Nothing to report. I worked on a paper until I got stuck for
lack of information. Naturally I turned to Google for help, only to find out
that I cannot connect to the internet. Rats!
I decided to take a break and go to the mall to shop for a
couple of thank you presents for my gracious hosts here. I have no idea what
would be a good present for Auntie Abigail and Claudia, and didn’t get a lot of
great ideas after wandering through the mall. Maybe a board game?
I thought about catching a movie while I was at the mall,
but Wonder Woman was not starting until 5 pm and I was not ready to wait for
four hours. Maybe tomorrow.
Back in my room I found I still cannot connect to the
internet. Curses! Fortunately I have a TV, so at least I can entertain myself
with sports, music videos, or the news (guess what I chose). One of the news
items referred to the cacao industry, which is facing a tough year ahead.
First, the price per ton has fallen from US$ 3,500 to as low as US$ 2,000. The
government is offering a subsidized price to the farmers of US$ 2,900, which
should help, but is not quite what the farmers were expecting. Did you know
that 75% of the cacao in the world is farmed in Africa ,
but the continent receives only 2% of the earnings? Most of the money is made
by the chocolatiers. Clearly what Ghana needs to do is to process the
cocoa beans themselves. In fact, there is one Ghanaian brand of chocolate; I
have bought a couple of bars and it is not bad at all. I hope they eventually
get to export the finished product. I also learned that cacao is a vine, and
that in plantations the vines are kept off the ground by supporting them with
poles. The cacao pod grows directly attached to the vine, like if it were a
wart. I further learned that the farmers are asking for pesticides to fight
some sort of caterpillar that likes to chew on the pods.
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