Tuesday, October 11

I was at the office til after 5 this evening working on the schedule for the
natural medicine school. At first I thought it would be pretty
straightforward, but getting everything slotted properly into the timetable
is actually a bit tricky.

On the way home, I passed a pharmacy that had a sign in the window that said
�It is better to buy medicine from a shop than from a moving vehicle�. I
suppose that is pretty good advice.

I got back home and lo and behold, we have electricity! And I�ve been here
over an hour and we still have it! Unfortunately, it�s all prepaid so we
will probably run out of units in the next week or so. Then it�s back to the
power company to buy more.

A lot of things here are prepaid. It�s actually fairly ingenious and a good
example of how commerce will find a way to thrive. Because almost no one has
credit history, it would be impossible to have accounts on credit for things
like cellphones and electricity. So everything is prepaid. You even prepay
at the gas station. You give the attendant however much you want to pay and
he programs that into the machine and then it stops automatically. There are
two reasons for this. One is that people wouldn�t pay if it wasn�t like this
(according to Dr. Addae). The other is that it would be pretty difficult to
make change when gas costs 7111 cedis a litre. Imagine trying to pay for
10.45 litres.

Today I saw a sign for a doctor (I think). On it was a cartoon of a pregnant
woman with a plumber�s butt and a doctor standing behind her. Except her
belly was so big it was touching the floor. And the doctor was wielding a
hammer like he was about to hit her in the head. I am going to try and get a
picture of it.

Speaking of pictures, I think I have a way to get them up on this site. I�m
going to take my computer to the internet caf� and then I�ll probably be
able to. That should be Friday or Saturday at the latest. Keep checking.

I�ll end with a story about the laundry situation here. It�s all done by
hand. This means that my whites are turning blue. And for some strange
reason, my towel smells way worse today than it did before it was washed! Oh
well, I didn�t exactly bring my finest evening wear over here.