In Search of Shea Butter

Thursday, July 16th.

Back to the Polytechnic for 8:30. Pascale and Obed took turns talking about professional skills, classroom management and progressive discipline. I talked to them about our fundraiser and our visit to the school that helped to put the needs of the Ghana schools and teachers in perspective for us and told them I worried about the future of all these children. But I told them that they are the future for their students. We had them fill out a survey for GNAT and another one for CTF because tomorrow the timetable has been changed again and we won't have time to do it then. Ernest left before lunch to fly to Accra to interview for Thomas Baafi's job. We ate lunch again in that room. Again it was fish, salad and a bit of fruit. The afternoon program was delivered by GNAT and we were taken by Eric and two Nkabom participants to a local market to buy some raw shea butter that the women on project wanted to buy. We were led into an amazing, congested, busy, colourful, noisy, smelly maze of stalls and small stands. We saw all manner of food, from grains, seeds, nuts, vegetables, etc. We also saw two stalls of voodoo stuff consisting of all manner of animal parts, from skulls, to horns, hair, tails, etc. After that we went to a local small tourist market where some people bought some beads and the like. We headed back to the room to rest and get ready for the co-tutor night.

Diane and I went down to the lobby and asked for our hotel bill. They calculated it while we went and had dinner. We went to eat at 8:00 with the three co-tutors from the Nkabom project. Eric ate with us too. The hotel bill turned out to be a lot more that we were budgeted for. Our allotment was $120 Canadian per room per night. They were charging us $190! $70 more per night for four rooms for seven days would have eaten up half of our budget in just one week! We did not pay and went back for a drink and to discuss what we should do before bed.