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.
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Ghana Chronicles: Pt.5
Village life. D. Atsu gets us to the village on time. Which is really whenever the fark we get there. So it’s around 11am on our second Saturday in Africa that we push the taxi as far as we can and then start portaging our gear through the deeper sand as jumping kids point the way to David Branigan’s house. David is the Peace Corpsman for this region, and he’s the main reason we’re here. It’s Branigan who contacted Peckham and applied for this area – Songorniya – to participate in the bike workshops program.
Songorniya consists of four villages along a roughly 6k stretch of dirt road, which itself sits a few klicks towards the sea; bellow the highway town of Sege. The four communities have two seasonally based means of income: farming and salt. The farming is a mix of produce, livestock and poultry. The salt comes from a large lagoon that sits just behind two of the villages. In the dry season, after the crops have been harvested, the communities shift attention to salt ponds along the lagoon’s banks.
When David originally applied, the VBP policy for first-time villages was to only run one workshop – 20 people in an 8-hour session. The response David got in Songorniya when they were accepted for one workshop was so great he asked for more days. VBP agreed to expand the program over four days, with three basic workshops (60 people) and a final ‘Advanced Class’ that would cater to the more mechanically inclined participants. The workshops have been confirmed for the end of the following week. With or without the new shipment from Boston, George and Sammy have enough bikes on hand to run the three-day basic program and enough tools for the Advanced workshop. Before we left Accra, they agreed to commit to the dates we hoped for so that we could stay on somewhat of a schedule.
Branigan’s been here almost three years and has made an obvious impact on the residents here. They call him ‘Akofi’, which loosely means first son of the community. He greets us quietly, a compact man built like a rock climber, barefoot and bare-chested, tending to a small vegetable plot. His house will be our quarters for the coming weeks; we respectfully enter a clean and utilitarian space. Unlike most of the village structures, the Peace Corps house is concrete with a tin roof and a compost toilet. The community built it specifically for aid volunteers and kindly caters to a more western sensibility about housing. There is a gas camp stove on a table with some shelves for supplies. A large surge protector and step-down rig allows David to run a small CD/Radio and when he needs to, a computer and printer. A small bookshelf occupies a corner with some hand drums. There is a bedroom, which David has graciously given up to us. We fold our bulky duffels and gear bags into the chamber as neatly as we can. Once we’re stowed, David shows us the two cisterns outside where we’ll pull our water, the wash stall with bucket for bathing and the compost crapper. There is also a storeroom where we put the bikes. The whole joint is basically the size of a NYC one-bedroom pad.
We mount up the rigs and pedal around to the other villages, greeting elders in the two communities where the bulk of our work will be done. We also meet the four people whose lives’ we’ll be following for a few days before they participate in the workshops. Having made introductions and gotten – sorta – the lay of the land, we return to the house. David has done most of his work with a local youth drama troop, and some of its members congregate at his place every evening. These kids will become our assistants over the next weeks, helping us get around and get by. Branigan has a PC confab to attend elsewhere in Ghana and so we will be in the hands of this group of teens for a week while he is gone. Before he leaves the next day, there will be much to do. David has two meetings to participate in, one with the Water and Sanitation Committee and one with the drama troop. The WatSan group is the organization that formally applied for the bikes, and so they are now responsible for organizing a suitable facility to store the bikes, run the workshops, to provide some food and drink, etc. We end the evening in excited conversation, anticipating that the game is finally afoot.
Ghana Chronicles: Pt.4
(click on any photo to enlarge)
The Iron Cross. This symbol is so au currant, so en vogue with plastic hells angel wannabies and the OC X Gamed empty vee generation. We come to find that this eloquent graphic icon has origins dating thousands of years through West African history. The war flag of custom hog farmers has it’s roots not in German dog fight aces but in Adinkra blankets of the 15th century. The cross was used prominently as a repeating patern in textiles serving as a symbol thought to remove evil (That Which Removes Bad Luck). American Badd Ass indeed. Mmusu Yidie, mo-fo.
Small Bikes. After another day of the Boston shipment not clearing the port we engage a solid forward tactic; we prepare to leave for the village at first light the next day. If and when the container clears Tema Port Authority, we’ll bomb back into town for the day in a tro-tro with a fast n’ light kit on our backs. The decision to get to the meat of our story jazzes us, and we fill the day with stocking provisions, blocking out currency, double checking the medkit and cleaning the gear. We stow a few bags at the Atsu’s and pare down our kit by a bag or two but it’s still overboard at five pieces. Camera gear’s a bitch if you don’t forgo yer own duds for space.
While I run everything through the dummy check, TT and Papayo go over to George and Sammy’s to retrieve our bikes. Yesterday, for the equivalent of around 75$ US, we had secured two MTB’s from the ‘workshops’ pile. I scored a low end Peugeot w/ plastic Shimano-esque cranks and gears. Rigid fork, riser bars with ratty old Grab-On grips and a seat with a hole in it. TT scored a true scrapper – a K-Mart ladies special with one piece steel cranks, stamp cut dropouts, a big pie plate and chain guard, all customized in rattle can drippy gloss black. New Schwalbe tires though, better than my red bomber’s Conti-nock-offs with partly worn down treads and cracked sidewalls. No worries in Africa. Both of ‘em weigh around 30 lbs. Despite the clunkerness factor, the boys at the shop had those bikes tuned to race-day precision in around 30 minutes flat. Anyway, TT and the kid went to pick them up ‘cause I was prepping other gear.
The most common bike in Ghana is a one geared 1931 pig iron roadster called a Phoenix. From there up, you get the full range of bike types though in Accra the English Townie style and the 10-speed Varsity knock style make up most of the wheels on the road. Ahhh the roads. Our street in Fadema, in MTB terms is what is known as a ‘rock garden’. Hans Rey would dig the lines in this ‘hood. Those riding the Phoenix most likely do not dig it. Like all things daunting and difficult in these parts, folks just glide stoically along. The sealed streets provide a different type of sketchy line. To the right, an open sewer of an average 2 feet of depth and width with a curb hewn from rough-edged blocks. To the left, in very close proximity is your old friend daily city traffic. In Accra there are few traffic signals, one lane each way, buses, tro-tro’ s, taxi’s and big trucks everywhere and with little regard for pedaling maniacs. Within a frighteningly short distance he surface can go from asphalt to dirt to concrete to gravel with half a dozen off camber hairpin turns. It is hell on wheels. Oh, and the air is choking with dust, two-stroke oil burn, carbon monoxide and smoke all the time. Bravo. A New York courier would think twice on some routes here. I’d like to tell you that we balled up and rode it, but no. Aside from a brief inaugural sprint with the camera mounted to the bars chasing Sammy up and down La Paz Road, there was no daring do in the streets of Fadema. With the value of the trip placed squarely on the film we opted to save our riding for the village. There was no sense in risking everything for the thrill of some serious urban assault runs. Ok, also, I’m a wuss; TT came to ride. The village waits. In classic Ghanaian hospitality and good will, D. Atsu agrees to drive us in on a Saturday morning with his taxi. We insist on paying the petrol, no small block of bills and far more than a tro-tro, but far safer. Mo' safe mo' betta. Our dice cast now, we hunker down for the night, excited for our mission to finally shift into a higher gear. Viva.
Ghana Chronicles: Pt.3
Doldrums 1. At around one week in, we’re still stuck with no shipment and no clear answers as to when something might happen. The best the shipper can do is tell George that the boat is closer to Ghana than Singapore, somewhere out in the Atlantic. What is certain is this; we have no control over our situation. Sampson takes us to the central bike market, which is really just a section of the giant outdoor market near the Jamestown section of Accra. It’s madness. We shoot around a half hour of footage with the stealthy little camera, having left the main bit of machinery safely locked away at Philo’s. Now is not the time to have our gear stolen or confiscated, or to raise any questions by using more ‘pro’ looking kit. As I collect footy with the ‘tourist’ camera, I am secretly pining for how great it could be if I had the bigger rig. C’est la vie. The market is a cacophony of parts, frames, new and old bikes, mechanics and vendors. It is a brief opportunity to do something and we relish it. All too soon though, we’re back to twiddling our thumbs.
Fidgeting in this festering berg is not helping our mojo, so after countless backgammon games, marathon reading sessions, trips to the internet café, etc., we shove off for an excursion to the Aburi Mountains and the National Botanic Gardens. 
This amounts to shoving ourselves into a tro-tro, a van rebuilt into a small bus – the main means of transpo for all of Ghana. The Accra-to-Aburi route careens out of town and up the mountain range that rings the city and suburbs. More or less, this is basically a large hill, not really a mountain. We pass Rita Marley’s place, which is easy to spot as it’s painted top to bottom in Rasta tri-color with giant lettering announcing not only who’s house it is, but what type of recording equipment is inside. I guess the ghost of Bob keeps the thieves at bay. Hell, maybe Steven Segal lives next door. The guy really does live in Ghana, though I’m not sure exactly where. He’s releasing a reggae album too. Truth. Anyway, we chug past Rita’s and arrive at the end of the road in the town of Aburi at just a hair before sunset. I climb out of the tro-tro and turn to help an elderly lady with her bags. As I take her hand I think, man she could be my friend Konda’s grandmother – she looks a bit like her but more than that her aura is hauntingly familiar. Suddenly my cel rings (yeah we get cel service in the 3rd world – welcome to the future). It’s Konda on the phone, checking in about some business back in LA. Cosmic forces are not to be fucked with – the only thing in control of our fate here is Africa itself. Somehow I find this comforting. 
We hump on up the hill into the gardens where there’s a well-recommended guesthouse. Apparently it’s taken a turn for the worse since our guidebook was penned. We’re trapped of course, because it’s dark and the nearest option for accommodation is around 3 klicks down the road. The room is one of those mold factories where you want to pull on more clothes when you walk in the door and it’s over priced. Stupid traveler move for sure, but we grit our teeth and bite the bullet. Stupid move number two, I didn’t bring enough Cedis to really cover the unexpected cost and eat a decent meal and get back down the mountain tomorrow. Some creative bargaining manages to circumvent most of the problem, though I feel like an idiot and TT is rightly miffed at my blunder. We put on clean socks, pants and shirts and crawl into our sleep sacks for a restless night. The next morning we check out the garden and it’s pretty cool. There are two giant cotton trees that are around 200 years old and inexplicably a crashed and rusted hulk of an old army chopper. We walk through the town and find some satisfaction in a number of Kodak moments. Upon return to Accra we learn that the shipment has finally reached port in Tema. Now we just need it to clear customs.
Doldrums 2. The next few days are spent with more time killing distractions that do little to distract us from the out-of-our-control factor. Games, laundry (hand washing is fun!), Camus, Hornby, Arsenal vs. Manchester United (PK’s suck! MU’s keeper sucks more!), a visit to Kokrobite Beach
, a visit with a friend of a friends brother-in-law who happens to live in Accra,
the discovery of a good veggie restaurant, Liverpool vs. AC Milan (never walk alone), web surfing at the net café’s, more books, more backgammon, some chess, some Kodak moments, some political dialog with D. Atsu, some social dialog with Adom Atsu, the bubbles, and each day the news that the shipment will clear customs tomorrow. A few tomorrows into this pattern, we learn it is a pan-African holiday. Everything will be closed, no chance of the shipment clearing, so we decide to check out Labadi Beach. Never in my life have I seen so much pollution in, on and around the sea. How can this seem correct to any human being? Dumping trash all around yourself while sitting on an otherwise pristine shore, wallowing in debris as it washes around you like so much canned rebel musak. No one smokes cig’s here, but they all litter like addicted fiends; food, plastic, shit. The water is unnaturally greenish brown, hissing and foamy with a disturbing tangy odor that overpowers the usual salty brine. Surf’s up!
(The beach photo to the right is from Kokrobite, not Labadi)
(That's Rocky's brother Bob there at the bottom right- thanks Bob, the veggie stew and xylophone/harmonica session was amazing)
Ghana Chronicles: Pt.2
Matron. In Accra we are hosted by the Atsu family in their self-described ‘third class neighborhood’ of Fadema. The Atsu’s have two corner lots on either side of a rocky side street that intersects another dirt lane leading out to the main paved road. On one side of their site is a corner store named ‘He Cares’ where a variety of canned and dry goods are sold, along with cold drinks. Behind the store is the main Atsu house, occupied by Auntie Philo, husband D and six kids. Three are their kids, and three are being cared for and looked after by the Atsu’s. D. Atsu is a semi-retired carpenter who owns a taxi, which a local man living further up the street drives for him. Along with the shop, it’s a good source of revenue. Thanks to the Atsu’s, this end of the street is relatively level, always swept clean twice a day and the gutters kept clear and flowing.
On our side of the compound are some other revenue streams – a block of four rental apartments and a kitchen/butchers shack leased by a local chop house (restaurant). The apartment we’re given to use is rented by Sammy for the purpose of housing David Peckham when he’s in town, along with other VBP volunteers who rotate through from time to time. Our neighbor is Mr. Atsu’s eldest son from a previous marriage, now recovering from a battle with a late diagnosis of diabetes. At the end of the row lives a family of four from Togo. The father of that clan teaches all the kids French on the weekends. 
While we are in residence, Mr. Atsu also begins constructing a large shed to be used as a carpentry workshop. He owns a number of saws, lathes and presses that will be moved from their current leased location elsewhere in Fadema once the new facility is complete. Despite the lower strata look and feel to the neighborhood, the Atsu’s do well for themselves. 
The businesses are all simple but are kept immaculately. There is a supporting cast of neighbors, tenants and friends who help run the shop, which is a meeting point for much of the community. In short, despite the relative lack of privacy the place is as jovial and exciting as any sit-com family home. We are welcome, safe and comfortable here. Philo rules the roost. She is mother, sister, proprietress, mayor, seer, healer, boss, friend, disciplinarian, taskmaster and community leader. To us, she is Auntie, her clan now our brothers and sisters.
All the children, including the ones they’ve taken in, attend school and get high marks. They get extra tutoring after regular classes and all plan to go on to higher levels of education after exams. All are exceedingly polite, inquisitive and soft spoken, with smiles that are infectious. James, Adom, Papayo, Afie, Ma, Pa and Asegi treat us like family. The neighboring kids come play with us regularly, curious about our backgammon games and life in California. The youngest, Moro, is at first afraid – he’s never seen white skin. We try the universal Polaroid icebreaker to no avail. His mom somehow digs up a white doll for him to play with and within a day he is our silent shadow. Moro dances with more rhythm than you’d think possible in a four year old. He says very little, but he observes everything and cautiously mimics what sticks in his head. TT becomes the pied piper to all kids under 12 when she produces our new icebreaker trick, soap bubbles. The delicate rainbow spheres fill the street and make everyone laugh. 
Money. Like most cash based economies where the currency is so devalued it hurts, Ghanaians tend to count bills by the thickness of the bankroll rather than tediously fanning through the notes. It’s around 9100 Cedis to 1 US Dollar, 16500 to 1 British Pound. The biggest note is a 20000, making hiding your cash a bit of a joke. Is that a brick in your pants? No, just lunch money. Folks who actually have some carry their scratch in black plastic bread bags, lidded mayonnaise tubs or in backpacks worn the front-way ‘round. The value bounces around so much on the exchange market that no one sees value in saving any surplus. If you’ve got some extra loot you just buy something useful with it and save it for later, like a big stack of cinderblocks or a pile of gravel for that house you dream of building. If you need a little extra paper in the meantime, you can always sell some of the pile.
Mozzies. Malaria is not to be taken lightly and the ‘zones’ or ‘bands’ in which it plies its ugly trade are growing every year. The strongest, deadliest strain can be found in the band that stretches across West Africa.
Malaria medicine can really fuck with your head. Larium has been identified (but not proven) as a possible cause of those Gulf War vets coming home and going on murderous rampages. Chloroquine has also led to some sketchy bouts of ‘jungle madness’ – I’ve seen it put a friend in the psych ward after complications from a prolonged trip through the Indian Ocean. Personally, I’ve only experienced the hellish nightmares and paranoia side effects of both drugs on previous travels, but it’s enough to make me wary of them.
Malorone is the new ‘safe’ pill on the block, they even advertise in the New Yorker. We’re on it but a couple days when the vivid dreams kick in. Or maybe it’s just a couple days before I actually get enough sleep to have a dream. Dead and alive, family, friends and strange celebrities I’ve never met populate my nocturnal haze with acid-flashback intensity. There is no horror or fear, so I guess it’s better than the Larium.
Anything’s better than Malaria – it kills over a million people each year, mostly kids. From what I’ve heard, if you get it bad enough you just wish for death. The Ghanaians we’re with see it as a part of their lives. For the locals who have developed some degree of resistance to the milder strains there are simple medicines to cure it quickly available at any druggist. Not so lucky if you don’t already live in ‘the zone’. Chemically treated nets and DEET lotions will become our friends in the field but here in the city we opt for long sleeves at dusk and depend heavily on the drugs.
One side effect of Malarone is dizziness, and it hits me like a sucker punch around day four. A low protein, high activity day adds to the bonk. Fortunately the dizziness mostly subsides and aside from occasional ice-pick-in-the-eyes headaches, I seem to be handling the drug with passable tolerance. 
Life expectancy. One universal truth about third world travel is, you’re acutely aware that death is one stupid oversight or miscue away. Of course you’re gonna be on alert (without being paranoid or peevish), stash your money smartly and watch what you eat and drink and say. You’ve got to mind your business, in all forms.
You’ve also got to mind your shits. Are you having them regular, are they firm or soft? Bloody or black is obviously a bad sign, as is retching up your stomach lining. Small cuts and abrasions you might normally scoff at and ignore need to be meticulously cleaned and cared for. Sanitation is not a strong suit in this town, much like those of any other developing nation. I tell you this not to cast a bad light on the people of Ghana but to paint a picture of the health risk involved for them and us on a daily basis. Ghanaians eat with the right hand and use the left for other purposes. The local papers point out that only 15% of all households actually have a toilet and even those flushing thrones just empty through a pipe straight to the gutter. What you and I would call a ‘weedy empty lot’ here is called a ‘shitting field’. Most sewers in Accra are not covered. They are usually where the sidewalk should be, and often several feet deep, giving new impetus to being sure of foot while engaged in pedestrian transit on crowded and bustling avenues. Dogs, cats, small children, pigs, goats, bats, chickens, cows and rats roam free and also have shitting fields, aka wherever they feel the need. It rains a lot this time of year and the city sits in a flood plain. This Petri dish of decaying feces is topped with a serious garbage problem, including discarded razor blades, scraps of metal, broken glass, dead frogs, used syringes and pretty much everything else you can imagine. Rabies is the least of the worries. 
Fortunately for us, we have a few bits of ammo to fight the good fight and maintain our bodily welfare. First we’ve had a number of vaccinations to armor our immune systems. Second we know what to look for and what to avoid. Third we’ve got a first aid kit suitable for the environment. It’s stocked with sterile needles, obscure remedies, wound care materiel capable of tending everything from minor scratches to gapping chest wounds and an assortment of prescription antidotes, pain killers and cures. We can even splint and stabilize a fractured limb. Most important, we have the training to find what is needed quickly and use it properly. The problem is, the damn thing is a bulky pig and so it is not always strapped to us when we’re doing fast and light forays into the city proper. Heightened awareness and prevention are always our first line of defense. 
Polio, Typhoid, Dengue, Yellow Fever, bilharzia and a number of other unsettling and deadly or crippling diseases are readily available to everyone here. Each day we see people who have been afflicted or hear of those who have died. Cemeteries are as over crowded as the streets. The concept of ‘universal healthcare’ takes on daunting proportions when viewed through the lens we’re glimpsing now.
Ghana Chronicles: The Beginning
Recap. We have embarked to Ghana on a project to document with video and photography the work of The Village Bike Project. The gist of the operation is as follows: 450 used and recycled bicycles have been loaded into a shipping container in Boston two months prior. See this post (Boss Town) for details. The container winds it’s way from Boston Harbor to Singapore and finally to Ghana, where it will be unloaded by a savvy team of Ghanaian bicycle importers named Samson and George. Most of the shipment will be sold off to various mechanics and bike shop owners around the country. (Some, we will later learn, will go to Burkina Faso). The remaining hundred or so bicycles will be set aside for use in workshops run in conjunction with a Moscow Idaho based NGO called The Village Bike Project. The workshops are the brainchild of former Peace Corps Volunteer David Peckham. David had been working in Gabon in the 80’s before coming to Ghana in the mid 90’s with an idea that he could sell low cost bicycle tools to Ghanaian mechanics that could help them do a better job. Around the same time he learned about groups like Bikes Not Bombs in Massachusetts and Working Bikes in Seattle who were collecting discarded bicycles destined for landfill and importing them to developing countries, where they were sold on the local markets. He created VBP with two guys he had met in the markets of Accra – Sammy and George. 
There are two types of workshop, basic and advanced. The advanced is aimed at anyone who goes through basic as well as the local village mechanics. Tools we’d take for granted are hard to come by here – Hammers and chisels are the Ghanaian equivalent of crank pullers, freewheel removers, headset wrenches and chain breakers. These useful tools are imported and sold at around 1/5th of the wholesale price to the workshop participants.
The basic program is an eight-hour seminar in which applicants have pre-registered through the Peace Corpsman stationed in their village. For the equivalent of between 15-30 USD (depending on the type of bike and the distance of the village from Accra), they get taught how to perform basic repairs, identify more technical problems before they become expensive bike spoilers and gain some basic riding tips. At the end of the day each participant gets a bike. Class size is limited to twenty and selection is left up to the Peace Corps rep in the village, usually working with a pre-existing group of community leaders. A mandate of the program requires at least 20% of the participants to be women, and for all of the participants to truly need a bicycle to help them in their daily lives.
For some perspective, in the villages we will be working with on this trip like most of the villages selected for the VBP, there is no running water, poor sanitation, limited electricity and the average per capita income is somewhere around a dollar a day. The bikes are sold rather than given for mainly the following reason; having to buy the bike ensures that the person receiving it will actually care for the machine. Each workshop ends up costing VBP around 300$.
Our filming in Ghana was expected to begin in the Songorniya Region, around two or three days after arriving in the capitol, Accra. Our original hope was to film the unloading of the container at Sam and George’s shop but we had been told that the landlord would not allow it, nor would the port authority allow us to film in the harbor. Of course, everything would change, on an almost daily basis. The following entries are culled from my trusty Moleskine.
Day one. After a few days layover in London, we arrived at the international airport in Accra at around 11pm. Entering any new destination after dark is never my first choice, but there really is no other option following the route we took, flying in from London. Our benevolent hosts Sammy and George met us outside customs holding up a color Xerox photo of ourselves, which we had sent as a way of helping them identify us. All the fragrances of Africa whistled through the car window as we rushed rapidly away from the culture shock – and sticker shock – of Notting Hill. Awkwardly edging through an impromptu roadblock, a few wrong turns extended our ride and our stress level – why didn’t the driver know his way? I calmed myself with the vague familiarity of similar first night discomfort in other worldly places born of dust and smoke and sweat. Trying to memorize the path into our new neighborhood, Fadema, became futile as the maze of Accra city planning revealed itself turn by turn. The roads became dirt and rock, narrower and twistier until we pulled up in front of Auntie Philo’s, matron of the compound that would become base camp for the next several weeks. Reeking of anxious excitement, we drank the proffered beer, locked down the cameras and tried for sleep.
Day two. Sleep did not come so much. More a distant waiting for morning and the unknown, finally shutting down the racing brain at 3:30am. Muted Muslim prayer chants from a nearby mosque began at 4. Birdsong next, overtaken by the rhythmic swish of a broom in the street and the washing of unseen pots, pans and bedclothes. To cross the road from our side of the compound to the main house, one must first traverse an open sewer. Treading carefully, we note that the small shop Philo runs in front of the house is called ‘He Cares’. Somehow, this offers protection and comfort to our otherwise atheist sensibilities.
Later. It’s still the first full day and we’ve been here weeks. The sky goes in and out of grey blue, punctuated with the smells of smoky cooking, cooked carburetors, smoldering trash burn off and reactive streams of sewage flowing through trenches of various depth and width along the roadsides. Food is folly, a preponderance of prefab yogurt snacks and politely offered fishfoul soup, politely forced down with plenty of rice and a double dose of acidophilus. Somewhere across this swarming mass of city is the sea. Between here and that distant shore are buildings containing easier means of replenishing nutrients and communication connections. Our secondary mission will be to find them. Our immediate task is to roll out for George and Sammy’s shop on La Pas road.
La Pas. Along this chaotic bramble of tarmac exists a reminiscent pattern mirroring every other downtrodden municipality of the globe trying to bootstrap itself into second world status. Languages may vary and the tonal hue of sun-baked skin may range widely but some things are indelibly, inexorably the same. To wit: mid-traffic hawking of toilet paper, chewing gum and bags of purified water proffered by young men clutching greasy wads of local currency. Row after row of unfinished cinderblock and rebar two story buildings, skirted at the ground floor by steel folding doors painted to reflect the goods and services provided in each cube. This set back from the sealed road and buffered by a dirt and debris no-mans land dotted with delivery trucks, swerving drop taxis, hire phone stands, clapboard shanties plying warm sodas of unfamiliar name, the odd grill of corn or dried fish, fly ridden rotting fruit, polyvinyl water cisterns, furniture on pallets and the occasional darting goat or clucking cock. Before each slab and steel cube sit half a dozen young men chatting over television entrails, copper fittings or a selection of cel phone faceplates. Shop signs are hand lettered mis-spelled aberrations of western pop references or out-right hieroglyphics, unrecognizable beneath layers of soot even to born and raised denizens of whichever Gotham we’re discussing. In this case, the Gotham in question is the Abeka region of Accra, but it might as well be Lopburi, Managua, Georgestown or Guernavaca. Homogeny is the price paid by the mollified corners of the world trying to look and act like everything is okay; as seen on TV. Globalization is the race to the bottom of the barrel, or looking down the barrel of the long gun, or both. The shop-keeps all shod their feet the world over in closed-toe sandals of dubious leather and staff their stores with dusty kneed men in baggy denim shorts and bootleg sports team kit. Doesn’t matter if it’s Africa, Mexi or SE Asia, everyone somewhere needs a pink clip-on cover for last year’s Nokia nock-off.
Accra, and Ghana as a whole, is unique in that most of its people are fairly well educated (by relative comparison). Primary education is a state mandate. There are more bookstores than cinemas in Accra, and most residents speak at least three languages – their native village tongue (there are 60 languages spoken in Ghana), English and Twi – the accepted universal dialect of the big city. The potential, one can easily fantasize, is certainly pointed in favor of the hopeful public. There seems to be two things working against them. They are taught both in school and at home under strict discipline of the switch, the lash and the fist. This renders the concept of thinking for yourself a rather mute point. Status quo is to be content to wait and be told what to do. Or expect a free ride from a passing NGO or rich uncle. The other obstruction is good ol’ Yankee materialism. Folks here seem to live just a hair-in-hand beyond their means, in a perfect impersonation of our indebted Western society. Ghanaian economics offers no credit cards, but wealth is still measured in the goods you possess. Even without the aid of Visa, the man on the street needs his Beckham jersey and the latest knock-off footgear to put on proper appearances.
Back to the business at hand. The shipment of bikes we loaded up back in Boston two months ago is stuck somewhere at sea, on it's way slowly to the port at Tema. Customs here can predictably be unpredictable, difficult and possibly a bit jumpy. After receiving some good news that we will be allowed to film the unloading of the bicycles at the shop, we get the balancing bad news that it could take a week or more for the goods to clear the harbor. Other developments include the revelation that our host in the village where the bikes are intended to be distributed will be traveling up country for the next six days, out of communication range. It would appear that our mission is stalled in Accra for at least a week.
Return To The Land of Plenty
After five weeks, we're back in Los without a single post from the field to the site. C'est la vie. Ghana was a successful mission, but I was woefully lacking in time, patience and mostly the ability to post. Suffice to say, there are many stories to tell and they will start to appear here soon. The days we had to wait for situations beyond our control seemed to last months. The days we were able to work began at dawn and quickly accellerated until night. There were days of flooding, and days of heat, smog and sweat. There is much data to process and regurgitate: 60 odd pages of notes, observations, rants, lists, poems, proverbs and questions. 37 rolls of film wishfully washing through a development bath at the lab across town. 300mb of digital snaps. Approximately 40 hours of video to digitize and start editting into the film we set out to make, now more accurately to become the film we actually shot. We met many wonderful people who took us in, took care of us and taught us a lot. We saw much hardship, and much joy from small things. Little giant steps. And most important to the overall scope of the mission, sixty bikes were delivered to sixty villagers who's lives will now be changed for the better by a simple, human powered vehicle. They learned to fix simple problems and identify bigger ones so they can keep the machines working for them. Some even learned to ride for the first time. The friendships we forged are a reward which more than outweighs the exhaustion and relief to be back on familiar ground. Check back for details in the days ahead. Viva.
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