Fish Farming Hold Pattern

From our original set of projects, we had intended to start development of a fish farm out by the Volta region in eastern Ghana. For this venture, we found a wonderful partner in Evans Tasiame, whose intentions directly mirrored ours of providing assistance to struggling areas at little or no cost.
Evans is a local Ghanaian [...]

An Oasis of Peace

After three straight weeks of work and brutal travel, I was really looking forward to Saturday. Not because we had the day off (those do not exist for us out in the field) but because we knew it would be a fun day of work.
The morning came quicker than expected and the early dawn was [...]

Emergency Care

A three year-old girl convulses on the table in a pool of her own saliva. Her eyes are rolled back into her head and she has lost control of her breathing, which now comes in short gasps. Her father sweats as he rubs her head gently, his face a combination of fear and hope. There [...]

Up Your Volta Region

The captain of Yapei Queen (in his underpants).
Travelling the length of the worlds largest man made lake on a German ferry used to transport yams was always going to be an adventure. En route to the Saboba Medical Centre (SMC) in the far north of Ghana, we prepped ourselves early Monday morning for our epic [...]

Golden Slums

The street children of the Accra slums.
250 Street Children.
13 Volunteers.
1 epic day.
Amongst many of Eric’s programs throughout the greater Accra region, a hallmark tradition for the past 5 years has been his street child feeding programme. The inner slums of Accra are a windy, chaotic, environment that lack the most basic of human provisions (shelter, [...]

For Everything Else there’s MasterCard

One 500mL sachet of drinking water: $0.05
One freshly baked baguette: $0.50
One tro-tro (shared taxi) into town: $0.30
Five hours, six bank branches, three information desks (with incorrect information), two credit cards, one exceeded ATM limit, and an out-of-service bank wire: Priceless.
For everything else there’s MasterCard. Too bad it’s not accepted anywhere in Africa.

Ghana, like the rest [...]

Hand Woven Shirts

Our names have spread quickly through the Accra community. People recognize us on the street, call out our names, and seemingly everyone runs their own NGO. One of such small entrepreneurs is Rahman-Abdul. He lives in a small shack with his grandmother and five other family members. Unemployed, he sits and knits women’s dresses. These [...]

Economies of an African Scale

Having an academic background of Economics and Finance, my approach to business are often occupied by such concepts as Economies of Scale, vertical integration, efficient equity markets, and other such topics. Coming to Ghana to apply these concepts on small scale projects is about as useful as expecting service from a Delta Airlines staff member [...]

The Slum

Within minutes of meeting Eric it becomes clear that he is a man ruled by passion. As he talks about the motivations behind the founding of ‘Sovereign Global Mission’ he bangs his fists on the table, and talks at us with fire in his eyes. He has worked as a teacher for six years and [...]

Field of Rakes

The first official expedition of GO began with a whimper of delays caused by massive security lines and really bad weather that resulted in a missed flight to Accra. Arriving to JFK 2 hours after our Accra leg departed due to a severe thunderstorm, Kyle and I were stranded in JFK along with 1000s of [...]