Hi from Ghana: Saturday morning 3/27

I woke up early today (3:45 AM), most likely because the time difference has finally overwhelmed the jet lag and heat exhaustion! It is very warm here and I am soaked with perspiration most of the day. Well, it comes with the territory and I am used to it. If I manage to add any photos to the blog later on, though, you will know why we look something less than spiffy should we happen to appear in any of them!

It has been a busy week. Susan Kraeger and I have been doing our "due diligence" by examining the ledger cards of clients, receipts for the latrine construction, etc. and everything is in good order. We have also toured the latrines (unannounced), stall by stall and found them clean. There is some deterioration of one wall--the privacy wall--due to settling of the ground beneath it. Mike has been in touch with the mason and it will be repaired. Otherwise things are in good shape there. We visited the two wells in Doblo Gonno and went over the mechanization of the one at the school with the headmaster and met the matron of the school who will be "chief of the works" well-wise. The school is looking forward to managing the well and also to the rainwater catchment improvements. The other well in the village is steadily producing good quality water and we stopped in for a drink and a chat with a woman filling her buckets there.

Susan brought some grammar school books in basic arithmetic to help Rita improve her skills. Although Rita is nervous, she and Susan have a good rapport. Susan is a good and patient teacher and Rita's grasp of some basics has improved dramatically in just a few days. Rita is delighted to have a computer of her own atop her desk (thanks, Sandy, for the donation). Once we have a better handle on her level of knowledge, we will send her some arithmetic programs on CDs to run in our absence to further improve her skills in basic math. Our hope is that Rita would oneday become sufficiently competent to teach other women the basics. Imagine how terrifying it must be to conduct even very simple buying and selling without any confidence in your own arithmetic!!! You are at the mercy of the honesty of the people with whom you deal. But, first things first. Rita must get up to speed.....

We are under a rationing of electrical power here which means that one day you have it, one day you don't as the supply is shared out over all of Ghana. Apparently there is some major repair of cables under way and this has cut the usual supply (of itself inadequate) in half. The small hotel where we stay has a generator which can power some lights and the ceiling fan, so we are not much inconvenienced. In the office, however, we try to make sure that we get all we need to get done, done when we have power. It is problematic to keep the laptops charged and to get things printed out.

Internet access remains spotty. That in combination with the power situation may mean fewer posts to the blog. I will do the best I can, however.