This week has been a pretty relaxing week as compared to my last week. We started the weekend prior to this week with a nice mini-vacation at the Wli Falls in the Volta Region. Before our mini-vaca though I headed to Accra early to meet with the Sea-Freight Pineapple Exporters Group of Ghana to discuss their business model and how they are assisting in building exporting capacity. This meeting was very productive, although the place was very hard to find. Then we went up north to the Wli falls which were one of the most beautiful places I've been in the world. After a 2 hour hike vertically up a mountain we emerged in a secluded area that had the most beautiful waterfall and fresh water reservoir. The weekend ended all too quickly and it was back to research. During this week I met with more farmers who had business relations with the Brazilian business Pinora. The people all had very good things to say about Pinora, but not the same about the processing plants that were in Ghana. Pinora exports different citruses for the farmers and deals with the production aspect, as well as pick up and transport. The production facilities would deal with the pickup and transport, just as Pinora, but were not consistent and tended to leave the farmers with goods that would spoil. The main concern of these farmers was funding for increasing output. They were not able to hire help for weeding or picking because they had no micro-financing options.
Everything has begun to come together in my research and my outlook is appearing a lot brighter than even just a week ago. As a reward to ourselves for another productive week, we visited Kakum National Park and participated in a canopy walk. Although I am afraid of heights, the experience was amazing and something I would do again. All of the smells here are unique and fresh, something I don't get much of at home. I continue to take in every experience possible because I don't know when I'll be back to this beautiful place. Rather than letting this feeling take away from the short time I have left here, I will continue to do as I have and live up this experience as much as possible.
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