Palm Oil

12:11AM 10 July

We had a lecture on 8 July by Dr. Sam who taught us about appropriate technology for Ghana. After the lecture he took us to a town that has a house that is rigged to catch rain water from the roof and pools rain on the side of the house for flushing toilets. Then, he brought us to a section that produces palm oil from berries that are produced by palm trees. This was a good outing. Dr. Sam told us that by extracting the oils found in these berries people use it to fry food and cook with. Also, from these palm berries comes palm wine. Unfortunately, most everything we see in this town and others that we passed getting here, are all flooded. It's rained, and mostly downpoured for the past three days. The towns and villages are flooded, peoples homes, stores, it's crazy. Dr. Sam gave us some environmental reasons as to why this has happened. He said that actions such as deforestation and building of homes and businesses has forced the natural course of rivers off their path and causes them to overflow their banks. When you build a house where once a river flowed through, it is only natural for it to run amok.


-- Posted From My iPhone