Chickens. On the morning of the second workshop we join up with Seth and ride with him to work along the same route that had previously required two taxis and a bit of hoofing. It’s a forty-click ride so I set the helmet-cam on stun and rally to keep up with our hard charging protagonist. When we get to the paved road, he’s really lighting it up so the ever vigilant Wilisto stays on pace with Tricia while I kick in the afterburners to keep up with Seth. This kid’s got kick and I’d hate to see what would happen to international road racing if Ghana ever fielded a team. Actually, I’d love it, because he’s laughing the whole way and it would rock to see a bunch of ‘roided out Euro’s getting their asses kicked by a jovial West African chicken farmer. Obviously in this case, the bike is a roaring success. As an added bonus, when we get to the entrance to the farm we encounter David Peckham, who has been riding his own bike on a fact-finding follow up mission from Accra through several other villages where the VBP programs had previously run. The man is incredible in his strength and tenacity. He’s also incredibly sunburned, which seems against his otherwise prepared-for-anything character. We gladly pass him a tube of SPF and welcome him as we ride back to Songorniya together. He will stay a few more days, reviewing the last workshop with his partners Sammy and George before heading to Gabon where his teenage daughter still resides.
Assessment. We play Russian roulette with mosquitoes and conversation, malaria cockroaches and milk stout. Fufu Banku and groundnut stew. Beneficiaries of the hospitality of strangers, the friendship of human kindness and lessons learned and taught through osmosis of culture. Our helplessly open minds ever in awe; we the members of so called developed societies, consistently proven infantile and lost by the old true logic and juju science of African proverbs and generational skill. Hiking out of the village loaded with all our gear the morning after the final workshop of the trip, George wheels up behind us offering a ride to the tro-tro stand, saving us a three click trudge. We pile into his hatchback at around the same spot where the night before we watched a thirteen year old boy head out into the field with a sprayer full of insecticide banned in the ‘first world’. Barefoot, bare handed and with no face protection, he worked through the night treating the crops of his father or uncle or neighbor. Crammed into the tro-tro between women bringing clams and groundnuts to market in Accra, 30 kilos of camera gear crushing my lap, I smile at the clattering road. Africa is the most complicated and rewarding place I’ve been. The politics, social practices and business acumen are boggling to say the least. As Westerners we find it alien, bucking common sense and easy to become frustrated by it all. Even the locals appear perplexed – they are victims of globalization while at the same time craving the lifestyle of televised America and Europe. Every documentary changes us; for that brief period of time spent filming we are both microscope and telescope – a super lens absorbing, magnifying, refracting and distorting all that we encounter. Ghana, with all it’s mixed messages and juxtaposed ironies will change us both. The trip has strengthened our relationship, furthered our creative drive and partially fulfilled a giant goal. We are on the way home, but we are only one third of the way to completion. Accra burns our eyes with dust, exhaust, gutter stench and anticipation. The flooding we experienced in the village has also struck the city, and the now dried patina of shumutz from the receding water creates a cracked layer of debris that mirrors the remainder of this film’s journey. It must be reviewed, written, edited and eventually concluded by yet another trip to Africa and the villages we only just left behind. The only way to end the project appropriately is to return in a few months or a year and see just how sustained the sustainable transportation we brought truly is.
Contradictions. The head of the Songorinya water and sanitation committee lives in front of the filthiest pig slop of stagnant water in his village. Women are empowered to acquire bicycles, yet still some of them are just stand-ins for brothers or husbands who could not meet the quota and will take the bikes in their place. Chiefs and capos of the villages do not actively participate in the wellbeing and maintenance of the communities. Education is mandatory, but children are still likely to be raped and beaten at home. Dams are built on high ground, roads low. Students are everywhere and the teachers are on strike. Ghanaians pride themselves on their democracy and name major streets after neighboring country’s dictators. Latrines are built while shitting fields prevail. Environmental monitors from the government cite in fractious households yet do nothing to promote solutions that seem readily available and desperately obvious. Money is counted by the thickness of the fold of bills in ones hand; yet the individual notes hold almost no value. Arts and crafts are made with great care for tourists while basic household needs are made shoddily. Even in the capitol, most houses do not have toilets. Sanitation is a major neglected issue while related diseases are treated with expensive drugs and ad campaigns. There are two Ghana’s, two Africa’s – one the domain of the wealthy, secure and ostentatious, mimicking traditional ‘big men’ and worshiping European standards. Others roil in the squalor of second-class neighborhoods reaching beyond their means for a taste of the romanticized dream. The remainder lives in shantytowns or on the streets, their own enclosed fiefdoms of doom. None manage to touch each other. The top rarely reaches down to pull up the middle; the bottom never reaches up at all. Each is it’s own enclosure within the larger alienation of Africa. Globalization creates a race for the bottom of the pile, suppressing and oppressing by design. What would it take to manufacture bicycles in Africa rather than importing Western discards? Could recycling be implemented as an industry in every country where poor sanitation is an epidemic? My bloodshot brain stews over these questions as we freeze in the international airport, waiting forever for our flight to London, our flight towards home. In the waiting lounge, one last shot at malaria circles my beer warily, dodging my feeble swipes of arms already dotted with worrisome bites. The duty free is chockablock with the requisite giant Toblerone bars, booze, cologne and ‘authentic’ trinkets. We are battle-worn, blistered, chaffed and mildewy. We smell of dirt, soot and sweat, even in our 'clean' travel clothes. We have forty hours of video and a hundred odd rolls of film to safeguard through at least two more security check points. We are again one, a team against the odds, proud and anxious to see the fruits of our efforts scroll across the editing screen.
Aftermath. Weeks after our return, Tricia was diagnosed with Typhoid – one of the few diseases we had opted not to be vaccinated for. She fought through it with her usual strength and stoic resolve; I’m not sure I’d have been so resilient. I learn from her every day. Editorial has been painful. The footage is lovely, but the story remains hidden from us in a morass of bad decisions and lessons learned. After months of backing the wrong horse we’ve got a new editor on board who can help, but the answers of what exactly we have and more importantly what we are missing elude us. Still we draw closer – no one said this would be easy. The film is finally materializing in small doses before our eyes. Idealistic visions of returning to Ghana in September and completing the film by December have been shelved by a combination of ‘real’ work and reality setbacks. A return to Ghana is inevitable, but what will we find there? David Branigan’s tour of duty is soon over, and he will have returned to the States before we can muster the second phase of filming. David Peckham had sworn to never return to Africa after a serious battle with malaria contracted in Gabon. Recently though, he seems to have found his strength and love for the mission – a recent email puts him on a plane back to Accra early in the new year. The Atsu’s continue to hold down the corner, we get fleeting email reports from Papayo reminding us to not forget them – as if we ever could. As for Wilisto, Rejoyce, Shargy, Seth, Nurse Leticia and the rest of our friends in Songorniya, only our own return voyage can tell. We hope it’s soon – family and work have us tied to the States at the moment, and we would like the edit to progress further before we head back, but who knows. I promise dear readers that you will be kept posted and I thank you for following along.
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