experience at the hostel. It was nice being able to wander around almost any time of day and find people to work with or talk to and even people who insisted that I eat some of what they were cooking. It made it much easier to build the kind of strong community that we needed for working together during the summit and moving forward.
Introduction
My Project (Part 1)
My Project (Part 2)
Other Work
Delivering Content
My Team
Language
Where We Stayed
Suame Magazine
New Longoro
Maker Faire
Food
Potluck
Ramadan
Transportation
Accra
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