African Idol

No way!!! American Idol mania is everywhere. Surely Simon Cowell is behind all this. Same format (roughly), same branding. They even have a Paula Abdul -- no wait, no one can rival Paula. This picture is one of the finalists (though she cracked on a high note and will likely perish after this round).

Snails anyone?

On the way home from the Cape Coast this young man was selling snails about the size of baseballs. We passed.

The Deer Hunt - more dancing!

The Ghaniains loved to dance!

The Cape Coast

After the Deer Hunt we went to a castle in the town of Cape Coast. It was here that slaves were brought and distributed to interested traders from the Americas, Brazil, and Europe. It was moving. Next to the castle was the port where all the fishermen departed from every morning after a prayer (see picture).

The Deer Hunt - Video

The Deer Hunt - the deer is captured!

A deer is captured by one of the tribes and paraded into the square. They will march in circles with the deer on their shoulders for more than an hour, present the dear to the town king, and later the President of Ghana.

The Deer Hunt - the party begins

Today was amazing!!! We went to the town of Wenebba to witness one of the largest and most unique festivals in Ghana. It's called (a.k.a. The Deer Hunt). Two tribes go our into the bush at sunrise and the first one to catch a BARE HANDED and returns to the town meeting square is the winner. We started our drive from the hotel at 5:30am to make sure we were there for the catch. Before the catch, while the tribes are in the bush looking for a deer, the rest of the town is partying and dressing up as tribes men and women themselves. Here is a picture of one partying tribe in yellow paint.

Opportunity International -Ghana

On Friday, May 2nd we visited Opportunity International, a very large microfinance institution with 60,000 borrowers with an outstanding loan balance of $20 million. It was a quick visit with the CEO and CFO but they were very impressed with the MicroPlace model and agreed to have us come back later in the week to meet with borrowers and take videos. We are hoping for an exciting day with them.

The kids of TuTu

While Tom and Micki were creating our documentary I went outside of the small hut to try and quiet the children to limit the background noise on our video. They actually became nosier when they realized when I took a picture they could instantly see themselves on the camera screen. So, I walked much further away and the crowd of kids grew bigger. This picture is of the "core" group that I started with.

APED's reach

After an amazing day meeting APED's clients we went back to the head office to say "Thank you" to Spencer the Executive Director. APED has an outstanding loan portfolio of $2 million spread amongst 18,000 borrowers in Ghana. Their smallest loans are as little as $5 and larger loans are around $3000. Here you see the whiteboard APED uses to track their outstanding loans in the various regions they operate. (They also have a software called eMerge that they use to track down to the individual borrower).

The TuTu Market

After visiting the borrower group we went to the market where many of APED's client sell their goods. For such a small town, I thought the TuTu market was quite bustling. Here you see a woman buying some kind of fruit.

Gloria Kissueou

In addition to meeting the whole borrower group, we were able to have some individual interviews. Meet Gloria Kissueou. When we asked for volunteers to be interviewed her hand was the first go up. Gloria was a very proud and impressive woman. She makes pastries to sell at the market. She's married and has 7 kids. Her first loan was $7 and her current loan is $120. Gloria said that what the loan has enabled her to do is grow her business enough to generate income to send all 7 kids to school and even buy them their school books.

Association of Progressive Entrepreneurs in Development

Day Two: We had an amazing visit to the Association of Progressive Entrepreneurs in Development, otherwise known as APED (pronounced Opp Ed). After speaking with the Executive Director, Spencer Badu, they agreed to take on us on a "field trip" to visit a borrower group in the small town of TuTu (outside of Accra).

Accra! (pronounced Ah Crah with accent on the Crah)

Our plane landed to a very loud applause. There were no difficulties with the flight but I assume that it’s custom to celebrate a successful touchdown.

Just as we stepped off the plane we felt it – hot and humid! We looked up and saw a giant word painted on the side of the airport saying “Akwaaba” which means “Welcome.”

Getting from the airport was pretty uneventful although like my experience in many airports around the world you don’t know who to trust for transportation. After negotiating a bit we ended up agreeing to 10 Cedis (pronounced “see dees”) which is the equivalent to $10 for what seemed like a legitimate cab driver.

He got us to our hotel safely but it wasn’t without him giving us a lecture about how we should trust people by accepting the price they quote for a cab or any other service (he spoke good English but with his dialect he was hard to follow). Once we reached the hotel Tom went to pay him and asked for a receipt and the driver said “Sure, I will make you a receipt for 14 Cedis.” Tom kicked into negotiating very calmly and then even explained to him why it would be hard for us to trust just anyone off the street. And, unfortunately by reneging on his original offer of 10 Cedis he was contradicting his whole speech to us. (See Tom in the picture as he chatted with the driver for a good 5 minutes after we stopped in front of our hotel).

We checked into the African Regent Hotel. It’s very nice, probably 4-star by U.S. standards (and about $200 per night). We feel safe here and it’s very clean. So, we’re happy.

Our biological clocks were way off, of course. But just as we were asking each other “What should we do today?” our driver, arranged by our Barclays contact, walked in the door to introduce himself. His name is Ebow (pronounced like “elbow” but without the “L”). We could tell right away he was a very nice man and he put as at ease immediately. We chatted for a little while and tried to “synchronize” our cell phones by making sure we could all call or text message each other. It ended up being a funny exercise because each of the four of us (Me, Tom, Micki, and Ebow) found no logic in when text messaging versus phone calls would work. We finally gave up knowing I could call Ebow, I could text Tom and he could text me.

So we set off to Accra downtown with Ebow at the wheel of the Nissan 4-door, 4 wheel drive (kind of like a Nissan Pathfinder). Our only mission for this outing was to kill time for 4 hours before the hotel would allow us to check in. First we went in search of a SIM card to help Micki be able to make phone calls. Success! We bought a SIM card for 25 Cedis and got her phone working quickly. Then we drove down to the beach. The beach water didn’t look too inviting (not sure if it was dirty looking because the rough waves or just plain dirty). We did however take a very cool walk (well, almost a climb) up some really steep steps of a famous Lighthouse. From the Lighthouse we had a great view of Accra.

We drove around for probably another hour just looking at the people, checking out the hotel that we were going to move into in a couple of days, and then we realized we were super hungry. Ebow drove us to a “Food Court” where there was a “Chicken Inn,” and Pizza Inn,” and some other “Inn.” It looked like a run down Kentucky Fried Chicken and Pizza Hut so we asked to try somewhere else. We ended up down at “Frankie’s.” Obviously Frankie’s is a very cool spot. It was very modern and had two big screen TV’s playing MTV Africa (though the video I remember was not be African artists but features Madonna and Jason Timberlake).

We were all nervous about what to order for fear of getting traveler’s sickness. But because Frankie’s had a fairly upscale crowd we opted to go for it. I had a Fish Kebob – it was great but cost 12 Cedis. I really expected that things would be much cheaper here but that isn’t always the case. The waiter brought us a bottled water but as we have quickly learned to do, we checked the seal of the cap on the bottle. This one was faulty so we asked for another just to be safe. So far, so good :)

Arrival in Ghana

Our Journey is Underway!!

We departed from San Francisco bright and early this morning in route to New York’s JFK. It was an uneventful flight, thankfully with in-seat video entertainment. Tom and I (though sitting separately) both chose to watch “No Country for Old Men,” a very uplifting film and a nice way to start our 7am flight.

After a quick one hour layover, we are aboard our Delta flight to Accra (pronounced Ah Crah – accent on the “crah”). We learn as the flight attendants are closing the doors that each of us (myself, Tom, and Micki) get a whole row to ourselves – sweeeeeet! I will be horizontal soon after wash down my Delta Airlines libation, the “Mile-High Mojito.”

Roughly 80% of the people flying on this plane are African and I am guessing Ghanaian. I told Tom, “I think we are underdressed.” Most of the African folks are dressed very stylishly; many of the men are in full business suits and some in full length African gown (I don’t know what they are called). The women are in colorful dresses or cool designer jeans. Meanwhile, Tom and I are dressed in our best Indian Jones khakis with a bland t-shirt (all mosquito-repellant treated of course).

I was just reading “Money” magazine and checking out the various savings account rates of return. National average for six month CD’s only 1.98% annually. Five year CD national average is only 2.77% with the best nationally at 4.3%. MicroPlace rates are looking better and better!!!

We are so excited to be going. Just before we hopped on the plane I got an email from Opportunity Ghana, a very large MFI in Accra that is happy to have us come visit them. So, now we have three scheduled which is really fortunate and we’ll hope that we can spend time meeting borrowers from these MFIs.

Well, time for a nap. The time difference from the east coast is 7 hours ahead. I’m trying to tell my body it’s 11pm (local Ghana time) so I can get on track with the time change as quickly as possible.

Next posting…..live from Ghana!