May 13th 2009

At last the notorious eighteen-hour bus ride on the STC. Akunz dropped me at the bus depot early this morning. As a seasoned Greyhound patron, I was prepared for the worst. The leg room could have been better, but otherwise it wasn’t too bad. The route to the North covers a lot of good country.

Around hour fourteen, I was flipping through my design plans without any real purpose. They caught the eye of the young woman sitting next to me. Her name was Ida. I had spoken to her intermittently throughout the trip. Ida was a professional photographer out of Tamale. She had traveled to Accra to visit her three-year-old son who lives with his grandmother.

She asked to see my plans for the Nurse’s Quarters at the Clinic. I handed them over and explained them as I would to anyone lacking in a technical background. She flipped back and forth through the pages with a bewildered look on her face. I figured I must have done a poor job of explaining the drawings. Before I could start again, she looks up and says “No. This is no good.” She then explains that the back door of the building should be in the kitchen instead of the bathroom. The women will need to throw the dirty water out of the kitchen when they are finished cooking. An extra door in the kitchen would also provide better ventilation for clearing smoke.

Apparently Ida had taken several computer aided drafting classes during her time in secondary school. I’m really not sure why I even thought to include a backdoor in the building at all, much less one in the bathroom. With no flammable materials in or anywhere near the building, the idea of it just seems silly to me now.

I doubt she was even listening to my initial explanation. She appeared confused because the front and side profile views of the building were out of order and didn’t match what should appear on the floor plan.

-John Yatsko