A cold caught me this week during the night. Here in Ghana, I can just visit a local Pharmacist tell them my symptoms and get an antibiotic prescribed. It started with a raw sore throat, I do have inflammatory sinuses and was diagnosed with post nasal drip sometime ago. I have also had pharyngitis before. This wasn’t pharyngitis but I caught it early the antibiotics worked. Needless to say I haven’t been on the blog because of it.

As an expat here in Ghana I don’t have health insurance yet but I am looking into it. There are many things that you may have to live without for awhile until you figure things out and the way things work. Right now I am living here on a Residency Permit which allows me to extend my stay for one year. I have been “roughing it,” in so many ways. I do my laundry by hand to save on costs of taking my laundry to the Laundry Service every week. In the U.S. I either had a washing machine or the coin-operated Laundromat to wash my clothes myself. I could purchase a washing machine here but haven’t done so yet to save money, until my income starts.

In Ghana, the electric is a prepaid service. My home is rented in advance for an entire year. My phone is on MTN which is also prepaid I pay about 120 GH a month for Data about 25 to 50 US. I purchase electricity because my entire rented house is on electrical only, and I need air conditioning, my stove and oven are also on electric, the size of a microwave, and I have a microwave too and a refrigerator that runs all the time. I also use electric to run my small studio for my business, and of course to run this laptop for my blog as part of my business. I am paying from six-hundred GH cedis to nine-hundred GH cedis a month for electricity which amounts to 115 US dollars to 120 US dollars a month, and my broadband for the internet is 240GH cedis a month which is equivalent to about 50 US dollars. The water is 50 cedis a month equivalent to about 10 USD I don’t use much. I also pay for security, garbage pick up and keeping the estate clean which is 825 GH cedis quarterly.

Finally, try to live modestly. Remember that once you live in a place you are no longer a tourist. So try to purchase your necessities at the local price, not the Tourist one.