Money in real estate

Thursday, September 2

Today was full of getting all the samples organized and labeled for leaving tomorrow, doing laundry, and packing up everything since it is my last night in Kpong. While we were in the lab getting the samples ready, Eugene (one of the lab guys) brought in his scrabble board and challenged Brietta and I to a game. Little did I know, the two of them are the type of people that have all of the scrabble approved two letter words and the “Q” words that don’t require “U” memorized. Needless to say, I lost by a good 70 or so points. Later that night Ruthfirst made Brietta and I a really yummy (and seriously spicy!!) mushroom stew with local mushrooms from Accra. It was the best Ghanaian dish I’ve had yet-yummy!!

Over the past couple of weeks I’ve noticed that there are many abandoned, half-built houses and buildings, even hotels in both Accra and Kpong. They look as if the land is trying to reclaim them, with weeds and grass growing all over. I asked a few people if something happened awhile ago that caused all these people to abandon their building projects. I was informed that the buildings and homes were not abandoned and that the owners had just run out of money for now. I learned that most people don’t save up the money to build a house all at once. Instead, they save some money and start building until the money runs out. Then they will go back and work until they have more money to return and continue building again. Since inflation happens so quickly (and banks don’t really offer house loans), it doesn’t make sense to save up the entire amount it takes to build the house; the saved up money would lose value too quickly to be of much use.