Thursday 17th July, 9 am

Well, quite a lot of things have happened since my last post, but since the vast majority of them are boring and mundane I will mostly just give my general impressions. Stuff might also be out of order because my memory is bad like that.

We had (as some of the others have mentioned) a night out on which we drank some very disgusting vodka. It is actually impossible to get alcoholic drinks here that don't taste horrible. There is no good beer, only one type of whiskey (8pm Indian Whiskey - don't bother trying it), and a couple of varieties of vodka, all rather nasty. There is wine, but it's not much good either. I'm therefore sticking to soft drinks almost exclusively. Anyway, on this night out we got a bit tipsy, and then went dancing (there are hilarious photos, which apparently are never going to see the light of day - I think that's a shame). We also found out far more about each other than we had expected to, or really wanted to.

I am now really quite proficient on the motorbike. I must, however, remember not to go to work before 8:15, as the traffic is terrible. I have done some long rides out into the field with Mr Mohammed.

As for activity at Nfasimdi Development Association, I feel as if I'm being useful. According to Mr Mohammed, simply turning up at a village and asking them about the local economy is liable to stimulate development. We have been doing quite a lot of that, not just to make them feel important but also to find out what we might usefully do to help. The answer to this seems to be either that they need capital or they need some specific piece of infrastructure - usually a mill or a borehole. As for the capital, we have designed a micro-credit scheme to stimulate shea trading. The basic idea is that they should get a loan in May, just before the shea harvest, with repayments due monthly from November to April. The loan should allow them to buy up shea when the price is low, and the lack of repayments until November should allow them to wait until the price is highest before selling the shea, thus maximising their profit. According to their own estimate, they can realise a 200% profit this way. Now what we need to do is find someone to fund such a scheme. I did some internet research yesterday and found that the big cheeses of the micro-finance world are a Washington, DC-based organisation called FINCA, so I think we're going to write to them and see if they can help. Regarding boreholes, I found a UK-based charity called the Ghana Borehole Fund. I have reservations about this charity (looking up their HQ on Google Maps showed that it's a house in Bishop's Stortford) but I'm going to contact them anyway.

I have discovered that it is incredibly cheap and easy to get clothes made here. Cotton fabrics in a wide variety of patterns cost $3/yard, and silk is $3.50/yard. Tailoring is $3 per item. Accordingly, I have got a shirt and am getting a dressing gown.

We found a really nice place to eat in Tamale. It's called Swad Fast Food (all the food here seems to be fast). The menu is about 100 times more varied than anywhere else, they do Indian dishes as well as local ones and some others, and it's really tasty. We are trying to learn to cook - one of the NGO people has said she would teach us - but we're not much good at Ghanaian food yet. It's difficult to cook stuff we're more familiar with because quite a few of the ingredients are either unavailable or much more expensive than more common foods. Cheese, for example, is difficult to get.

Anyway, that's about all for now. Feel free to call me/email me if you want to know anything more about our trip.

Sam
sam.borin@cantab.net
00233247889323