I decided to get up early one morning and take pictures in the little village where the volunteer house is. I am so glad I did!

Here is a view of our village:

The little village we live in has tons of unfinished houses. I’m familiar with this issue because it is rampant in Cairo as well. Because credit and borrowing is not something that people do/are able to do, many people in developing countries will start building a house for their family with what savings they have. The construction stops when the savings run out. When savings are made again, construction will continue. When those savings run out, construction stops. And the cycle continues until the house can finally be finished. This is a huge issue in developing countries around the world, and I don’t think it’s one targeted by microfinance institutions (who target poor households that require very small loans, rather than lower/middle class households who require medium-size loans – hence these people have no choice but to do the “stop and go” construction for years until the house is finished).

I was so excited that I ran into one of these cute lizards running around. They are hysterical – every so often they stop and starting doing pushups lol! You can kind of see from these two pictures below, he scrunches down, then fully extends his arms up, and will keep doing that for 20 seconds or so. Pushups!

I also ran into the cute little goats around the corner from us, but they were not friendly at all! I wanted to get close to the baby goats because they were so adorable, but I didn’t want to upset them anymore.

Especially this one black goat, who kept giving me death stares!

I also stopped at the fruit stand up the road from the volunteer house.  I bought a pineapple, apples, oranges, and some mangoes for 9 cedis (after exchange rate, still about the same price as back home). It’s kind of scary how expensive local fruit is, especially for the local Ghanaians. Overall I have found prices to be much more comparable with the US in Accra than in Cairo – the cost of living in Cairo is SO much cheaper than here in Accra. 

We finally got to do our field visits! It was such a great learning experience. We met Comfort early in the morning and headed out through Amasaman and the neighboring towns to visit all of the beneficiaries, to collect microloan payments, check on any overdue balances, and see how the businesses were doing.

We met Gloria and Beatrice first; both are under equipment loans. The microfinance office is lending a refrigerator to Gloria in order to sell cold drinks on the street in addition to her fried plantain food business, and Beatrice is borrowing a fryer to make what I call “Ghanian donuts” of fried dough and sugar.

The Ghanian donuts looked so good I had to try one. It was extremely heavy and full of oil - dangerously delicious, but I couldn’t even eat half of it!

After meeting with Gloria and Beatrice we made our way over to another village to meet some of the other beneficiaries, but they were not at work yet. So we decided to go see Matilda in another neighboring village, who we had created a questionnaire for. On our way we passed by a mosque holding Friday prayers - a little bit of Cairo in Ghana!

Comfort took us on some shortcuts through the bush - it was beautiful.

After a very long walk we finally made it to Matilda’s shop. She is sweet woman with a warm smile, and we got to meet her 3 beautiful children. Here is Matilda with her son.

We spent nearly 2 hours going over our questionnaire with Matilda, which was exhausting but a great learning experience for everyone. Matilda’s daughters went across the street and got ice cold and spiced hibiscus juice for us at the end. It was so refreshing at the end of a long day!

So, apparently, today is a national holiday -_- so no microfinance office. Even better, we wake up to a huge rainstorm (it’s also apparently the rainy season). But me and Laura and Jamie were starting to get cabin fever and really needed to see some of Accra! We decided to go to a downtown area called Osu and just walk around and find lunch somewhere. As soon as we arrived we came across a store called “Global Mama” which is very similar to Ten Thousand Villages, except it just operates in Africa. Women with a handicraft sell their products to Global Mama for a fair price, and then Global Mama sells it on. The store was beautiful, with all types of handmade fabrics and beaded jewelry. I couldn’t resist some handmade soap because they just smelled so good.

Afterwards we got lost trying to find a pizza place and ended up back at Global Mama’s where there was a Mexican place right next door. The restaurant was really nice, with freezing air conditioning, and a clean, fancy bathroom (can you tell how much I am appreciating first world things right now?) I also got a bottled coke made with sugar cane!

We had no idea what to do after lunch. Accra is a city of 2 million, but it’s not like a typical city – there doesn’t seem to be a “center” or “downtown” and everything is flat and spread out. So we attempted to go do some sightseeing. Fate would have it otherwise – our cab driver decided to take us to the beach, lol. The beach was kind of crazy… not relaxing like the beaches back home at all. There were just so many vendors trying to sell us things! A really strange assortment of things too… popcorn, watches, mangos, temporary tattoos, artwork, and even puppies – yes real puppies.

This man was making AMAZING sand sculptures with a little chisel.

This rastafarian dude seriously wouldn’t leave us alone with his canvas art - it was beautiful though, and I wound up buying a rectangular scape of women dressed in beautiful colored fabric carrying baskets.

These guys were very talented and very ridiculous. They were acrobats/entertainers, but they got a little dirty near the end of the show, so we kind of just looked away - must have been part of the show, but we didn’t appreciate it at all!