We are back in Yendi. Our flight out of Accra was delayed because it was raining when we woke up this morning. We got to Tamale at 11:30. We took a taxi from the airport to Relax Lodge and picked up the van. The folks that run the hotel were disappointed that we did not spend the night. I know they could have used the business. Hotel, restaurants and tourist places have had a hard time of it with the borders closed but we really needed to get back.
We had some business we needed to do in Tamale before we could head to Yendi. Our first stop was the Lands Commission. No, we have still not finished the land papers. If you remember last time we checked on them they said that they could not finish them because they did not have the ink and office supplies they needed to complete them. Steve gave them the money to buy the supplies. This time they said they are 90% finished but they needed us to talk to the Land Commission lawyer about the tax status of the property. Please, we told them we don’t mind paying property tax; they then said that we have to go to the Ghana Revenue Service and get some sort of tax certificate. Please! It seems like we take one step forward and 2 backwards. We will check with the tax office in Yendi tomorrow.
Next we went to the Vodaphone office to check on the status of our post paid phone. This has been another headache! They say the phone is activated but when we try to use it we get an error phone locked message. Today I asked if we could just discontinue the post pay service; port the phone number to a chip we could use in a normal cell phone. She said yes that might be possible but for me to try the phone one more time!
Our last errand of the day was to buy a new safe since the one in Mr. Iddrisu’s office is no longer safe to use. We thought we would just go to the store that normally sells safes and quickly pick one up but they were out so they sent us to a couple other places. We did not find the size we were looking for; we actually ended up buying 2 safes. All the workers know that we have a safe in the house. We decided that it might not be safe either since so many people know where it is. We will feel better about not having all our apples in one place.
Tamale has a much better selection of fresh vegetables than we have in Yendi so we stopped by the vegetable seller and stocked up. The only problem with buying bunches of vegetables is that we have to wash everything in iodine or bleach water before we can eat them.
We got back to Yendi just before dark, unloaded the van and started washing vegetables.
Thank you for all you do for us and for the work.
In His Service,
Steve and Kandie
