Right now most of the girls were out on "assignment", i.e. working in their trade that they have been learning while attending/living at BOPA. So, Shari & Forrest only got to see a fraction of what Dora gives to these girls. Remember, BOPA ("the rock") is an all girls school founded by Dora to teach girls skills, i.e. sewing, fabric printing & fabric dying, catering (professional cooking), and acadmics. Dora is a minister and in the past has lived in Western Europe.
Ghana is experiencing signifcant inflation right now across just about every sector of their economy. We learned from Dora first hand just how hard it is for BOPA to function in this environment. All of her costs have been rising multiples in the past year. Even though Dora is self sufficent when it comes to water, i.e. BOPA has a huge rain water collection system AND a LWW system, the other expenses of running this school are rising, i.e. electricity, propane, consumables, etc. Dora has had to reduce the number of students BOPA can support over the past year because of the inflation.
BOPA has also seen pressure in BOPA's retail business. For years BOPA has been able to take the fabrics, dresses, etc. that the students make and sell those items in the marketplace. However, today that business has almost gone away due to cheaper Chinese imports. The one part of Dora's business that is doing OK is the catering business where the girls are able to prepare food for events.
Nevertheless, Dora remains strong and is constantly looking for ways to support BOPA. We had a fruit drink that a local bottler in Nsawam makes whereby every bottle of fruit drink sold, BOPA will get a few pennies. It's pretty good - all natural no preservatives.
As you may remember from last year, Dora's dream is to move to a new facility outside of Nsawam. She already has a head start on it - she had 14 hectars (you do the conversion) donated to her and some cash that she used to build a pretty good size building. The buildng still needs a roof. As one would expect, this has not stopped Dora. BOPA has already started using the land to plant fruits and vegetables - some of which we had for lunch. Dora moves forward - doesn't really know how to live in the past I think.
We left Dora in Nsawam and headed to the outskirts of Accra to the Presbyterian Boys School at Lagon.
Presec-Lagon as it's known is a pretty good size school for boys. We wanted to visit Presec because it has been on the lsit for a potential LWW system for some time. The headmaster at Presec is a man by the name of Kwami. Another very optimistic Ghanian.
The good knews is that Presec has a couple of bore holes that offer plentiful water for the students to use for washing, etc. The bad news is that out of the ground it is not suffcient for drinking. So when we got to the bore hole site, i.e. filing station there were 20 boys lined up with buckets fetching their water. We were at Presec for about 90 minutes and I don't think I ever saw less than 5 boys drawing water at any time.
Jim & Forrest tested the water and made some notes. We'll see. The number of students and the quality of the water out of the bore hole may make Presec a challenging decision for a LWW system.
Jim & "company" testing the water.
After Presec we made our way through traffic into Accra listening to Germany play France in the World Cup.
And speaking of the World Cup - Ghana's national legislature has gotten involved and opened an offical inquiry to understand why Ghana did not make it out of pool play int he World Cup. Seems they spent a lot of money for the team and expected a championship...
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