Outdooring. When it rains here it comes as a squall from the sea. Straight up the estuary, the lagoon, the salt flats - roaring. Straight into the village- roaring. By morning it is past. We depart for Mr. Ayim’s to partake in his new son’s outdooring ceremony. Wary of precipitation, I rig the camera in its protective coat. The outdooring is a traditional naming ceremony; a gathering at which the child is given his name and presented to the village as a member of the community. It is an honor to attend and be allowed to shoot. It also bestows a bit of prestige on the Ayim household to host our crew at their event. Mr. Ayim is a subject of our film, the Songorniya Water/Sanitation Committee representative for his village and a farmer. He needs a bicycle to expedite his many tasks. On a given day there are fields to tend, meetings to attend and visits throughout the village to communicate the Wat/San agenda with his constituents. The outdooring presented us with a rich filming experience, as well as a profound cultural one. Song, dance, chant, prayer, sermon; it was quite a festival. The sun graced us all morning, 7 til 10 when we departed with five hours of footage from two cameras.
A retreat to the Branigan house gives us a chance to clean the gear and scarf some rice, beans, fruit and water. I prep the kit for the afternoon, when we will follow our second subject, Seth. Seth is president of the drama troupe that David has helped facilitate. He also lives at his work, a chicken ranch 12k’s away. In order to get to drama group meetings, rehearsals and events he must walk and/or pay for a taxi. With a bicycle he’ll be able to save the taxi money and pay for secondary school. I think, as a cyclist, it goes without saying that all the participants in the workshops will walk away with a machine that not only facilitates an immediate need, but one that will also provide a profound sense of freedom in a more abstract sense. The bikes aren’t through customs yet, and the workshops are a week away. There is the guarantee of existing bikes to run the program, but the shipment is key.
We dully walk, and then pile into a local taxi with Seth and six other people. The car is a four door hatchback, patched with bailing wire, tape and spit – who knows what keeps the engine running. We clatter over 4k’s of dirt track before hitting the main paved road. 4k’s after that we reach Sege and pile out. At this crossroads town along the main highway, we shift to a private taxi for the remaining distance to the chicken farm. On a normal day of travel, this costs Seth a fair chunk of paper each way. It costs us even more, since on the second leg we get the Obruni mark up on the fare. The farm is fun, and Seth puts his drama skills to work and in 2 hours runs through a bunch of tasks that he’d normally spend most of the day doing. We shoot his ‘before the bike’ interview and pile back into the taxi, which we’ve paid to stand by. It’s been the first full on day of filming and it feels great to have almost 8 hours of footage in the can. At dusk, in celebration, I set up a time-lapse shot while we prepare dinner and listen to Wilisto and Rejoyce laugh. 
At night, the rains come again, the third rain of the day. This is heaviest, the darkness perhaps magnifying the force. Swathed in creamy toxic handfuls of DEET, I rejoice in the water-cooled breeze wearing shorts and a t-shirt in brash defiance of this high strain malaria zone. Soon, the majority of the known world will be zoned for one disease or another. Malaria already kills one million a year, mostly infants. Standing in Seth’s chicken coop earlier today, I had plenty of voices in the back of my head repeating a mantra of avian flu. The chickens were healthy and free, in a large regularly cleaned space with fresh water so not a real concern, for the moment.
The next day continues with success, we spend the morning following Mr. Ayim to one of the fields he tends and conduct an interview with him. In the afternoon we get word that the shipment of bikes has cleared, so we gather our wits and a small kit and make plans to dash back to Accra. Filming the unloading of the container is not something we expected to be allowed to do, but George and Sammy made arrangements so it will be a great asset to our project if we can cover the event.
Comments