The Accra launch event was not so great. Attendance was lower than that of the Takoradi launch, and that city has one tenth of the population of Accra. The mayor used a speech that barely mentioned the competition. The mayor instead used the event to promote his own plan, which consists of burning all of the garbage to generate energy. In the process he completely dismissed any notions of recycling as a waste management strategy, which conflicts with the goals of our competition.

Of the 50 or so organizations I invited, only about 4 or 5 showed up. Fortunately one of these is a major multinational consumer products company, and we are going to make a personalized pitch in the next few days. An oil firm that could not make it to the event also wants us to come in and do a pitch.

Unfortunately, these will not be enough to reach the fund raising goal. The next strategy? Going door to door in the business district. I have no prior experience with sales or fund raising, so I am ever so slightly scared. If anyone has any suggestions on how to go about doing this, I would appreciate it.

This weekend I went to Akosombo and the Boti Falls. The lake cruise was very nice and relaxing but overpriced. We ended up stopping at an island in the lake to do some mild hiking, but it pretty much turned into us getting surrounded in a swarm of locals begging for change. We didn't stay on the island for long. The next day we negotiated for transport directly from Akosombo to Boti Falls. If we had used the normal route it would have taken up to 2 hours longer to get to the falls. When we made it to the falls my camera stopped working, so I only have pictures from my camera phone. I hope to get pictures from the other people over the next couple of days. The falls were pretty spectacular, and well worth the amount of traveling.