Our First Visit to West West (another side of life)

I am excited to be working on two different projects, because they are very different. One company is older, the other is a start-up. One needs finance help, the other needs direction for their many ideas. One is in the city center, the other is an hour outside the city near a small village. I definitely feel like I am getting a well-rounded view of the Takoradi area, from the large mansion-like houses to the villages with mud huts.

Today, we went to West West Agro-Processing, which is ~an hour outside of Takoradi (by Nissan pick-up truck, Ananda told us today was the first time he rode in a pick-up truck). We drove on the main road for most of the time, and then another 15 minutes on a side road. I am quite impressed with the roads here. Even today, as we went through villages, they had mostly paved roads. We passed through several villages on the way to West West, with the usual site of women and children on the side of the road carrying anything and everything you can imagine on their heads as they walk.

Reverend Ebo provided us with a lot of information, and we quickly revised the scope to not include any farming assistance. (Their own land’s pepper harvest has been a challenge, but a 30 minute review didn’t yield any helpful insight from our team so we opted to move into the areas where we can help.) We toured the factory, but it wasn’t running because there are no peppers available to process. My chemical engineering background came in a little handy today, as did my experience in sales as we discussed their sales strategy and marketing plans. As before, our threesome proved to be a good team. We had some good ideas, but the lack of cell phone coverage or internet prevented us from doing on-the-spot research so now we’re doing some of that back at our hotel.

The best part of today was our lunch break. There is literally nowhere to eat around West West, so we had the hotel pack us some lunches this morning, After we ate, Lydia joined us for a walk to the village. We walked down a dusty road into a village, passing a palm oil conversion area along the way, and a guy selling some bushmeat he just killed (some forest animal). We chatted a bit with the locals, and the kids followed us (likely that they have never seen white people in their young lives, based on where they live). It was really enjoyable, and Lydia was able to buy us some bananas that we had been wanting (Rosa tasted one yesterday that was green and delicious). I’ll post pics soon, so you can see what village life looks like here in Ghana.

More on West West next week. For now, the focus is on Multiwall and our bank meetings tomorrow. Please wish us luck!