This blog post comes to you "African style"- aka late, aka "Trevin time" (for those who know me before my time management skills matured). It has been an absolutely packed week! I keep forgetting which day of the week it is and how long I have been here. I haven't even been here a week yet and I feel like its been three. Anyways- since I posted last I actually got to visit the farm! It was everything and nothing I expected all at once.
For starters, the trip to the farm did not take two hours as I had originally thought and did not take four hours as I was later told. It took 4.5 to drive to a town called Kotoso- a town that does not show up on any map, and if you asked someone for directions, they'd point in a direction. Then it took 30 minutes by boat to finally reach the farm.
In the first picture, Jon and I had just come to the top of the mountain that you must drive over to get to Kotoso. He pointed across the lake and said we could see the farm from there. I snapped a picture in hopes of circling the farm to show you, but I can't actually see it myself. This should just give an idea of the size of Lake Volta. As the road veers slightly to the right, Kotoso lies down there. (As a side note, I apologize for the picture quality- something happened in the upload process. Good ol Africa...) I will post more pictures of Kotoso and give some background in the future!
This next picture, we are riding in one of the only forms of transportation to the farm- boat. The boats that are used on Lake Volta are anywhere from 10 to 40 feet long and are hand-made out of wood. I was sitting on a plank that laid across the width of the boat, similar to the one in front of me. The boy at the bow sits as far up as possible so he can signal to the "captain" where the fishing lines, debris, and tree stumps are. Running a wood boat into a petrified stump isn't my kind of fun on Lake Volta, so I'm happy for the system!
Lake Volta was once a plain that had a large river running through it. In the 70's, the British government decided to put a damn at the southern end of the valley to create a hydropower plant. The plant powers most of the southern region- including Accra. Meanwhile, the lake provides precious Tilapia and Baracuda for the fishing villages and a means for irrigation for farmers like Africa Atlantic. To the right, here, a tree still stand mostly intact- loaded up with fishing nets.
When we finally reached the other side, we hopped in the farm Gator and buzzed up to the farm. Since the photos were not loading correctly, I decided to leave you with a taste of the farm. This is the first thing you see as you come up the hill from the lake. The white spots on the right are the old and new farm houses. The green line that stretches the majority of the horizon is the crop. They are growing feed corn currently as a pilot run to see if an irrigated system can produce a worthy crop. Once this pilot run of 15 acres is completed in September (and is a success), they will have the motivation and the investments needed to push the farm to scale. "To scale" is somewhere roughly between 2,500 and 5,000 acres. They have the right to this much land- they just need the right equipment to farm it.
In the first picture, Jon and I had just come to the top of the mountain that you must drive over to get to Kotoso. He pointed across the lake and said we could see the farm from there. I snapped a picture in hopes of circling the farm to show you, but I can't actually see it myself. This should just give an idea of the size of Lake Volta. As the road veers slightly to the right, Kotoso lies down there. (As a side note, I apologize for the picture quality- something happened in the upload process. Good ol Africa...) I will post more pictures of Kotoso and give some background in the future!This next picture, we are riding in one of the only forms of transportation to the farm- boat. The boats that are used on Lake Volta are anywhere from 10 to 40 feet long and are hand-made out of wood. I was sitting on a plank that laid across the width of the boat, similar to the one in front of me. The boy at the bow sits as far up as possible so he can signal to the "captain" where the fishing lines, debris, and tree stumps are. Running a wood boat into a petrified stump isn't my kind of fun on Lake Volta, so I'm happy for the system!
When we finally reached the other side, we hopped in the farm Gator and buzzed up to the farm. Since the photos were not loading correctly, I decided to leave you with a taste of the farm. This is the first thing you see as you come up the hill from the lake. The white spots on the right are the old and new farm houses. The green line that stretches the majority of the horizon is the crop. They are growing feed corn currently as a pilot run to see if an irrigated system can produce a worthy crop. Once this pilot run of 15 acres is completed in September (and is a success), they will have the motivation and the investments needed to push the farm to scale. "To scale" is somewhere roughly between 2,500 and 5,000 acres. They have the right to this much land- they just need the right equipment to farm it.