Today is Independence Day in Ghana. It is a big deal with lots of parades and children marching and traffic jams. Banks are closed but the funny thing is that everything else is open.
I had a meeting with Emmanuel this afternoon and he is having problems with the quality of the trees he has gotten for me and we will need to access another mill which we will visit on Monday together. I am pleased that he is concerned to maintain quality. He knows that if the quality is poor on the first order, there won’t be any re-orders. His fan belt broke and he had to call a mechanic with a replacement.
I came home to write emails and then headed up to the car and he was still there but nearly ready to go. My car wouldn’t start, as the battery was flat. It had a very weak battery when I bought it and this was not the first time. It was time for a new one before going to Dunkwa tomorrow, but I had not enough money and banks were closed. The mechanic thought a new battery would be 140 GHC!! Storage batteries, engine oil and hydraulic oil are very expensive here. You can pay up to 10 GHC for a liter of oil at a petrol station. A man I know uses cooking oil instead of hydraulic oil in his excavator. Emmanuel spotted me 160 GHC to get the battery.
When Emmanuel backed out of the driveway we pushed the Carina E to the hilltop and I bump started it. I hated to go all the way to Adum on a low tire, but the Shell station there has battery testing equipment, batteries, air for the tire and petrol for my tank; all of which I needed. When I got there the battery stuff was locked up, the air didn’t work and I got petrol.
A young man rode with me to a battery shop he knew and I waited while they put water into a new lead-acid battery and lightened me by 135 GHC. For air I needed to go to Bekwai roundabout to the vulcanizing shop (tire repair), which I slowly did. They checked and filled all 4 tires and the spare for 1.5 GHC. I am accustomed to paying 20 pesewas for air, but here they wanted 30 so he made the best of it by adding a few pounds to every tire. Pretty sneaky I thought. Everything takes longer than you think, and costs more than you thought. By the time I had gone to the Internet and returned home, Marlayne was starting to worry about me as I had been almost 3 hours to travel 2 K to the internet and get petrol for tomorrow. Such is life for adventurers. J
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