Ghana Trip Five - Winding Up And Heading Home

I am finished with this trip and am making the long way home. I have gotten to know the major routings one can take going to and returning from Accra. This leg is the Turkish Airlines leg through Istanbul and Chicago. It takes a long time with an overnight layover in Chicago. But on the other hand, you get to stay at the Turkish Airlines Business Lounge which is as over-the-top as any I have ever visited. The food is amazing and varied. Plus when I went to get a shower (another perk the international business lounges usually have), I found out they have 'Private Suites' - rooms with a small desk and an honest to god bed!. With an 8 hour layover, I took advantage of it and got a good restful nap.

As my last post stated, we are making such progress and I fully expect things to continue that way. We have a couple of new users (in a future post I will describe a bit more about 'users' versus 'donors'. As soon as GG gets his not-for-profit entity finished with the last legalities, we will start the stipends for the ladies and Mr. W will set up the training boot camp.

I was even working this weekend. I gave a couple of the ladies some coaching sessions on time management and budgeting and M a marketing and sales plan to try and get more foreign business visitor logistics facilitation clients as she is doing for me.

Then on Sunday before we left, GG, M and I were bringing yet another of the ladies onboard to be GG's personal assistant...something he surely can use with all that is going on. My strategy with our ladies is to try and get them something meaningful they can do AND get paid for as soon as possible. This is the fourth out of six. Although I know we need to start doing all money transfers in an official way now, I felt it was important to break the rule and get his woman, who we could see is really starting to make the leap in her attitude and behavior. So after an hour of discussion, I gave her some USD as a 'signing bonus' (and I did discuss this with Wife before I did it for a change so at least I was not totally out of compliance!). The look on her face - a combination of disbelief, excitement, and determination - told me that I had made the right decision.

Afterward, she reiterated just what an amazing opportunity it was for her and the others. She related yet again how the slippery slope into doing sex work left one feeling so embarrassed and disrespected. She told me that the kind of stipend we are proposing is serious money in Ghana...that people with Masters Degrees can find it hard to even make $500 a month.  I think I will do another post and put out a more detailed explanation of the overall business concept.

From this point on we will be entering a different phase. We are now fully looking to implement the concepts we've developed. I suspect the nature of my travel will change in accordance with the needs of the development of the business between the U.S. and Ghana. The ride continues.