My brain is fried! And to be perfectly honest I have used Steve’s allotment of brain cells too. We have had to go back to 2017 and refigure all the taxes on Nana Bekum. I did not think it would be such a big job but it took several hours just to dig up copies of the stuff we needed. Not only did we need the amount of money he made each month we also needed the amounts of gifts he received and the amount he paid in gift tax. Could we do the figures for a whole year; well absolutely not! We had to figure them for each month and make a separate entry for each month. We worked on the stuff all day and finished the rough copies shortly after 4:00 just in time to take it to the tax office for their approval. It could not be submitted as we had it figured because we just did a rough estimate on the taxes. The tax calculator that we had access to online did not take into account that Nana was retired and no longer paid Social Security tax so it kicked him into a different tax bracket. We sat in the tax office until almost 5:00 while they refigured each of the years. We will retype the documents and take them back tomorrow. At least they were kind to us; but then we buttered them up by taking them a huge box of mangoes to share with the office staff. There were over 100 mangoes in the box so everyone got a nice sized bag to take home. Many of the office staff are not Muslims so they are not fasting; those that were not fasting enjoyed the mango immediately.
Speaking of mangoes, I decided to count the number of mangoes that we picked up today. It rained last night so the mangoes were very dirty. We did not want to give away dirty mangos so we washed them. As we washed I counted. Today alone we picked up 461 mangos! Can you imagine that? And there are still mangos on the tree. We got so many because there were no workers here yesterday or today; we did not even have a watchman last night.
Red stopped by to negotiate a deal to re-hang the razor wire and to pick up some of the money we are holding for him. He is trying to save enough money to buy a water tanker truck so he only takes a little of the money that we owe him to live on and leaves the rest here. When he left we gave him a bag of mangos. We also took mangos to Nazo’s house, to Gomda, the mechanic and Steve gave a bag to the men that barbecue the guinea fowl. We even met a group of older teenage girls walking down the street near the mission house and gave them a bag. Everyone thought the gift was grand! The people in the tax office were joking on each other that they would have to pay “gift tax” on the mangos that we gave them. In the past gift tax was paid on gifts that exceeded 50 Cedis; this year the government changed the rules and now you are supposed to pay on any gift that you are given. Isn’t that a little excessive?
Have a great day!
In His Service,
Steve and Kandie
