The River

It’s hard to know where to begin.  It is 2:00am here in Ghana, and my head is swimming and every part of me is a mix of salty and sticky.  The guest house room would be dark except for my laptop screen and the eerie pulsating glow of blue, amber, and green LEDs all shouting that they are happy to be charging the lithium batteries in the GoPro, drone, camera, gimble, and battery banks.  The last two days have been exhausting and exhilarating.  I’ll wind the clock back a bit and catch everyone up.

Yesterday evening, right before golden hour, Joshua G, Joshua B, Beth, and I drove 40 minutes away to a small river town to gather some photos and enjoy the scenery.   We weaved through two police barricades and politely waved to the soldiers with guns.  It’s not a good idea to be driving alone in this more remote area of Ghana late in the evening.  A driver might encounter an unofficial roadblock — which can be less pleasant than a grin and a wave.  Our plan was to return by 6:30.

Our first stop was a large toll bridge spanning the White Volta river.   For 20 cents we passed across the bridge and did some safari driving down the terrain to reach a broad, flat rocky shoreline.  It provided a great place to launch the drone and get some video of local fisherman.  The river provides food, water, and transportation.  Unfortunately, it is often a sewer as well.  Chicago and its river, thousands of miles northwest are not so dissimilar in this regard.

The Harmattan was still filling the entire sky with a faint orange haze.  The effect was that of an overcast day without crisp shadows.  Adding to the natural dust hanging in the air is the smoke from fires.  The underbrush is often burned in the dry season.  Several reasons are given.  First, it drives natural game animals from hiding.  Hunters using traditional weapons wait for their prey to emerge.  Another reason given is the fear of snakes.  Walking routes that have tall grasses can be of serious concern.  Finally, the tan and brown grasses are burned to clear the ground for planting.  We have come across four or five grass fires on this trip.  It can be a bit of a shock to round a corner and see flames blowing your way.  Quickly scanning the area, however, I realize that none of the Ghanaians seem concerned, and so we just keep walking.

The river is broad and muddy.  Staring in the still water I can see 2 or 3 inches through the brown water and a minnow or two darting around.  Looking back up the banks, I can only imagine how the river rages during the rainy season.  The banks in the photo below are probably completely underwater.

A local fisherman, with a broad smile and kind face walks over to us to greet us.  I extend my hand and we welcome each other.  “You don’t see any fishing now, because they go out in the very early morning and in the evening.”  He describes a sandbar where the water is only 6” deep.  As the dry season wears on, the shrinking river provides shallow areas where the fish are driven into nets.  Our fisherman is proud of his new boat, and indeed looking at the flotilla of sunken craft he does seem to have a particularly good ride.  After setting up the drone for a short test flight, our new friend offers to go out into the river and paddle, so we can film him.  We are both grinning at each other.  He is happy to demonstrate his boat and skills, and we are excited to get some video.  “Would you like to ride?”.  Hmmm… now that is a great question.  I wonder if he has a Coast Guard approved PFD for one of us to wear?  Since we are shooting some video, we decide that it would be much better to let him paddle solo, which he does with skill and strength.

The movie below includes some of the drone clips I edited together.

The Market

Hollywood loves the rich colors and exotic spices of an African marketplace.  It is an ideal setting for an exciting chase scene with overturned tables, angry shop keepers, and colorful wares.  Indiana Jones frantically runs through a market filled with patterned rugs, neatly dressed Africans, and large baskets to search for his girlfriend.  Aladdin and the princess enjoy a marketplace getaway in Disney’s new retelling of the tale.  Yet even without a chase scene, a real African marketplace is an explosion of color, activity, and rich smells.  I could spend pages of text trying to describe the experience.  In this area of Ghana, the once or twice a week market is where nearly all goods are sold.  Yes, there are a few roadside shops, but they focus on small consumables – water, mobile phone credits, rice, gasoline, street food.  The marketplace is where pigs and sheep are bought and sold, clothes purchased, and every kind of farm-fresh food and colorful houseware available.  

We are exploring the marketplace just to take in the vibrant colors, textures, and at times pungent odors.  If only we had time to barter for some hand-woven scarfs or blankets.  Wow. 

Small children walk around the marketplace with snack trays balanced on their head.  Two adorably cute kids froze when they saw us.  Their eyes popped open in amazement.  Tiny faces flash fear,  apprehension, then delight as I grin and wink at them.  After a bit of encouragement, they paused for a photo – fruit in front and ginger shyly behind.

Fresh foods, spices, colorfully packaged candies and even carefully barbequed and seasoned dog are available at the market.  It is a movable Walmart.  

We slowly walked through the market with the video gimbal and then shot some drone video.  If you would like a small glimpse of the market and a chance to experience a real African market, without Spielberg  or Disney, watch the videos below.

Audio Recording

The next morning, we prepared to begin the audio recordings.  For a few minutes, maybe three, after the cold bucket shower and before finding my clothes hanging on our makeshift line spanning the room, my body is not struggling against the heat.  But as soon as we emerge from our room and walk to get breakfast, I can feel the pavement, the walls, and the air beginning to warm in the early morning sun.  This is not even the hottest or most uncomfortable time in Ghana.  Yet it is brutal.  I drink water mixed with Gatorade mix, and yet feel dehydrated all day, rarely needing to take a bio break.  I seem to be inside an enormous dehydrator determined to slowly desiccate me.  When I pause for a drink, I gulp down half a liter.  Yet it somehow it is not enough.

We begin the morning with community health.  In the Gonja language, our first speaker explains the signs, symptoms, and risk factors for Tuberculosis.  We move on to AIDS, and later diabetes – or as it is translated to Gonja – Sugar Sickness. 

Later in the afternoon, we hear church members retell their life-changing experiences after deciding to follow Christ.  They are powerful and moving accounts.

However, by 1:00, the heat has started to take its toll on not just me, but the computers as well.  While running the audio recording software I realize that 3/4ths of my CPUs are busy in a kernel task.  Frustrated, I try to reboot, shut down system services, and prowl the process list looking for offenders.  Finally, I get a bit of networking and do a Google search.  It seems the MacBook idles processors when the CPU gets too warm.  Essentially, my laptop has hit the Thermal Design Point – the maximum heat that can be dissipated before CPU cores are taken offline.  Ugh.  We begin a complex laptop swap.  I set my laptop down and let it cool while I use Beth’s laptop.  Then after a few more audio tracks, her laptop begins to slow and I switch back to mine.  Finally, while shooting some iPhone video during a track my phone shuts down with a temperature warning across the screen.  As I try and remove it from the case, to help it cool, I realize the phone is too hot to handle, so I have to lay it on the table, and with a bandanda, pry the leather cover off to help it cool.

Fortunately, we finished our recordings at the same time our equipment finished.  We are going to need a better heat strategy.  I’m light-headed and wilting as well.  My new Aorta seems to be doing well, but the rest of me is done.  Maybe we all had a bit of heat stroke — computers and people. Beth seems to be handling the heat well, and while I’m struggling with computers and the heat, she is enjoying getting to know the nurses and pastors.  She has carefully organized the audio tracks, photos, and names of each person helping today.  She is amazing.  We make a good team. I get light headed and sweat, and she organizes and plans.

After we break for a late lunch, we cool off in our rooms and pass out for an hour.  

Choir!

I’ll have to admit, that as we began to pack up at about 5:30 for a drive to a local church, my body lacked energy.  I drove us across town to a small church, where the choir began to trickle in as we plugged in cables, ran power cords, and set up tripods.   

My spirit changed, however, as soon as the choir started singing.  Wow.  Hearing the beautiful Gonja voices, raised in praise, brought me back to life.  Track after track, their original songs filled the harshly lit florescent space of the church.  

The lighting for the video below is poor.  Please see past the acoustics of a tin roof, cement floor, and the glaring lights.  See their joy.  It was near the end of their session, about 13 tracks in all, when they decided to start dancing while they sang.  I just happened to have the iPhone running.  It is 8 minutes long, longer than our modern attentions spans. Longer than a twitter rant, but this kind of video is joy, and well worth the watch. About 2 minutes from the end they really have fun.  Wow. It took a lot of bandwidth at the roadside, under a cell tower. Enjoy!