Good Morning!

The Takoradi launch event went very well. It had the largest turnout so far. The crowd of the previous launch events consisted of professionals and NGO staffers. This launch event, however, was attended mostly by average citizens. Many of them expressed gratitude that someone was actually giving them a chance to launch a business.

An ever so slight problem has emerged. While the World Bank has been advertising that it is giving 1 million ghana cedis (about $650k) in prize money to the competition, in reality they are not giving anywhere close to that. So it looks like it is up to us to fill the gap with other sponsors. It really would not be a problem if the sponsor search was ongoing; unfortunately before I came here no one really thought of trying. I've never done fundraising before, and I have about 7 weeks to do it. This should be interesting, to say the least. I have found contact information for about 40 potential sponsors, mostly multinational companies with Ghanain operations and a few NGOs. I want to reach out to the local business community as well. I really hope that the World Bank can help me with this.

I finally got over to the market last week. It was hot and hectic, but I was able to get a week's worth of vegetables, cooking oil, and some spices for about $6. I was fianlly able to make the lentils with onions and squash, topped with garlic infused palm oil. After I made this, the other volunteers demanded that I make dinner one night next week. I think i'm going to try to make a couple of local dishes (red-red, keleweli) and pineapple ravioli for dessert.

On Saturday I explored Accra by foot and saw a couple of museums. The National Museum gives a good background on Ghanian culture and art, but they have serious conservation issues. I spent Saturday night at Kokobrite Beach. I went with a bunch of the other volunteers and stayed at a hotel called the Italian Gardens. The food was actually pretty good, and the rooms were very nice. Unfortunately the bathroom turned out to be a shed next to the restaurant. Such is Ghana. We went to a party featuring a live rastafarian reggae band; afterwards we were invited to a tribal drumming and dancing circle on the beach that went until 4 in the morning. I ended up joining in, but most of the other volunteers were to embarrassed to do so.

Kokobrite has a bad reputation for muggings, so none of us brought cameras with us.

I uploaded two more galleries on Facebook; I don't have anything on Picasa yet.

http://www.facebook.com/home.php#/album.php?aid=22343&id=1628075351
http://www.facebook.com/home.php#/album.php?aid=21803&id=1628075351