Sydney, Australia shut off electricity at key sites today, such as the Opera House, to express concern over global climate change and encourage conversation. Here in Ghana, we are taking conservation to an extreme. Power is now off for one-quarter of the time and there's a chance that one day soon it will be off all the time.

 

The electricity was supposed to improve this month when the rains were supposed to come and the country's oil/gas power plant generating capacity was supposed to be increased. Neither seems to have actually happened. The country gets 60% of its electricity from hydroelectric sources and 40% from oil/gas. The water level in the largest dam is very low, hence scheduled power-outs since August.

 

Apart from the current crisis, Ghana's energy situation is a mess. There is not enough capacity, the authority is deep in the red, about one-third of the country still has no access, and the country's energy is being held hostage by rogue  weather patterns in unstable parts of the atmosphere…

 

 

Beware of Ghanaians with email addresses. I have long wondered why young Ghanaian males spend hours on sites like JewishFriendFinder.com and other singles' sites. Although I should not be looking at others' computers, I have read passionate emails written to European men about sex, marriage, and the joy of life together. I have seen a man using a translation website to turn his awkward English love letter into crisp German. I assumed it was all a bad joke.

 

And then another Peace Corps volunteer let me in on the secret. The love letters, the suggestive images, and the longing for affection are all part of a scam! He saw a couple of guys celebrating outside of a local Western Union (yeah, we got those) because they were there to pick up money wired to them by some unsuspecting and gullible man who probably mistook them for a twenty-something, lonely beauty who just needs enough money to buy an airline ticket to go meet her Internet sugar-daddy.

 

 

Addendum #1: Passover seder Monday night in Accra at the home of the same Israeli couple that hosted Megillah reading. The seder is a joint-venture with Chabad of the Democratic Republic of Congo. DRC has been one of the bloodiest places on the planet over the past ten years or so with an estimated four million people dead from a recently ended civil war. There was violence there again last week as supporters of the runner-up in the recent presidential election clashed with police (thank you BBC). And apparently there are enough Jews there that Chabad decided to dispatch some of its young soldiers.