First inspiring days in office

Oh, I am so blessed!

This internship is just soo much more than I ever could have expected. My internship at the West African Fairtrade Network (WAFN) is located in a office in central Accra, together with Agroeco who partly works with Rainforrest Alliance (leading to very interesting discussion, you can imagine!).

My work is to assist the regional coordinator - Banson, a ghanaian men in his best years. We are having many interesting and funny discussions and will have a great coming two months, I am very certain about! 

Anyway, WAFN is one of several Fairtrade-certified producer network, supporting producers from Ghana, Benin, Togo, Burkina Faso, Cameroun, Sierra Leone, Senegal, Cote d' Ivoire and Mali. WAFN is member of the the African Fairtrade Network (AFN) who are to represent and communicate in matters regarding Fairtrade (ex standards, new productgroups etc)

At this moment WAFN is working within a Comic Relief funded project called 'Fairtrade Development for Africa' which is coordinated through Fairtrade Foundation. 

I am just about to get a grip over WAFN, but already feel very inspired by looking at the producerlists we have over Ghana! - Here you can find beautiful Fairtrade-certified mangos, bananas, pineapples, cocoa and cashewnuts! - Importers wanted!

Today a newly Fairtrade-certified cashewnut producer visited our office and invited us to join them when their cooperative have the annual general meeting in some weeks! - Wow - cashewnuts, I'm gonna learn all about them! The cooperative consist of 1750 members and just sell the rawnut, which needs to be processed, which is done in a local factory. - At this moment they have not exported any nuts, but are building capacity for it. 

Since monday me and Banson have visited VREL - a Fairtrade-certified banana producer for a meeting, and were able to visit a Fairtrade premium paid school which I visited last time in Ghana, when it was being build. - It was nice to see how it worked now, being full with students! 

We also had the chance to have some lunch next to the Akosombo river, imagine how lucky I am to do this during office hours! ... however sometimes the public transport system with tro-tro's feels a bit unsafe, sitting in the back of a minibus without any belts, the only thing to do then is to chant hare krishna.. haha 

Now I'm going to a jazz event to meet sweet friend Kajsa!