sadly the last two weeks have been a little slower than expected due to a lack of electricity at the mill. the generator for the area was working, but there was a break between the pole and the farmhouse which meant that no work beyond drying could be done.
after several hours of discussion about the illegal activity of the neighbors (they paid off a local electrician to feed their cable directly to the generator) we arrived at a logical resolution.... we would not replicate their illegal behavior and would follow the correct process. calling the electricity company seemed like the right thing to do and i was glad we had agreed on the fastest way to access electricity. somehow between this conclusion and the next steps something was lost. i am pretty sure it was just me who was lost, but i was definitely lost. my rice lady has a daughter who has a fiance (chag gadya) who works for the electricity company. he works in another region and is not allowed to request services for our area or get involved in maintenance matters. for some reason over the course of the the next week he and his co-worker showed up on the farm, measured the area, bought cabling, dug a trench and laid cabling to the generator, and the electricity was back on again. i don't quite understand why this was the resolution, but we seriously spent hours discussing the best way to resolve so i am not opening this up again... the lights work and that's that!
it was a good chance to catch-up on some of the administrative tasks in the office where we went through old records to try and create a complete financial picture of the business. although it is a relatively simple business, there are some complicated activities. particularly complicated is where my auntie has lent money to a farmer over a period of several months, not quite recorded it accurately, and then recovered the loan through rice paddy delivered in several installments also not quite recorded accurately. then there is the fun and games of figuring out who owes what money to who. fortunately the power is in the hands of the rice lady, and she usually gets her way.
while we were up in the rice fields without electricity, it was also a national public holiday for founders day. this gave us a day off and a chance to visit one of the major attractions in the area - the akosombo damn. funnily enough this is the source of most of ghana's electricity. lake volta contains all the water that flows from burkina faso in the north, and then makes its way down to the sea. on it's way down through ghana the water passes through massive turbines that turn and generate electricity. it is an incredibly beautiful spot, and we had a great day. it was just a shame that despite being less than 20 minutes away from the source of electricity for all of ghana, we couldn't get electricity in the field!
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