HumanPoweredTransport

Ghana Chronicles Pt. 10

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.

Ghana Chronicles Pt. 9

Left out.  I’ve neglected to mention three notable events that took place in the past few days.  We spent time with Nurse Leticia as she ran an inoculations program for newborns in neighboring villages.  This will be the primary need for her bicycle, as each week she must walk dozens of miles bearing several bags of supplies to set up these mini-clinics.  Village mothers and sisters bring the infants to the nurse, who set’s up camp under the shade of some trees or in the case of rain, under the protection of a school or church roof.  The babies are weighed, checked for illness, and given booster shots and nutritional supplements.  The mothers are educated in the care of their children.  The program has helped bring the infant mortality rate in the region way down.  We documented this particular day again in the rain, under the eves of a local school to the beat of the children’s morning march and assembly.
We also followed Faustina in to Sege on her daily trek to secondary school.  She usually takes a taxi, which costs a large chunk of her mother’s wages and can often take hours as it clatters over the broken roads.  With the road washed out, even the taxi is not an option.  The taxi poses other threats too, as nefarious drivers can try to charge more than just money for the ride.  Her only other option is to walk, an even longer and more taxing proposition fraught with its own potential dangers.  The largest problem posed by her current means of getting to school is that she is often late and always exhausted by the effort, leaving her with short attention when it comes to the morning lessons.  On a bike she hopes to regain some time and energy for her first classes, as well as the opportunity to save the taxi fare towards continuing her education.
One evening we grabbed the bikes and another of our young hosts and set off on an hour-long ride to the coast, where we visited one of the local fishing fleets.  The boats are like giant war canoes, and the village itself is reminiscent of a pirate’s warren straight out of a dime-store novel.  Or maybe just a third-world Oxnard, I can’t decide.  The vessels are beached along the high-tide line, colorful bows exposed and bearing ironic names like Liverpool and Magye Mae.  The light is fantastic and the ride does us a world of energizing good. 

Workshops.  It is difficult for the tortoise to climb the mountain; another Shargy proverb.  Morning on the day of the first VBP session kicks off with an ice-pick-to-the-eyes headache, screaming children who are probably being beaten or worse, three visitors before 6am and a lot of confusing issues to resolve before the workshops begin.  Leticia’s boss is being a hardass and threatening to fire her if she attends the seminar.  We surmise that the man is pissed he’s not getting a bike, so Moses and David go off to try and smooth things out.
The night before, Sammy and George arrived with the bikes piled high in a blue panel van.  The evening was filled with ‘un-flattening’ the bikes, a process involving straightening the handlebars, raising the seat and putting the pedals back on.  The local mechanics were enlisted to assist, providing George and Sam the opportunity to assess the skills of the neighborhood wrenches.   While this was going on Moses and David were fielding an almost constant stream of people who now wanted to be added to the limited list of 60 bicycle recipients.  The tact and decorum they employed to say no was impressive. 
We had arranged for our four subjects to all participate in the first day of the seminars so that we could film them all together, and also so we could spend the following two days trailing them around on their new bikes.   George ran the first half of the day in Ga, so I couldn’t understand a thing he was saying, but after a buffet lunch of warm cola and glucose biscuits he finished the day in English, leaving me rolling on the floor with some of his jokes.  I can only imagine how funny he had been in the local dialect.   Day one ended with a lottery method of getting the bikes to everyone, which met with a fair amount of grumbling, particularly from Mr. Iyam.   Over the years of running this program, Sammy and George have determined that the only fair way to distribute the bikes is with a draw of numbers at the end of the class.  Otherwise, if they give people the bikes at the start of the day no one will pay attention to the lessons, not to mention favoritism and possible violence can erupt.  They make a big point out of mentioning that the behavior of this first group of participants will go a long way towards deciding if the program will return to the village next year.  As a result everyone is well behaved, and even the slightly drunken excitement of Mr. Iyam tones down and goes with the flow.  Once all the bikes have been picked everyone is giddy with the joy of their new rigs and we are giddy knowing that our efforts have been worthwhile.

Ghana Chronicles Returns

After months of sloth and slack, a little prompting from Branigan sr. has motivated the promised but ignored conclusion to the Ghana Chronicles.  For a recap of pt's 1-7, click here.  And for new readers, all underlined passages can be clicked to link for related or extended information.

Part 8.
Return.  Wilisto is reading the revolutionary Latin American writer Paolo Freire, washing clothes, clowning with the girls and partaking of our food.  It’s good to be back in David’s warm spartan home, knowing that the bikes will soon arrive and the workshops will kick off the final stage of this journey.  The room is clean and warm, stocked with musical instruments, books and cooking supplies.  A storage area holds the tools David uses to tend his small vegetable garden, and two cisterns collect water for bathing.   The home is high-end on the village scale and was built specifically for the rotating Peace Corps volunteers who come through.  It has electricity, a tin roof and a composting toilet, all luxuries in this part of the country. David is still off at an orientation seminar for new volunteers, so we have his place to ourselves; that being a relative term considering how many locals are visiting us on a 24hr basis.  One of these young folks is Shargy, son of the community elder Moses.  Shargy looks like a teenage Miles Davis.  He speaks in proverbs and asks probing questions that at first are a bit unsettling, but quickly disarming and humorous.  Here’s a Shargy (which by the way is pronounced ‘shaggy’) proverb: Butterflies should not think of themselves as birds.  Indeed.
We go to sleep anticipating an increase in activity as we plan to follow Faustina and Nurse Leticia through their daily routines over the coming days.  Wili will help us teach Leticia to ride a bike for us and we will follow Faustina on her daily journey to school.
As I drift off into the haze of half-sleep that I’ve become accustomed to here, I mull over something that Shargy said to me just before he took leave for the night; in order for Africa to move forward, it must let go of it’s traditions and history that hold it’s people back.  An interesting insight from a boy living in a small village.

Riding Lessons.  We set off early for the clinic to rendezvous with Nurse Leticia, and already the rains threaten.  Just how much of a threat would be revealed later in the day.  By the time we reach the nurses quarters, a light drizzle has begun, but Leticia is undeterred.  I loan Wili my parka and set up under the eves an unused storage building just behind the main clinic offices, affording a view of the open plain between Leticia’s residence and the hospital.  The lessons begin and at first it’s a bit comical, as would be any adult learning to ride a bike for the first time.  Leticia is fiercely determined, and as the rain increases so does her resolve.  At one point during their efforts the volume of rain became severe, so there was a break in the action to collect water in basins and fill the storage reservoirs for the coming dry season.  Tricia pitched in to help with a large washtub balanced on her head, and everyone freaked  - it’s too heavy too much first time carry on head!  She stubbornly insisted so they gave her a smaller bucket and the water brigade commenced.  When the reservoir was full the cycling lessons resumed. 
Amazingly, we realize that she plans to master the machine in just a few short hours.  Pausing to catch her breath she explains to me that the puddles motivate her not to fall because she does not want to get muddy.  She only tumbles twice and in fact does get the physical mechanics of cycling down in small time.  Wilisto is as amazed as we are, telling me it took him days to learn to ride as a child.   It has been raining with increasing ferocity and as a pack of shouting children run by we learn that one of the levees has broken, meaning fish are flopping around waiting to be caught by hand.  Leticia admonishes them not to run a certain way because the flooding also means that the pit where the clinic discards it’s used needles has also overflowed.  What the fuck!?! We think and say out loud, but there is nothing we can do.  This is Africa, and even though the nurses carry the proper boxes for disposing of sharps, apparently the next step is to just dump the full boxes together in a pit that get’s burned once a week.  The mud swirling around our feet takes on a new toxic menace. 
On the way back to our village, we discover just how dangerous this storm has been.  The same levee that provided fish for the masses and flooded the toxic disposal pit has also washed out the only road.  Four feet of rushing water blocks our path, so we turn to embark on a two-hour journey the long way round.  We’re riding bikes with all our gear on our backs, which is barely comfortable on short distances.  The crowd at the breeched road begins shouting wildly – we can’t ride the long way or we will surely be consumed in the even heavier rains bearing down.  Everyone grabs our gear from us and starts ferrying us across.  All of the good Dr. Spiria’s lectures about avoiding rivers and standing water wash through my head as I wade into the current and make the push to the other side.  I take a quick inventory of the cuts and scrapes on my lower body and wonder which ones will get infected first.  At least we’ve got the industrial strength portable pharmacy back at David’s. 
Soaked and sequestered back at the Peace Corpsman’s house, we take stock of our situation.  The small video camera is DOA, having been carelessly dropped by me in my haste to move out of the rain earlier.  At least it will lighten the load of the camera pack.  Clothing has been taking around three days to line dry in the humidity.  Now that the air is predominantly water, ‘dry’ is a cruel joke.  We stuff our boots with old newspaper and pathetically hold the insoles over the two-burner stove.   Next up is a fun read of the medical texts in the first-aid kit.  Our toxic floodplain crossing presents a host of exciting possibilities – billharzia anyone?  We decide to play it safe and start dosing Doxycycline with diner.  With days ahead of us before we can wrap up this phase of the project, our morale is low and ebbing.   I think of guys like J. Michael Fay and J. Craig Venter, slogging across the jungles of the world trying to cure the planet and I think – I’m a pussy.  Meanwhile it rains and rains and rains.

Celebrate The Cause

Whilst y'all might have already blown the bank on that new set of bling wheels or whatever material chachi you wanted for Christmas, we here at the HPT HQ thought it'd be helpful to post a link dump of some worthy causes to support this holiday season.  If you need a gift for Auntie Mae or just want to squeeze in a few more tax deductions before the end of '05, here's some worthy sites to check out, handily grouped in categories.  If nothing else, educate y'osef with the knowledge they present.  This is by no means a complete list, nor should you take the information on these sites as gospel.  We've researched where we can in an attempt to insure these links are to legit organizations that practice what they preach.  Don't just take our word for it though, dig deeper if you have doubts, or find your own causes to support.  Feel free to send us any new links you think we might be interested in and at the end of the day - Go ride your bike!

Free Press.  There were over 100 journalists killed in the line of duty this year, and another 1000 or so are dissapeared or imprisoned for their work.  Here's some organizations that help keep journo's alive and uncensored and some others that continuously work to provide truth in media.  The Commitee To Protect Journalists works tirelessly to keep journalists safe. Reporters Without Borders does more of the same. MediaChannel is a watchdog website that strives to maintain a balanced and fair press. Witness is an organization that works to document human rights abuses around the world. Accuracy In Media is another watchdog of mass media. Global Risk Awareness trains journalists to stay safe in hostile environments.  The News Safety Institute does the same.
Africa: Regular readers know that we spent a chunk of the summer in Ghana working to document the distribution of reclaimed bicycles in rural villages as sustainable transportation sollutions.  There are similar programs in other parts of Africa (and the world).  There are also bigger problems in Africa, as anyone can tell you.  Here's a few sites that we think highly of.  Disclaimer - we could fill pages with links to organizations working in Africa, this is by no means a comprehensive listing.  In fact, it is a drop in the ocean.  Project Darfur is set up to keep attention focused on the attrocities that continue in Sudan.  Eric Reeves is a professor who has made Sudan his focus.  His site provides valuable information unavailable elsewhere.  Zimbabwe is being raped and pillaged by it's leader.  These exiles are trying to get the truth out. In Ghana we worked with Village Bicycle Project.  Other likeminded organizations include Hans Rey's Wheels4Life and Pedals for Progress. The Re-Cycle crew in the UK helps VBP and others, as does Bikes Not Bombs in the US.
On the home front:  Education, literacy and opportunity for the youth is of primary importance to keeping democracy and freedom alive.  The Campaign For America's Future strives to find improvement in the school system.  Jonathan Kozol has writen about sollutions to improve our schools for decades; he helped form The Center For Education Reform to carry the torch.  Radio Rookes provides a voice on public radio for teenage journalists.
Global outreach.  The work of Doctors Without Borders is paramount to the survival of countless citizens of this planet.  Landmines maim or kill countless innocent civilians - adopt-a-minefield helps clean up the danger.  Our environment is in danger, fortunately there is a defense council in place to fight for it.
Bikes:  Again, there's tons of organizations out there advocating for cyclists or working with cycling towards the greater good.  Here's a couple we like.  The Bicycle Messenger Emergency Fund helps provide heathcare for injured couriers and the IMBA fights for our right to ride off road whle maintaining the ecosystems around the trails.  Viva!

Where Ya Been?

Here's a cool site that let's you create a map of all the places you've visited in the world.  They've got the same thing for states. 

Nat Wrap

Pagey got food poisoning and still finished 3rd!  More on that in a minute.  Katie Compton can't race the UCI field all year in keeping with the rules of the Paralympics, where she's a stoker for a blind tandem team.  Once again she stormed from the back of the pack and killed it - 2 time champ.  The seven year itch didn't work for Powers as Lil' Wells the Younger claimed the under-twenty-three shirt.  And only the wise fools at Drunk Cyclist predicted Todd Wells the Conqueror would take the elite men's crown.  Tree Farm faired well in second, Johnson was a respecable fifth with only one foot clipped in all race, and everyone had fun in the snow.  Dale Knapp took out the Amgen ex-pat in 40 up masters, and the rest of the categories wound up pretty much as expected.  Great prospects to come from the junior ranks, and now our big boys and girls will recover through the holiday before shipping out to Europia to tackle the world's best. 
Now, we mentioned here before that Page had some interesting sponsorship issues going on, and we'll try to clarify now.  At Nationals, he was sporting the Liberty Seguros kit of fallen Vuelta champ Roberto Heras.  Liberty was the title sponsor of this year's edition of the National Championships, so they basically ponied up the funds for him to drop the Milan and Igorre World Cup races and come back over to defend his title.  Therefore, he wore their team kit instead of his usual Cervelo outfit, or his Colavita strip.  See, in domestic road racing, Jon's sponsored by Colavita, who ride Felt bikes.  In European cross races, Jon's sponsored by Cervelo.  Thing is, they haven't had a bike ready for him in two years!  Last year he raced custom Hot Tubes frames with a Cervelo paintjob.  This year, he's riding Mipozo frames without even covering the logos.  The irony is that Colavita's bike sponsor, Felt, makes a fine cross bike, but neither company pays him to race cx so he's forced to find a seperate set of sponsors for this part of his season.  According to his web correspondant Jerry, Cervelo hasn't done much to get any bikes ready for Jon, so he had to rely on his old Belgian training partner and friend  Mario DeClerq for his rigs this year. 
In our opinion, Cervelo is really missing the boat.  Cross is huge in the US right now - look at how many entries they had at Nationals!  The market is hungry for good cx bikes, and Cervelo is already widely popular thanks to team CSC.  It stands to reason that the combo of a Cervelo-made cross bike marketed under the legs of the best male cx racer to come out of North America would sell like hotcakes, but obviously they don't think that way.  It's too bad Jon suffered food poisoning the night before the big race and wasn't able to defend his title, but jeez - third place against a strong field with a wrecked internal system is pretty damn impressive.  He's poised to have his best season yet on the Euro circut, so hopefully a smarter sponsor will see the value in backing him next year.  Viva Jon, and viva all cyclocross psychos - the classiest acts in the sport!

Natty Titles, Cross Champs

Cyclocross Nationals are a comin' this weekend.  Ryan Trebon has some interesting predictions over on Velonews, and you can always checkout his blog for a rant or two.  Pagey has been riding hot all year - HPT has been conversing with Jon's webmaster about his bike situation - namely, his title sponsor not stepping up and making a bike for him!  Details to follow in another post.  The ladies are riding hot - esp. the Bella's.  Juniors, U23's and Masters will all be well contested.  Elite men could see some upsets in the form of Tim Johnson and Chris Horner.  The biggest factor of all the races is going to be the RI weather.  Snow, cold, wet, cold, more snow, wind - it's gonna decide the fate of many a crosser - especially those making the trek from the West Coast.  Another factor will be jetlag.  With racers coming in from all corners of the country and across the Atlantic, how they handle the adjustment to the East Coast time zone could be just as important as how they prepare for the hostile weather.  Viva!

Fo'Sale

As regular readers will know, the Squadra here at HPT is fond of the word 'omerta'.  The code of silence has many implications in the seedy crime underworld of mafiosi and corrupt cops, but it also applies to our favorite sport.  Doping has long been kept under the rug by a secret pact between riders, managers and owners, so we celebrate our protest with this - an offering of the t-shirt variety.  The text reads 'When you're not positive, omerta guarantees results".  Think of it as our version of 'dopers suck'.
Just in time for the holidays, available in four colors (yellow, grey, sky blue and pea green) and two sizes (L & XL).  These are limited edition shirts produced in collaboration with Goodfear.  Eventually they will be available in the Goodfear shop, but for now they can be exclusively obtained by contacting us here through the comments section of this post.  We'll get back to you with price and shipping details. 

Lanceypants

The good folks in Ohio who craft the beautiful Gaansari steel rigs have a cool fixed-gear thang goin' on that they useta call 'skidstrong' but now call 'Fisso'.  Why the name change?  As they explain on their blog, the exhaulted grand dragon of American cycling hisself got all in a twist over skidstrong being too similar to livestrong.  All due respect to cancer survivors, but boo f'n hoo.  Wonder what his highness thinks of the drunks over at 'livewrong'.  I love that the Ohioans call him Lanceypants.  Viva!

Slow'em Down

Traffic calming has reached new levels of absurdity in the UK.  Viva.