This first week was all about first impressions coming our way. We have arrived last Sunday at Kotoko airport after a pleasant flight of almost 7 hours. Friedl, our contact person, came to pick us up and took us to the Bettany guesthouse next to the hope for life bakery where we have been sleeping, until now. The first phase of the project is aimed at analysing the bakery from the inside out as well as analysing the city of Accra from the outside in.

First we got a tour through the bakery by Friedl and we were introduced to the staff members. The next day we were invited to help out at the bakery and we spend the night making “bolletjes” to be delivered the next day.

We also got an invitation to join the chauffeurs on their daily route helping them delivering the bread to the supermarkets and shops of Accra. Bread delivery is a a highly time consuming job, as traffic here is crazy, and roads are unpaved and have surprisingly deep holes everywhere. Additionally, the city has a widespread centre: it is home to over 2.500.000 people! Joining the chauffeurs turned out to be a fantastic way to see a big part of the city in a small amount of time and to get familiar with the different neighbourhoods. Furthermore, it helped us to get a good impression of how the people of Accra buy their bread, what is available in a general supermarket or shop and what other breads are on display. The two chauffeurs drive a different route, so we split up in teams of two and switched the next day. To drive two times on a different day helped us a lot because we were able to discuss what to look for the second time.

So far we have mapped the locations of all the shops where hope for life bread is being sold. We have made a profile of every shop that includes the amount and types of bread they sell and also which competitors are on the shelves and how much space they occupy compared to hope for life. Based on the different locations and the knowledge we gained about the different parts of the city, we divided all shops into six different districts.

The bakery provided us with sales data from the shops of the past six months which we used to measure the performance of each district and every shop individually.    

Hope for Life has structured its cooperation with the local disabled by dividing the city in twelve districts. Every district has its own representative coordinator that organises meetings for all the hope for life members. All coordinators come together once a month at the Bethany Guesthouse to discuss what is going on in their districts and the future direction of Hope for Life. We were invited to join such a meeting and were introduced to all the representatives. We now have the contact information of all the representatives and most of them are really enthusiastic about cooperating with us and our project.

Besides all planned activities we have gained a lot of information and insights just from being here and witnessing everyday life.

Next week we plan on spending time with every representative individually. Today we will work on preparing those meetings and discussing on what we want to gain from them. We also plan on getting in contact with disabled people from each area and we will be moving to a different location so it will be easier to access different areas in one day.