We are so aggravated! We have been to the tax office 4 times today! We need a tax clearance certificate for the Child Center so that we can renew its license. In the past we have always written a letter to the tax office asking for the tax clearance certificate and letting them know which government office is making the request. The certificate costs 1 Cedi and about a day to process the request. Steve took the letter to the office yesterday and was told the only way to get the certificate was to go though the Child Center’s portal. Going through the portal is the only way to get the certificate. When he tried he was denied because there was a list of non-payments against the account. We knew we owed nothing! Luckily we have kept a copy of all the payments we have made. By cross checking our records many of the items were corrected but then came the problem of the months when there was no withholding tax. These are the months that we are in the states and the Child Center is not spending any money. We were repeatedly told that if there is no activity for the month that we do not fill out the monthly return. This morning we were told that we were supposed to fill out the return and make it NIL. Really! The guy that was helping us tried to get annoyed with us for not filling it out but we were not having any of that nonsense. Finally one of the guys that told us not to submit NIL returns walked through the office and greeted us. We told him what was going on and he acknowledged the fact that he told us not to file and the reason was that there was a glitch in the system and it had just recently been fixed. Until all the non-payment and NIL items are resolved we cannot get the certificate. We are supposed to go back tomorrow and see if they can get the certificate. We are exhausted!
They got the small boards that tie the rafters to each other put on the roof today as well as the facial boards. It is looking better all the time. Today 8 men were working plus Nazo and Mr. Iddrisu. The roofers don’t demand as much attention as the masons; Steve only had to make a couple trips to the jobsite today.
The organizers for Zorash’s women’s group are coming for a visit and year end report tomorrow. They are supposed to demonstrate the process of making Shea butter from harvesting the nuts to the final Shea butter product. Most people think that Shea butter is purely for cosmetics but in our area and further north of us the people eat the Shea butter and they fry in Shea butter. I told Zorash that she should tell the visitors that with the increase in the cost of cooking oil they expect to see an increase in the consumption of Shea Butter. The problem with Shea Butter is that it smells like Shea butter. I told Zorash that I thought that if we cooked onion, garlic, ginger, nutmeg and curry powder (all the ingredients they like in their stew) in the Shea butter until it was brown that it would mask the smell of the Shea butter. We decided to try it and it worked out wonderfully well; there was no smell of the Shea butter; just a wonderful aroma of the spices, garlic and onions. We cooked some rice and ate it. Amama tried it and was surprised at how good it was. We sent the rest of the stew home with Zorash; she is going to take it to the demonstration tomorrow and have it as the “grand finale”.
Take care and please, please pray for us!
In His Service,
Steve and Kandie
