 |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Here's a newspaper article I picked up from http://www.thestatesmanonline.com/pages/news_detail.php?newsid=3510§ion=1. The Statesman is a Ghanaian newspaper. We haven't heard much from Africa, but I'd like people to know that apparantly everybody didn't starve to death there yet. I cut out a few lines, but the remaining text is original.
"There is a saying that necessity is the mother of all inventions, and Ghanaians struggling with the constant lights-out are certainly putting this into practice, with manpower appliances increasingly taking the place of electrical-powered goods. The Saturday Statesman visited some places in Accra such as corn mill shops, clothing making shops, vulcaniser shops to find out the state of business in the current energy crisis. Innovation, and a return to the electricity-free methods of our forefathers, is how many Ghanaians are making ends meet. Isaac Anoh, a resident of Awoshie and a corn miller, says he has been doing this job for four years now and uses the electrical corn mill machine. It helps him do the work early and quick, but because of the energy crisis he has taken to the use of the man power machine. "When the light goes off I use the manpower machine and it helps us a lot because it makes us serve our customers. It is difficult using the man power machine because one has to peddle for so long before it starts to operate.
“When I use the electrical machine I charge ¢4,000 for an “olonka” but when it is man power I charge ¢5,000. My customers do not complain when prices are being charged because they think electricity is not reliable and they need to get their food prepared. “The kenkey sellers and the “koko” sellers prefer this method to that of the electrical machine since that can make them prepare their food for profit,” he added.
The manpower machine used to be standard for corn millers across Ghana, but with the advent of the electrical machine, it has largely been relegated to back cupboards. Now, it is making a resurgence: “There is a saying that “sankofa” is not bad so if Ghanaians have gone back to their roots there is nothing wrong,” says Anoh. However, the energy crisis is taking a toll on his business as it is businesses throughout the country, and he is eager to see it come to an end. “We are pleading with authorities to solve this problem because there are other machines we cannot use with man power, like the tomatoes machine,” he said. “Business is not really good compared to when there was electricity and moreover we are made to pay taxes and other bills to Government.”
Martha Asante, a seamstress, explained that she reverts to using a box iron whenever the lights go off, but the situation is not ideal: “It is difficult using it compared to the electrical iron because with the box iron you need to fan the charcoal or fire before you can use it to iron the fabrics,” she said.
“But it does help a lot and customers sometimes prefer this because they need their dresses for occasions. Business is not as good as before. The charcoal sometimes stains the fabric which destroys the design of the dress. Also charcoal is very expensive and difficult for making fire,” she added. Kwabena Obeng, a vulcaniser, also expressed resentment at the lights out. “I have to stop using electricity for my work sometimes because of the load shedding exercise, but I use man power to pump the car tyres for my customers since I do not want to lose them,” he added."
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
I got my bicycle today. When I bought it, about a month ago, the shopkeeper told me to expect some weeks for it to be delivered as the bike shop had a waiting list. But apparantly they have been boosting production. I’m not using the bike a lot yet though. I’m carpooling with a colleague. I’m just happy to be prepared for when things might get even worse. The governement has decided to reclaim the Markerwaard (‘Marken Polder’), which is currently a lake. Reclamation of this polder has started in the nineteenseventies, but was later cancelled due to changing priorities. The land was no longer needed for agriculture as there was considerable overproduction of agricultural products in Europe. But now the government wants to produce more food. We are importing way too much of it. We also lack the land to grow biofuels. So now they have revived this project. They will keep use of oilproducts to a minimum; this means: thousands of jobs will be created for people who will be doing hard manual labor. This sounds like the 1930’s again (when they started the project by building a large dike). Belgium has already protested. They say we should better put our effort in the missing piece of the “Iron rine”, a railroad from Belgium to Germany, through the Netherlands. Our governments have promised to build it decades ago, but it’s still not there. On the German side there have been some protests about other things: apparantly our Royal Dutch Shell has been making sure we have plenty of gasoline and diesel in the area I live: near the harbour of Rottardam with Europe’s largest refinery and The Hague with the Shell HQ. Shell personnel need the fuel to get to work. I haven’t experienced much of the fuel shortages, but aparantly things are different in Germany. And they blame us for keeping it for ourselves. Ah well, they can ride on the thousands of bicycles, they stole during ‘the war’ (WWII). I read a story of a guy who had to barbecue because of power failures. I immediately decided to buy an extra can of LPG for my camping gas set. Electric cooking doesn’t work if electricity fails. I also bought a 2nd hand natural gas cooking set. Only 10 km away and for very little money. I won’t need to eat raw if power fails. I didn’t buy a house yet. I’m already spending more money than I used to. As housing prices seem to be going down, it seems better to just wait a while and buy a house as it hits the bottom. Things can get worse. I am reminded of that regularly. There’s too many old people living around here (and working in our garden), who keep reminding of how things are just somewhat inconvinient now. Back in ‘the war’ things were a lot worse. A lot.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Today I’m home early. I have a caffeine addiction. And the company I work ran out of coffee. And the shop was out of coffee too. I’m feeling feverish and my head is aching. I took the rest of the day off and went home, taking the colleague I carpool with, with me. How can they expect me to work without coffee? The boss’d better have a new stock tomorrow or else I’ll leave home early again. A colleague of mine sold her motorbike. She’s been complaining about her financial situation for months now and decided to give up here only true love: her BMW motorbike. It was only a few months old (apparantly she bought a toy she could not afford). She sold it to a guy in a Porsche. So even the guys with money have to save money and drive a motorbike to work, rather than their fast sports car. Being home early I went to work a bit on our land and collected some ‘vegetables’ from the roadsides. I claim it’s for my rabbit. (Yeah right, I had one as a child. It survived till christmas.) Like I’m going to explain people what they can eat and what not. We have no problems getting vegetables from the stores though, but it’s just a good feeling to be more self-sufficient. There’s still plenty of food in the stores and sold by local farmers, even though people from nearby cities are also finding their way here to buy cheaper vegetables. Meat is a different story. Prices have gone up a lot. My father has begun fishing with worms we dig up from the roadside (never use the worms from your garden). Last night we ate some bony fish. We are not the only ones fishing here. There was plenty of fish in the water adjacent to our house, but I fear that they will get harder to catch in the future. Three days ago a duck was curious enough to eat my fathers worm and swallowed the fishhook. The duck tasted pretty good. :) Right now ducks have disappeared. We are probably not the only people who try to catch them. There are also a lot of papers hanging in public places from people who have lost their cats. I think someone has had a lot of free meat lately. I noticed there are no cats out on the street any more. People with cats don’t let them wander out free any more. With housing prices down, I’m thinking about buying my own house, close to work. It’s not that I want to move out of house, but this is just an opportunity too good to be true. I can afford it, but do I want it? Some good news for our village: as the touring car companies are facing a stop on holiday bookings, the touring cars are now used for public transport. There now is another bus line connecting our village to nearby cities. It’s a bit more expensive than the normal bus line, but since the normal bus lines can’t handle all the customers, there are plenty of people willing to pay a bit more for a bus they can actually sit in.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
With diesel prices continuing to rise and ever decreasing availability I decided to have my car retrofitted to run on dual fuel CNG/diesel rather than pure diesel. The retrofit isn’t cheap, but since we are supplying the parts, I can get them at cost price. And I don’t have to wait in line to get the retrofit done. With the dual fuel I need one liter for every 40 km (and some CNG, which I can get at the office for free – when there is nobody else using the slow-filler – or for € 0,99 / kg at the pump, 3 km away). A lot of colleagues turned to CNG, so filling at the office isn’t realy working well. The company cars go first. At the CNG station there is often a line of people waiting to get their cars filled. And you are lucky to get it filled for 80% as the pump is not designed to be so popular. We are planning to build another station nearby, but that might take months to complete. We still need all the official paperwork and parts might take a while to get. I started carpooling with a colleague. I was using my bicycle, but the whether hasn’t been too well lately and my colleague has to get to work anyway, so why bother. She uses gasoline, while I use diesel, so we can use whatever is most available. We keep are keeping score though. At the moment we both have enough juice to keep going. We got the agreement for the land lease signed early this week. All the neighbors have been busy getting the weeds out and getting some vegetables planted. The shops still have plenty of vegetables, but many goods are getting more and more expensive. The meat prices are going up fast. Many farmers had problems buying food for their animals (cattle food is largely imported here from all over the world). Many decided to raise less animals. This is being felt by the meat industry. The cooling houses are all speculating on scarcity and high prices even though they still have months worth of meat stored. Some girl posted a video on the wwo-website. She’s stranded about 10 km from here. Apparantly she can’t get back to the US as the airline went bankrupt. I sent her a msg. No response yet. I read another message about immigrants leaving for home from the UK. There is no need for immigrants to do the dirty work now. The English decided they have plenty of people now half the factories are closing down. The French are not very eager to let all those people in, despite the fact that anyone should be able to travel freely through Europe. I hope they don’t all decide to come here. There are no jobs here now either. There is a ferry to England about 10 km from here. We are on the road from England to Poland and beyond. I'm not sure the ferry is going though.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Things got a bit nasty this week. Several petrol stations have temporarily run out of gas and/or diesel. I heard LPG also seems to have dissappeared from the market. In the Netherlands LPG is produced as a refinery by-product. Apparantly the refineries are not refining… Light I heard about electricity cuts in many developing nations (India, Africa, US) and several eastern European nations. I have loads of candles in stock. We always get a lot of them at christmas, and use up only one or two candles. I bought an extra lighter. Water I filled my bathtub with water in case the water supply stops (they work with electrical pumps) and have a few buckets with water outside for watering the plants. I also bought a water filter (with active coal) from the pet shop, just to have something in case we run into serious trouble with the water supply. You can do without food for a few days, but not without water.
Food
I'm still overweight. That's also a way to store food. And I have a room filled with canned food. I am not eating canned food though. There is plenty of fresh food coming in from local farmers at the shop. And it's quite affordable. There's not a great variety in choice of it though.
Transport I use my bicycle, except when the whether is really bad. I do make sure my car stays filled up with diesel. I scout the petrol stations on my bicycle before driving there to fill my car up. I don’t do social visits any more. I don’t have time for that either. Business The CNG business is going stronger than ever. We obtained some local production rights for parts and have started production using a local manufacturer. Aparantly he had plenty of available machining time. We took over part of the business of one of our competitors that went bankrupt. We bought much of their goods inventory and their customer administration. Their customers are already finding us. The phone appears to never stop ringing. We hired some extra personnel (including someone for our financial department, to make sure we actually get paid) and a new office location, across the street with a lot more storage space. It has been empty for months now, but with several businesses closing down, the owner decided to hire it to us ‘for a special price’. We had to pay a month in advance, but that's no problem for us yet.
Advance payment are getting more and more common now some businesses have started to collapse. Credit insurances have gotten quite expensive. We offer customers 5% discount if they pay in advance.
We had to lay of most of our personnel in our US office. We are hardly selling anything there. The US economy is looking grim. Current Mood:  tired
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small}
gerben1974's journal
Previous
anxious