Sunday evening, Jan 29. Today Craig, Quay Que (our driver) and I went on the Dodi Princess boat cruise up Lake Volta to Dodi Island and back. The trip up the lake was lovely, live band, drinks, food. The water was beautiful and we saw lots of fishing boats. They are like very long and narrow canoes. When we got to Dodi Island they gave us 20 minutes to walk on the island. It turned out to be very disturbing because the people from the nearby village come to thT part of the island when a boat is coming and all the tiny children follow you along the path, begging for money. They were all in need, but it was not possible to give because there are so many of them and they swarm anyone who takes their wallet out. What they need is a cooperative that sets up one donation bucket at the dock and then share it among the villagers. They had dancers and singers at the dock so all they needed was to organize themselves so people had a way to give. Trouble is there seemed to be no way to explain that to them. When I get home I am going to try to find out about their school and see if I can do so something. It made the trip back rather long and sad. The band launched into a 45 minute song that was rather like a Ghanaian dirge with a funky beat. It did not really improve the mood! We joked that it must be their version of 99 bottles of beer on the wall! When we got to the dock, a fellow we had asked to make us woven bracelets for our family and friends had managed to complete all but about 8 of the 43 we asked him to do. Basically he had to weave the names into the bracelets so I am sure his fingers were ready to fall off! He brought the rest to the hotel tonight...a very nice young man. Tomorrow we are off to Somanya for two days and then back to Accra. It is going very quickly now. We are looking forward to learning about Somanya Community Credit Union and hoping we can offer them something of value.