Water: going with the flow in Ghana

Here's a little story about getting water that pretty much highlights the way life is here for new obrunis (phonetic sp. but means white person).

We can't drink the tap water, so have a need for bottled water. I've been buying case after case of 1.5 liter bottles & feeling guilty about the amount of plastic we're using. I've been looking for weeks for water coolers. Every one I find is about $275 and that seemed steep. Finally decided we'd used one too many plastic bottles & went out to buy a cooler. I wanted to use my Visa card because I needed to buy 3 for myself, another colleague and the office (most everything is cash & you can only get about $350/day from the cash machine, so a large purchase like this would take days of going to the ATM). So, went to 2 major electronics stores that had water coolers only to find that they did not take Visa. Went to another store that had the coolers, took Visa but found out my Chase card was declined because they're on a "blocked vendor" list. After the owner was really clear that they don't have anything to do with the US - they were obviously from the middle east - I finally clued in that they probably somehow were on the US financial institution list of companies that have questionable links to terrorist orgs. By then, I had to get ack to work, so called off the coller search.

The next day, I was able to find a place that had the collers (although only 2 not 3), took Visa and took my Visa - SCORE. Figured it would be easy to get the large bottles that go on top of the coolers. Wrong.

The super market did not have the bottles & sent me to another supermarket. They didn't have them & sent me to a mini-mart. They didn't have them & told me to go to the supermarket that told me to go to the mini-mart. Finally, with the assistance of our driver, found out that you have to go out to a little store near where the Voltic water company has their main facility. Took about half an hour to get there, found the store & they had many bottles in front. We went to buy a few and found out that it's not possible to buy the filled bottles unless you return empty ones. So, how do you get empty ones? Best guess was to go to the Voltic facility. Went there and they told me they were out of bottles. I asked how it was possible for the water factory to be out of water. The guy smirked and said "we're not the factory, we just sell it". They did have 3 dirty, empty bottles. I asked if I could buy those. They finally agreed & said I had to pay 18cedi (about $13) for each. I asked if I could get a receipt & they seemed doubtful. A sure sign I was getting the obruni price. I called the driver to help out & lamented about having to pay so much for dirty, EMPTY water bottles. We finally got the bottles for 15 cedi each, but then had to take them to the store down the street to exchange them for filled bottles. Paid 3cedi each for the filled bottles & finally went on our way.

Once home, I plugged in the water cooler. Plugged it in, left it overnight and......room temperature water. So, we have our water, we have our cooler & I hope that one day the water will be cold............