Eileen's Birthday Party

Tonight I was lucky enough to attend a birthday party for a Ghanaian friend of the Dutch guy, Joe. As I mentioned in a previous post he works with insurance negotiation for a hospital but he is also involved in a non-profit that sends pharmacist students from the Netherlands to Ghana to complete an internship. I met two Dutch girls that are finishing up their 8 week internship and I got a few tips on how to get around using Tro-tros. Back to the birthday girl, Eileen turned 30 and her mentor threw her a wonderful birthday celebration. She is a pharmacist and I can tell by the words shared by her friends a family a very caring and loving woman. We had a wonderful dinner with traditional Ghanaian foods. I love the food here, but once in a while the spice gets to me. I’ll come back ready to eat fire! It was a fun and enjoyable night and I met some great people that I hope to build a friendship with.

One side note about why I think things work a bit differently in Ghana versus the developed world. Interest rates hover around 25% and the Cedi (money) is somewhat stable, but not like the dollar. This makes it very unwise to loan or borrow money in Ghana, so this forces people to build and collect things for a house piece by piece when money is available. It is common to take years to build an office building or homes. Often families will live in a half-finished home that is huge even in our standards waiting to make enough money to finish or even furnish the rooms. This makes me realize that we should be happy that we have a functioning financial and monetary system even though it has its faults as well. At least we can get a mortgage or a loan to buy a car with a reasonable interest rate and know that the dollar will remain fairly stable. In my opinion this is one reason why developed nations are where we are and why developing countries still struggle to improve their daily lives.