KMJ travels

It seems to be getting muggier each day - but they had crepes at breakfast this morning, so who cares!  At 9:00am we met with Larry from GAIN (Global Alliance for Improved Nutrition), one of IHSD’s grantees, and his colleagues Rosanna & Pane, who would be taking us over to a flour mill in Tema where they fortify the flour various vitamins and minerals.  Rosanna rode in my van and she was fascinating to talk to.  She grew up west of here in Cape Coast (where I’ll be going on Sunday) but has lived in Accra for over 20 years.  She also spent time in the US while her husband was in grad school at Purdue.  Here are three main things that intrigued me from our conversation:

 1)  Ghana has reached 100% participation by the flour mills in fortifying their flour in just a year.  Up next is cooking oil.

2) When Ghana gained their independence 50 years ago, they then held the Miss Ghana pageant.  The winner was a fat woman, because in their eyes, being fat is a good thing - it means your husband is taking care of you.

3) Modernization is taking the same toll on many of their youth as it is ours - she says traffic is so bad because everyone drives their kids to school, and then the kids are not healthy because they spending all thier time on computers and are not walking to school anymore.

adding onto to point #3, as we drove from Accra to Tema we passed miles of new developments building unbelieveably large new homes.  I’m talking Samammish Plateau size or larger, hundreds of them.  Many are predicting Ghana to have an oil boom in the next few years, so I’m assuming part of this is those folks on the inside of that.  But, they have got to get some infrastructure - they cannot build that many houses without any roads.  From the flour mill back to our next site in Accra is 12.5 miles - we have to build in an hour of transportation time for it.

Tema is very industrial - it’s a port city with lots of factories, so overstuffed transportation trucks were parked and driving everywhere.  The Irani brothers flour mill consisted of three different mills, along with a packaging plant.  We got to tour past the silos and into the sifting rooms and packing rooms.  I loved it!  My favorite part of Sesame street was always when they went inside the crayon factory or coke factory. 

From Tema we trekked back to Accra, grabing lunch at the Golden Tulip Hotel before our meeting at the Ghana College of Physicians and Surgeons where we will be holding a roundtable with several of our local grantees.  This is a brand new building that just opened in December, so the staff is very proud of it and happy to be hosting us.

Next stop after that was the Noguchi Institute of Medical research at the University of Ghana, where we will tour some of their labs and meet with some of their scientists who have work going on many infectious disease projects.  This will be one of the sites we visit with the Japanese Delegation, as it is a building donated by the Japanese goverment.

Driving all over Accra you encounter street vendors selling things alongside the road, especially at busy intersections.  This afternoon we encoutered an especially vibrant selling area where you could literally get anything from water and fruit to car seat covers, chairs, jewelry, towels and maps.  It was crazy!  Rick commented it was better than the home shopping network.

Finally for dinner tonight we went to Captain Hooks, where they bring you your bill in a mini treasure chest.  They had fresh lobster on the menu in various forms, so we all got that cooked in some way except Tebogo who got beef.  My pasta with lobster was great and then Shelby & I shared crepes with ice-cream and choclate sauce for dessert.  MMM, crepes for breakfast and dessert - a good day.