Time seems to fly when you spend majority of your time in a crusty seat in an over stuffed 15 seater van puffing away at top speed of 45 miles per hour. I even used the odometer feature on Snapchat when it came to a point we were moving considerably faster then normal on a stretch of highway and we reached all the way up to a cruising 57 miles per hour!
Having just been in the country for a week, I have already seen a lot. Jude, my trusty sidekick and brother, and I have slept in 3 regions and had daily meetings with people trying to assess the current position of Yenso Solar. We laid a good foundation when Cole and I came the first time but there were a lot of bugs in the original model. Now I have to sort out what worked and didn't work and set up new ways of testing new models. I definitely have my work cut out for me.
Some things didn't work out so well the first time around, mainly just the process of collecting credit payments. It is clear that literally everyone wants the lamp. It is the best. Perfect, even. All except that it is just too expensive for people here to buy flat out. To combat that, we attempted to offer a two-month credit plan; a third of the price as a down payment and the rest in two-month increments. In theory it should work. Our full time employees would make the deals and follow up monthly. But this is Africa. Nothing is ever that easy.
That includes life outside of business. When Jude and I were on our way to his house, he warned me that “there was a certain fault with the washroom in the house.” I come to find out that that “certain fault” was a nice way of saying that there wasn't one. So the combination of newly being reintroduced to the Ghana cuisine plus no place to relieve oneself has brought about its own sort of adventure. I will spare you the details but next time you are on your knees at night, thank your Heavenly Father for indoor plumbing. It’s a modern miracle.
Other than meetings, the week has been spent chasing down credit payers to hold to their end of their contracts. Haven't been too successful yet, but we are still faithful. Even so, I am planning on leaving Takoradi to go work closely with Brigham Johnson in Twifo Praso on some other ideas that should help Yenso grow. Brigham is the son of the late Billy Johnson who played a major part in bringing the church to Ghana and for converting nearly thousands of people. He later became the first Patriarch in Ghana and is somewhat of a beloved legend. The legend lives on through his son and I have the honor of working and learning from him.
A perk to living at Jude’s house, however, is that I actually get to sleep in a bed by myself, which seems to rarely be the case when I come back to Ghana. This has given me the chance to do things that I have always put off doing. I have time now to sit and think and expand on ideas without added stresses of school and life. I am just a guy trying to change the world. One crazy adventure at a time.
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