Chinese Food - hold the "Chinese."

To explain the title of this blog post...CHINESE. This week we ate at a

“Chinese Restaurant.” The restaurant has potentially never seen a Chinese person…and consisted of some sort of noodles with lots of pepe and other Ghanaian spices, accompanied with Ghanaian rice. The menu had two options, and both options turned out to be the same meal! The surprising thing? It was absolutely delicious, even if the “Chinese” aspect seems to have been forgotten. It’s been over a week since our last post. Wow! Time is slipping away too fast. In only three weeks we’ll be back in America. We both wish we could stay here longer. Business is picking up and the future is looking bright (Pun Intended)!

The Future Looks BRIGHT :) 

We’ve been super busy dealing with logistics and hiring so we didn’t have as much time to sell as we wanted to. But, at this point we have still sold half of our inventory! We have discovered plenty of ways NOT to sell a solar lamp, and, a few ways that work very well. Most of our success has been with businesses or organizations like banks, schools, government, or unions. We meet with managers and executives to arrange a meeting with their staff. We come back and present our product to the entire company. This model helps us to reach a large number of potential customers quickly and allows for financing options. Through these organizations, we can sell on credit. The organization ensures we get our money, and more people are able to afford the lamps on regular payment plans.

We are also happy to announce that we have partnered with a Ghanaian NGO called Edutainment Canopy Initiative. They work to improve literacy and education in rural and urban slum areas. One of their projects is to go to villages and build “Edutainment Canopies” where children can go to study at night in a safe, bright, and fun learning environment. Previously, they helped villages to raise funds for generator and lighting systems. We will work to provide solar lighting at a significantly lower up-front cost with free operating costs. As experts in reaching rural areas, Edutainment will also help us get access to those who need help most.

We are looking into using the urban sales of solar lamps to drive down the costs for providing solar to villages. More affluent city dwellers pay higher prices, thus subsidizing lamps we sell in rural areas. This means that when people buy lamps, they are not only saving money and freeing themselves from power outages, but they are also helping more rural children get light. More light means better health, better education, and better opportunities. We have marketed this approach as “Ghanaians helping Ghanaians,” and people LOVE it.

In the words of our friend Michael, “Foreign aid is not the solution. We want jobs, not handouts.” Yenso Solar is proud to have brought on three new members to our team. And we are still growing!

In other news, we got running water back yesterday for the first time since arriving here! Woohoo! Also, we celebrated two birthdays this week! It was Jude’s daughter’s first birthday this week, and, in classic American Style, we all ate tons of ice cream for Harrison’s birthday!

On the topic of food.  We also enjoyed super expensive fufu! Harrison pounded fufu! Ghanaians always die at Harrison’s funny twi phrases. The latest: (pointing to Cole) “So why is he is lighter than you? His skin is a better color.” “Well….my mother is Ghanaian.” “What? Then where are you from?” (Harrison proceeds to explain very specifically where he is from in Ghana and everything about that town.) “Hmmm…” They aren’t quite sure how to respond. Guess people just aren’t used to the differences between a glowingly fair Scandinavian, and a bronzed native American.