Ghana's Great Potential

April 8, 2013

My mind is buzzing tonight as I write this blog post. I'm not sure what triggered it, maybe a cumulative wonderful experience here in Ghana so far, but I've realized that this trip is nearing its end. Had you asked me if I was excited for it to be over a month ago, I might have leaned toward a positive answer. It's a sensory overload to say the least. At this moment, however, the thought of leaving this new life scares me. I feel an odd sense of fear of what I used to know. 

Don't get me wrong, it's not a dread of going back to the States, it's more of an unease about what it'll be like. I can't get terribly dramatic because I'll only have been gone four months by the time May 4 rolls around, but with everything we've experienced and everything we've been through, I wonder how I will perceive the place I've called home for almost exactly 25 years straight. Will I feel a sense of comfort? Will I settle right back in? Or, will I have an itch, a longing for something else.

Matt and I thought this trip would be a giant answer to all of our questions of the future. We thought the transition would make us realize what's next for us. Instead, we have more options and more questions. It's fantastically frustrating and irritatingly exciting. Or maybe the other way around...I don't know yet.

Today was an all over good day. We slept on the ship last night as it repositioned from Takoradi to Tema overnight. The ship arrived in port around 8am while we ate breakfast on the back deck. Our ship maneuvered its place in next to the National Geographic Explorer ship. We all wondered what it would be like to be on that voyage around the world.

Matt and I prepared for the Unreasonable round table event that we were going to shoot today in Accra with the rest of the team. We got our gear and hopped on the shuttle outside of the gangway. We met up with the rest of the crew who had travelled overland to meet the ship.  They were un-showered and had had some adventures of their own that we needed to hear about.

The shuttle took off, and we got a nice tour of Tema, the ocean and then Accra where the event was located. The shuttle took about an hour, not because of the distance but because of the traffic and very bad roads. The potholes here are impressive.

We arrived at the shuttle drop off location which is a nightclub closed down for renovations called Citizen Kofi. SAS was excited to hear that Accra's biggest night club was shut down for our stay here. Despite their desperate attempts to hide it, there are some party animals on this ship.  They give the other students and the program a bad name.  It's sad that they come all this way to go and get pass-out drunk. It's truly a select few, and there are many students who are wringing every drop of value out of the experience.  I can't imagine what it would have been like to do this trip as a student.  College is such a formative time, and this is such a life-changing experience to see the world like this.  I'm not sure I would have been ready for it when I was in college.

We grabbed taxis to the grand opening of Start-up Ghana, a new hub in Ghana that incubates entrepreneurs, much like Unreasonable, but all year round.  They just pulled together the office, painted it, furnished it and planned the event in the last three days.  We walked in and they had painted the logos of Unreasonable at Sea, the Unreasonable Institute and all of the companies that were coming to visit that day on their front wall.  It was an exciting atmosphere since they were kicking off their grand opening by inviting us in to meet with all of the entrepreneurs that they will be incubating in Ghana.  

There's a lot of exciting energy in Ghana.  They just discovered oil here in 2007, and many people fear that it will become like Nigeria with the warring over the natural resources, but as a more peaceful country and with a stable democracy for the last few years, the hub and many entrepreneurs are hoping to learn from other countries and utilize the new find for the better of the people and not just for the government and politicians to get rich.  There's a lot of corruption here, though.  At all of the check points along the roads, the police force bribes and profile people depending on who is in their vehicle.  When we were with Steve, we were stopped at a check-point and the officer made Steve pay him 2 cedi because Steve had so many white people in his car.

There were great conversations and great energy between the Unreasonable entrepreneurs and the local Ghanaians.  We were supposed to have brunch at 11am, but TIA (this is Africa) and we ate around 1:30pm.  People hung around, and they had organized round table discussions throughout the afternoon based on different topics of technology, health, start-ups and green topics.

About two hours into the event, the power went out, so the lights and air conditioning that we were enjoying were no longer.  They opened up the windows, but there was no breeze.  It immediately heated up in the building, and people started sweating.  It brought up another ongoing issue in Ghana which is the inconsistent power.  After our time in India and Myanmar, we weren't surprised.  The locals who were running the hub felt embarrassed, but we all went with it.  We understood.

At 5pm there was an hour-long break for people to mingle and get some fresh air outside.  There was a soccer game going on across the street in a big dirt field, so many of us went over and watched the teams play.  I sat and chatted with people who came by and said hello.  Everyone introduces themselves, asks your name and usually how old you are to get the conversation going.  We met many nice people.  My favorite was a painter around my age.  His art was hanging on the walls at the hub, and he has a studio where he shows and sells his art.  It's truly brilliant.  He started an NGO where he teaches young people art.  I took down his information because it would be fun to partner with them using their art in our videos.  I support anything that encourages art in young people's lives.

I really enjoyed sitting out on the front step of the hub between buzzing conversations.  I sat and watched the world go by.  It was interesting just to watch the community go about their business.  Some watched the game. Some were selling fruit and water.  Some young girls would come by every once in a while and get bags of water from a building a few houses from the hub.  A few old men chatted together on the side of the road and gave passerbys that they knew a hard time.  It was just life in Accra, and it was peaceful to just sit and watch.

A little after 6pm, our hosts had prepared the dinner tables for all of us.  They had put three candles in the middle of all the tables, and we ate by candlelight.  During dinner people gave keynote talks to inspire us all.  At one point, we had an electronic guest.  There were two co-founders of this hub and one of them has never been and might not be ever able to come to Accra and see his work.  He lives in California and was paralyzed eight years ago.  His dream is to see the local businesses in Accra and in Ghana succeed and grow and become profitable.  He works from afar on the project and he pre-recorded a message for us.  It was very powerful to hear his story and his thoughts on how his experience in charity showed him how highly ineffective it is.  You have to teach the people to fish, and they have to save themselves.  He really wants to support the innovation from within the country.

Our live band at the Republic Bar

After dinner, we all walked down to a bar called The Republic.  It was fun to walk along the streets at night and see all the people and what they do when the sun goes down.  It's relatively safe here, although it's never really a good idea anywhere to walk alone at night.  We felt safe with our local guides leading us to a well-lit and open bar.  They had fun cocktails with a Ghana twist using local ingredients.  I had the Republica which was delicious.  They had live music: a band with a xylophone, djembe, drum I have no idea what it's called and a guitar-esk instrument that the singer played.  Far too good to have to leave, but we needed to catch the last shuttle back to our ship in Tema.  With an hour's drive ahead of us, 9pm seemed like a good time to head back.

I'm definitely in a contemplative mood, and I'm sad to see how few days we have left both on the ship and in-country.  We still haven't heard back if we're needed in Washington DC for the Unreasonable at State event which will be going on May 1 and 2, so our trip could come to an end sooner or later than we expected.  We're flexible at this point, so whatever happens, happens.  We're already packed, so traveling isn't the problem.  It's settling that will be weird...

TIA: This is Africa

March 7, 2013

Today was our second day in Tokoradi, Ghana, and I was chosen to shoot some video of one of the students' field labs.  We were headed to the Nzulezo village on stilts.  It sounded like a really cool trip that I was able to tag along with.  Danny was going to be the photographer and I would shoot video.

We hopped on the bus after an early 7am breakfast and settled in for the one hour drive to the village.  Well, there's a new hash tag, #TIA, which means, "this is Africa."  It basically says that whatever you were expecting, you're expecting wrong.  This is Africa - we do things on our own time.

Our hour-long bus ride turned into three hours on windy, dirt roads with impressive pot holes.  It was beautiful scenery and it was interesting to see so much of Ghana.  We got to drive by a rubber tree farm and see all the little collecting bowls on the trees to get the rubber.  There was a lot of construction, so they said this was why it took so long.  We got to see villages and larger settlements and places where they were mining.  What, I'm not sure.

We finally pulled up to the Nzulezo village visitor's center, and the bus's collective bladders were about to burst, so we all piled off to head for the wash rooms.  After the wash rooms, we were asked to pay a fee for our cameras.  We each had to pay two dollars if we wanted to take any photos.  The woman wrote down our names and whether or not we paid, but she didn't have change, so people were giving 20 cedis with the promise that we'd get change at lunch.  I heard one woman mutter under her breath, "what a racket."

It was 11:30am, so the promise of a noon lunch after the tour sounded a little fishy.  The woman said that the tour was an hour and a half long, so another woman asked when lunch was, and she said noon.  Okay, TIA.

We were running later than planned, obviously, so the tour guide, Stephen, asked us all to get back on the bus.  He said we would usually walk down to the road to the village, but to save time, we would ride the bus.  We pilled back on and we drove a couple minutes to a relatively large set of concrete, teal houses where there were many bright orange life vests.  They suited each of us up with a life vest, and we followed directions and strapped them on tight.

We started on our walk down the little dirt road that led through a few houses and out into a massive field.  You could see a ring of trees around the field where the jungle started, and it looked like the set of trees a ways out was where the water started.  We were all excited again and walked for about fifteen minutes.  We got to the first set of trees only to find another, longer field on the other side.  There was no shade and no other way.  So we kept walking.  It must have been over a mile because we ended up walking for almost 45 minutes.  Most people got wise right away and stripped off their life jackets because we were roasting in the feels-like-105º weather.

We were pouring sweat by the time we reached a small shelter with benches.  We could see the long canoes and were happy to finally be where we needed to be.  These canoes would take us to the village.  The guides asked us to remove our shoes, which we felt a little surprised at.  It turned out we had to walk through the swamp to get to the boats.

We all hesitantly entered the black, mucky, HOT water.  The parts that were sand were okay, but then you'd find a big, mucky hole where your foot would sink down into the squishy mud.  I kept telling myself: this is an adventure.  We're fine. This is an adventure.

We got in the boats, and I sat next to a student who had been left behind by her group, so we shared a tiny bench.  It was just big enough for both of our rear ends to fit.  My job was to film and her job was to bail out the water that was leaking through cracks in the boat.  Her job seemed more important than my job.

Our two local rowers took us through a long, shady ditch area which was a welcome break from the blazing direct sunlight of the field.  Then, the ditch opened up to a massive lake that we had to cross to get to the village.  It was a good 20-minute boat ride to get there.  At this point, we had been traveling for four hours, and there were some complainers starting to whine.  I was with them in my head.

We got to the village on stilts, finally, and climbed up on a ladder to find a raised walkway that went through the huts up on the stilts.  Many students went straight for the beverage house where a woman was selling Star beer (Ghana's favorite beer) and cold Pepsi's.  We weren't quite sure in general where we were supposed to go or what we were supposed to do because we were just barging into these people's homes.  People were laying around, not paying much attention to us.  Those that did seemed annoyed at us, and others asked for money.

We were brought back to an open air meeting room on stilts at the end of the walkway and met the man who was second to the chief.  The chief had gone to visit another town, so they brought his daughter as a representative who sat through the history brief looking overtly bored with the whole thing.  The history of the people following a snail god to this location and setting up on his back was interesting, but we were all tired and hot, that I don't think people really caught more than what I just said.

The second-to-the-chief man then passed around a bowl for money that he claimed would be given to the school, but we learned from Cambodia, that these things are not always as they seem.  I decided not to contribute, and was followed by small children all the way back to the boats asking me for money.  It definitely tainted the experience a bit.  As usual, a tourist site is set up to trap you in a location where you're asked to feel sorry for them and give them money.  I'm feeling a little jaded about the whole thing.

The interesting part to this stilts village was the satellite dishes on the sides of the huts.  Everything was built up on bamboo stilts and then built out of bamboo with tin roofs, and there was a single power line running from across the lake to provide power to the village, and people were inside watching satellite television.  Others were outside wanting a handout.  I wonder how they afford the satellite tv...

It had only been 25 minutes, but because we were behind schedule our tour guide hurried us back to our boats.  We got on with the same crew and the same people and began our journey back to the visitor's center for lunch.  I looked at my watch and guessed we wouldn't be eating until 3:00.

The boat ride was okay, and we chatted with our rowers, but, surprise, they asked us for money.  They said at the end we could contribute anything we wanted.  They did work hard rowing us so far, so I tipped them each an American dollar.  At least our guides got that dollar.  I wonder where our "camera fee" and the school-bowl money goes.  I suppose we'll never know.

The long boat ride back turned into the longest 45-minute, direct sunlight field walk I've ever done.  We were all exhausted and hungry and out of water and dripping with sweat.  We made it back to the bus, and they took us back to the visitor's center.  They had lunch set up for us and we were able to eat by the beautiful ocean.  It felt nice to sit and to eat.  People remained pretty positive despite the ongoing jokes about how poorly the day went and how not worth the money this tour was.  Students pay a hefty fee to go on these organized tours.  I've heard that this was a poor example of a field lab because so much had been miscommunicated to SAS.

We had some fresh fruit for dessert, and I realized that I like powpows.  Every papaya I've ever had in the states has been bland and unrefreshing to me, but the small, brightly colored papayas that they had with watermelon and pineapple made for dessert magic.

It was time to go so that we could make sure to be back to the ship before it departed for Tema this evening, but we still had time to stop at a fort.  There was a British for that had been turned into a museum that was just a "three-minute walk" from the bus.  We all skeptically accepted to jump out and peek at it, and it turned out this time that he wasn't lying.  It was just inside a little piece of a town, and we walked past women smashing grain, children playing, and some men fixing up the concrete on an open-air building that looked to be a place where people might gather and hear someone speak.

The fort was interesting, but I wasn't in the mood to listen to a tour guide, so I poked around a bit on my own and rejoined the tour on the end.  To my detriment, I now have no information on the place we visited, but it was fun to climb around an old, concrete fort complete with replica canons.

We dragged ourselves back onto the bus to settle in for the ride back to the ship.  I was so sweaty and still dripping, but after a short, awkward nap, I woke up freezing in the air conditioning.  Now was not the time to be moist with the frigid air of the bus.  What a complainer I am...

We got back to the ship with time to spare, boarded and I went straight for a shower, water then dinner.  I found Matt and a few people from Unreasonable who were interested in doing a drum circle up on the 7th deck.  We joined in.  I drummed and then danced in the middle a little, and we all had a great time. People from every part of the shipboard community joined in: students, faculty, staff and lifelong learners.  The Unreasonable learning partners from Microsoft and SAP joined in and people jammed into the night.  It was a great time.  A good ending to a long, tiring day.

Surf's Up in Ghana

April 6, 2013

We pulled into port this morning just after 9am, and there was a set of drummers and dancers on the pier to greet us.  They were all done up in matching African outfits and going nuts on their drums.  The dancers were barefoot on the black asphalt of the dock, but it didn't hinder their passionate moves.  Many of the passengers were out on the decks waving.  It felt very welcoming.

Matt and I were given the day off, and we heard that our friends Tori and Kevin were headed to Busua beach to get their surf on, and Matt, with a wild hair, thought it would be fun to join them.  Neither of us have ever surfed before, but both of us were very excited to try it out.  Kevin has been surfing since he was little, so he's really good at reading the waves and said that he would give us some surf lessons.

We waited around until the ship was clear, and excitedly packed our bags with only towels and swimsuits.  It felt really good not to have a massive camera or tripod strapped onto us.  We met Tori and Kevin at the gangway, and then walked the 15-minute walk out of the commercial port to where the taxis and street vendors with their crafts were waiting for us.

When people say the phrase, "Oh man, it's Africa hot today," I know completely understand why it exists.  The weather said that it was 95º but feels like 105º.  I think it's the humidity or maybe it's the dead-on equatorial sun, but we were pouring sweat by the end of our 15-minute walk.  The cabbies and street vendors swarmed us, but we had decided to walk into Takoradi rather than pay the 3-5 Ghanaian cedi that it would cost to ride there.  The exchange rate is about 2:1, so you cut their cost about in half to get USD.  It would be like $1-$2.  We found out it would have been worth it.  It's so hot here.

We walked up a winding road and found the main strip of Tokoradi.  I had originally thought that the city would be a lot like Ho Chi Minh where there were rougher parts of it, but with good development. I'd say it's at a lesser level than the Indian cities that I saw.  The built up buildings, like offices and banks, have electricity, running water and air conditioning, but the streets out front are a tad neglected and the outside of the buildings were never really cared about, I think.  It's just a difference in culture.  Why put time into making the outside of a building look good?  Not worth the time or effort.

We were in search of an ATM to get some cedi before heading on our 20km taxi ride to Busua Beach, and we found one about eight blocks away.  Every one that we had gone up to along the way was either out of order or sketchy.  We decided not to risk anything and go for the ATMs with the line of students at it.  We pulled out our cash and then walked down the street.  People greet you and talk to you and ask your name, and after being in India, I assumed they were either begging or wanting to sell me something.  I was actually pretty rude at first because I didn't trust anyone.

We met a fruit vendor selling mangos, powpows (or papayas) and avocados.  Holy yum!  Kevin asked her if she could recommend a place for us to eat lunch.  She pointed down an alleyway and said we could get authentic Ghana food there.  Again, we were still in distrust mode, so we cautiously went down the alley.  People were greeting us.  They were friendly and most of them just hanging outside their shops.  I took one look at the "restaurant" and the vats of reddish liquid boiling with fish parts in it, and I decided that after just getting over a bout with a bacterial infection of the stomach, affectionately and medically termed "traveller's diarrhea" (I can't wait to get home and have normal bowel movements again...not to get too detailed, but it's definitely been three months of abnormality for just about everybody.)  I was going to opt out of the street food.

Matt and I waited outside as Kevin picked out his fate from her little cart, and started up a conversation with a man who was a Professor, originally from Ghana, but had been living in Michigan for the past 22 years and just moved back to Tokoradi.  His name was Greg.  He was very kind to us, and we had a nice conversation with him about what he does and what we do, and we told him that we wanted to get to Busua beach after finding some lunch.  He got a friend to go and negotiate a taxi for us which would take us to lunch then over to Busua beach.  He recommended a hotel, Akorama, or something like that, where he said we could get a nice meal of Ghana food.  We got in our cab, and he took us to the hotel restaurant and said he would wait for us.

It was nice inside, and we found mostly American food on the menu with a single page of Ghanaian food.  We each picked out a different thing so that we could try it all.  Matt got a fish stew with fufu (pronounced foo foo), I got steamed yam and plantains with Palaver sauce and chicken, and Kevin and Tori split fried plantains with a goat, spinach and black-eyed pea sauce.  After a very long wait, the food came out one by one.

Without offending my dear Ghanaian friends, I now realize why there are no Ghanian restaurants in America.  It's definitely an acquired taste.  Fufu is a thick, white paste made of plantain and another grain or sometimes corn.  It's like a grittier and slimier version of sour bread dough that you pick pieces of and dip into stew.  The stews are red-colored, oily and with bits of meat swimming in snot.  The consistency is so slimy that you could lift the spoon out of it about a foot, and the slime would stretch and goop off after a few seconds.  I tasted it, and I was done with the texture for life.  My yams and plantains were very plain, and my chicken Palaver sauce was okay.  Spicy, but with a weird flavor that's almost like fish sauce, but not.  The fried plantains were amazing, but their goat stew was pretty bitter.  It made for a good experience.  One cannot knock a thing until one has tried it, and I've tried it, and I'm knocking all over the authentic food.  We decided it might just be the place, so we vowed to try it again somewhere else for dinner.

Our cab driver patiently waited for us.  In Africa, they do things on a different schedule, and the restaurant ended up taking and hour and a half.  The waitress wouldn't bring our bill, she just kept saying that she would in a minute, so we decided to finally just get up and force her to allow us to pay.  It was expensive for Ghana standards and really not that great.  Kevin had the right idea with the street food.  His little yam and sauce treat was pretty good, and it only cost 1 cedi (or 50 cents).  We probably should have just gone with it.  Oh well.  We got back in the cab and drove for about 30 minutes before reaching the town of Busua.  He dropped us in front of some houses, and we walked down the alleyway between them which opened up to the ocean and the surf shop we were looking for.

There were a bunch of SAS students already there, and there was a man putting on a magic show on the deck in front of the surf shop.  He was surprisingly good, and they had the music cranked, so it was a fun atmosphere to walk into.  Kevin got us a couple surf boards and we decided to leave one person with our bags on the beach while the other three would go play.  I went first for my surf lesson, and we stayed in the white wash attempting to stand up.  It was a total blast.  I can't wait until we can go again and try some more.

Matt headed out there, and he was a brilliant beginner.  He got up on the board within a few tries, and then headed out to the real waves to try and catch them before they broke.  Tori and I watched him get lifted up on the wave, stand up and ride it all the way through the white wash before crashing into the water.  Tori said to me that she thought he should be proud of that ride, and then we saw Matt's head pop up out of the foam and his one arm go straight in the air with a fist pump.  He was proud.  I was glad I caught him in all his glory!  We switched off for a few hours, and whoever was out without a board just got to play in the waves.  It was exactly the break that we needed.  It was so fun!

The beach was full of locals since it was a Saturday, adults and kids, all playing soccer or volleyball and dancing with the students.  It was a really fun atmosphere of people, but, of course, there were the people peddling their wares to the foreigners, and I was offered a bracelet.  I declined, and the man shook my hand and asked what I was doing tonight.  I wasn't sure, I told him, we had only gotten to surfing.  He grabbed my hand again for another crazy handshake, leaned in close and said, "Do you like black magic?"  "Is that drugs?" I asked.  "No problem, sista, I'll hook you up," he said with final handshake and went running off down the beach.

Uh oh...I think I just ordered myself some black magic.  Luckily, he never came back for a visit, and we weren't spending the night there at the beach where the bonfire and late night stuff was going on, so I thought I might be safe.  When I recounted the interaction to Tori, Matt and Kevin, we laughed through all the things that black magic could mean, other than drugs.

We wrapped up our fantastic surf day with some beers on the beach as the local kids started a dance party.  We sipped our beers and watched the sun go down over the ocean and the palm trees.  It was purely magical.

Tori wrangled us up a taxi to head back to the ship, and we hopped in with Steve.  We liked Steve right away, but after about five minutes of driving, he pulled off the side of the pitch black road and said that he needed to deliver some fruit.  He pulled a plastic bag out from under his chair and hopped out of the vehicle and ran off down a dirt road.  We sat in silence for a moment, then someone said, "ummm, should we be concerned?"  We considered many different scenarios, and finally stopped on the fact that he actually was delivering fruit to a friend.  Ghana, so far, is a very friendly and relatively trust-worthy place.  They're straightforward here.  I feel like a lot of it is African culture.  They're to the point and pretty blunt about information, but still have a good sense of humor.

We heard footsteps running on the dirt, and there was Steve running toward the vehicle.  "Okay - we go!" he said and hopped in the car.  Yep.  Delivering fruit.

We thanked him for waiting for us at the beach because we negotiated him then had our beers, and we said that since he waited, we could wait for him to run his errands.  We started talking about what his life was like, and he said that he liked to sing songs in his taxi.  In fact, he had a song that he wrote in his taxi and recorded in the studio with the taxi money he saved up.  It was during the Ghana election a year ago, and he called it, "Why Africa" and it was meant to promote peace across Africa and around the world.  He asked if any of us were singers, and I was volunteered, so he taught me the lyrics, then cranked up his phone and we all sang along.  You can meet Steve, hear his song and watch his music video on YouTube.  It's actually pretty good.

He asked Matt if he had a girlfriend, and Matt pointed to me as his wife in the back seat, so Steve decided to dedicate the love song that he wrote to me.  He said it was hip-hop, but here they call it hip-life.  He played us the only other song he has recorded right now called, "Give it to me."  It's a bumping club song, and about exactly what you think.  Steve is talented with many genres.

His signature move in all of the songs was to yell, "Hey, Steve!" during any sort of breaks.  If you watched, "Why Africa" (above) you'll hear it a few times.  In the love song dedicated to me, it was our job to yell out, "Hey Shawn" whenever that part came up.  He said that we could write any song at any time and that we could write one right now.  He sang one about surfing, then asked if anyone had their heart broken.  We all said yes, but it still got dedicated to Shawn.  "Hey, Shawn!"  Matt laid down a beatbox track while Steve freestyled our new heartbreakers song over it.  It was pretty catchy and we all sang along with the chorus when it came.  Matt titled it, "Only Good Love," and Steve vowed that it would be the next track he would lay down in the studio when he got up enough money.

We got back to Tokoradi, and we asked Steve to take us to a place where we could get some local Ghanaian food.  He brought us to a line of single lightbulb carts with plastic chairs behind them.  The sauces were on stoves, so we felt good about the fact that the liquid we were going to consume from this place was boiling.  Steve showed us how to wash our right hand at the table to prepare for dinner. We learned that you never, NEVER use your left hand to shake hands or eat in Africa...that's the wiping hand.  Very disrespectful.

He ordered the dinner for us, and it was corn fufu with some sort of chicken stew.  The slimyness was there, and he said it was a plant that they boiled in with it.  He slurped his down, loving every bite.  I was a little lighter on the amount of lukewarm fufu that I ingested, but the sauce tasted okay and I had the chicken that was sitting in the boiling hot liquid.  It's hard to eat with your hands when the sauce is too hot to touch.  That didn't slow Steve down, so we jumped in.  It was pretty dark in the place, so we all just hoped for the best with what we were snarfing.  We were hungry from surfing.

We found out at dinner that he's 23 and was going to college to become an engineer, but his dad died in a car accident, so now he's taken in his brother and is paying for him to go to school.  He's such a bright, friendly guy, it's hard to hear about that tough time they went through.  He wrote another song that he wants to get out about suicide called, "Hang In There."  He wants to let people know that they can get through the tough things in life, and you don't have to commit suicide.  He said he sings it to himself sometimes when he's sad and it motivates him, so he wants to share it with other people.

He said he had a friend who had to drop out of school and take in his brothers and sisters and decided to kill himself, but Steve taught him how to drive and got him a taxi to start making money to take care of his family.  He felt so good about helping his friend that he wanted to help more people and thought his music would be a good way.  We all agreed.  It was a nice song and fun to hear a capella.

I wasn't able to finish my fufu, but they didn't seem to mind.  The total came out to be a third of what we paid at the other restaurant, and we bought Steve's dinner, too.  It was a fun experience to eat with the locals and have Steve as our tour guide.  He spoke the language and handled everything.

We wrapped up our meal and drove the final ten minutes to the ship.  Steve sang a final song about how sad he was that his friends were going.  "My friends are leaving today, and I'm sad they are going away, but they'll be back to Ghana soon, or I'll go to America."  Catchy.  Gave us all a great laugh.  He's just too cute.

We were dropped at the port gate and swarmed by late night street vendors.  We said goodbye to Steve after tipping him an extra 15 cedis for how awesome he was and jogged through the crowd of sellers to get to the safe side of the port gate.  We were groaning at the walk back to the ship when a man in a big white truck pulled by us.  He asked if we were going to the ship, we said yes, and he waved for us to hop in.  The crew was like, "should we get in?"  I blurted, "No!" but they had already jumped in.  I got in, thinking it wasn't a good idea, but the nice guy was on his way to the night shift at the ship past ours and knew that we were a part of the students who needed back to the SAS ship.  Good guy.  Has been married for just over a year and hates leaving his wife alone at night to work the night shift.  You do what you've got to do.

We said goodbye to our other new friend, made it past the vendors at the bottom of the gangway and boarded the air conditioned palace that is the MV Explorer.  There were not really any showers or legit changing rooms at the beach, so we were sandy and crusty with salt and ready for a shower and some more dinner.  We showered and then found Danny for a 7th deck story swap.  It was fun to hear about his crazy day, too.

In hearing about his day, we also heard that Evan, who was supposed to be shooting an SAS field lab tomorrow decided to stay the night out with Protei who had rented a car and gone a couple hours away from the ship.  Danny had to shoot the field lab, so he made his way back to the ship under crazy sketchy circumstances and was glad to be alive.  All that said, I was chosen to take Evan's place and shoot the field lab to the village on stilts the next morning.  Change, change, change.  It's the name of the game.  Better get some sleep.

On-ship Post-production

On-ship days have begun blurring together as we journey to Ghana from South Africa.  My days have been spent in the Eagle’s nest or media lab or vomit closet, as we called it at the beginning of the voyage.  The media lab is nice because it’s a location that’s quiet, doesn’t have any thru-traffic and has a desk with power so that my computer doesn’t die during my worktime.

The downside to being locked away in a closed, windowless room that’s tucked away behind the giant student union is that I become extremely anti-social.  When I go out for meals, I’m not in socialize mode, and I forget that the ship is full of excited, interested, talkative people.  It's unhealthy for me.

We’ve run into a push for the last three weeks on the ship because we’ve decided to take on an extra project in addition to our other deliverables.  Through the Unreasonable project, we’ve been working with some large corporations and, of course, the start-ups that are a part of the program, and they’ve seen potential in our work.  One of the largest clients we could dream of working with right now has reached out to us after leaving the ship and is interested in us doing a video to show to their board and major executives why Unreasonable at Sea was worth it for their company’s time and investment.  That’s a lot of pressure.

Not only is it a lot of pressure to perform, but we’ve already filled up our time with Unreasonable deliverables.  We've worked out the schedule and decided to share the workload as a team, so I have total faith that we can handle it.

Yesterday, we had Ghanian appetizers in the Tipsy Toucan.  They were pretty delicious, but they never  add up to the amazing, authentic food of the countries.  I still took a photo. [photos to come]

The day before yesterday, we had the screening of the Semester at Sea's Unreasonable 72-Hour Film Festival.  The students made films in 72 hours starting on the day that the ship stopped in Mauritius.  They did a fantastic job.  There were some very clever films, a meme film that included all of the inside jokes of the ship and the winner of the festival got posted on Semester at Sea's blog.  Make sure to check it out!  I was so proud of the students.

Today, we got the excitement of coming within 500 feet of the exact 0º, 0º coordinates.  The crossing of the prime meridian and the equator made for an exciting event on the ship.  We took photos and watched our GPS.  As sailors, you are considered a scalliwag until you cross the equator. Tradition is that when you cross the equator you shave your head and become a shellback.  The highest honor is reserved for those who have sailed across 0º, 0º who are called emerald shellbacks.  We didn't do any shaving, but Matt and I are official emerald shellbacks.  It was actually one of Matt's dreams.

Did you know that there is, for realsies, no fooling, a booey that marks the coordinates of 0º west and east and 0º north and south.  We all got to see it.  It was less than 500 feet from the starboard side of the ship.  It wasn't terribly exciting to see it because it's not very elaborate.  It looks like a white booey.  It took a little bit to convince us all that it was real.  They tried to trick us with the equator and the prime meridian that there is a band stretched or a laser or a line, but at this point, we were all staring at it, and looking at the GPS.  We looked it up online, and it really is legit.  That was fun to see.

We're wrapping up our post-production and ready to head into Tokoradi, Ghana tomorrow morning.  Matt and I have a free day, so we're going to attempt some surfing.  Neither of us have ever done it, so we're glad to have Tori and Kevin as our guides.  Tori Hogan was just recently featured in National Geographic for the panel that she led with Archbishop Desmond Tutu and Ken Banks, a Nat Geo Explorer.  I got to film the panel.  It was amazing.  Tori is a fantastic interviewer and mediator, and Ken and Arch were very entertaining. I wrote about it in an earlier post.

Anyway, they're going to allow us to tag along, so I'm sure we'll have some fun stories to tell.  Hopefully no injuries.

April Fools

April 1, 2013

So many holidays just crammed into such a short amount of time!  Today was a normal ship day.  No one really pulled a good April fools day joke that I know of yet.

I shot an interview with George Kembel of Standford's D.School this morning.  He's going to be the main narrator of our episode for South Africa.  We're trying something new and double-dipping with Semester at Sea.  Our episode will double for their video upload for the week.

George is an interesting and very passionate guy who started out as an entrepreneur and ended up at Standford teaching students from multiple disciplines the design thinking process.  The design thinking process is a way to go about innovation.  It's a process that uses action and "rapid ideation" to begin finding solutions for problems rather than the usual: get a problem, don't question the problem, think really hard, work really hard, try the solution, then realize you're solving the wrong problem after years of work.  His process jumps right in and makes quick, gnarly prototypes that immediately test ideas and use action to move forward the innovation process without losing precious time and money.  We've sat through a couple of his workshops, both filming and also participating, and it's something very good.  I can't wait to implement it as we keep moving forward with Mass FX Media and our future plans.

His interview went really well, and our focus was on the future of education.  He, like many people, believes that the higher education bubble in the US is on the verge of popping, and we need to find out what the next iteration of higher education is.  He talked about what online school needs to look like and about the lecture method of teaching and how school needs to fit the learner not go with the tradition of what school has always been.

During out visit to South Africa, George's class, which he co-teaches with Daniel, went on their field lab.  Field labs are required for all classes, and they are a way of going into the countries and implementing what the students have been learning in the classroom.  George's class partnered with the Girl Effect through the Nike Foundation to partner with a township in Cape Town and join the students from the class with local youth in Cape Town for a design thinking workshop to look at what kind of issues the girls are facing in South Africa right now.

This was the day that Matt and I had just gotten back to the ship, so we didn't go along, but as the editor, I get to vicariously experience it, and after hearing George talk so passionately about it, it makes me excited to share the story with everyone on video.  So far, I think this will be a powerful episode to meld what we're doing with Unreasonable with what the students are doing and learning on the ship.

I agree with George in that I feel like the most powerful thing that the Unreasonable Institute and the founders have given to the students on the ship is the permission to live their life doing something that follows their passions.  The rule isn't: graduate and get a nine-to-five.  There actually is no rule.  I think students need to hear that.  I would be a shining example.  Once I was given the permission to follow my dreams, I planned for it, and I made it happen, and here I sit on a ship traveling around the world doing what I love with the person and the people I love: filmmaking.  It doesn't get better than this, and the risks are worth it if you're aware of them.  Calculate them.  Plan for them.  Then jump!

The reception in the Glazer Lounge.

So, I'll be digging into those themes this week with our South Africa episode.

After a long day of editing, the Deans invited all the staff to a reception in the Tipsy Toucan.  At random intervals on our journey, they do a nice reception where everybody gets together to chat, and we get free wine and appetizers.  It's lovely.  This particular reception was Mexican themed, and I got my taco and burrito fix.  There's nothing like guacomole after three months of not having guacamole.  In the photo to the right, you can see how crazed I am about my tacos.  No foolin'.

Happy Easter!

March 31, 2013

Well, we didn't set sail in the night because of the weather, so we got to have our Easter breakfast on the deck of the ship with a backdrop of Cape Town.  It was a nice change of pace for one of our sailing days.  The ship is capable of double-timing it, and they plan in extra time in all of the sailing stints for things like this, so it won't affect the dates that we're in Ghana.

Matt and I procured a couple hardboiled eggs for breakfast and set to work decorating them for Easter.  We hope that everybody had a lovely Easter.  It's just not the same when it's a normal work day for the ship community.  I want to reiterate again how much I miss having weekends.  We got a nice couple days off in Cape Town which was very nice.  It was the first weekend we've had since January 4th.  No wonder people are feeling a little burned out.

Matt and I posed for some pictures with Table Mountain in the background, then went in to finish our breakfasts.  It was time to get back into the swing of things on the ship, so we had a morning meeting to work out our goals for the sail to Ghana.  I've been assigned to edit the South Africa episode, so that'll be my duty in the next five days.

I'm still waiting on the logging, so I set to work finishing up some details with Mass FX and reimbursements for travel and cleaning up our room.  It was also good to catch up on this blog and get down some of the basics of what we did for this last week.  I wish I had kept up with it because I'm now having trouble remembering a lot of the details of what we did.  It was a pretty low key port, so it's probably okay.

The rest of the day was pretty straightforward.  Helping with post-production logging and searching for lost project files.

Mark and Larissa made us all
Easter baskets out of sticky notes.

We had taken part in organizing a 72-hour film festival on the ship for all of the ship community during the stop in Mauritius, and the finished films were ready for judging, so we got to be a part of that process.  We watched through all thirteen submissions.  There was a really cute on by the kids on board who did an animation with their legos, a very clever one that went through all of the funny things that people say and do on the ship, a sweet one about a love story over the years aboard the semester at sea ship and, one of my favorites, a video mocking Baer Grills that goes through a Survivorman-type show on the island of Mauritius.  Everybody did a great job. There's some real talent on this ship.

The films will be screened on April 3 to the whole community, and I look forward to seeing the students watch them.  People are really going to enjoy the film festival.  Of course, we'll have a red carpet and have everybody dress to the nines.  Makes me miss the Lifetree Film Fest coming up at the end of April.  You people had better attend that and let me know how it goes.  Eat extra popcorn for me.

Matt and I went to the Easter service on the ship, then finished up our post-production duties for the day and called it a night.  I've got mixed feelings about being back on the ship.  We were so spoiled with our adventures in India and Cambodia, and I find myself missing Auroville the most.  I've got to get my sea legs back to where I stop noticing the rocking of the ship, and hopefully I'll get back in the groove of ship-life.  This little cabin is our home for these last four weeks.

I can't believe we only have a month left!  Half of me can't wait to go back to Colorado and the other half of me is afraid of this ending.  It's the new normal.  What's going to be able to measure up next?  Probably just a bowl of fresh fruit will do it.

Last Day in Cape Town

March 30, 2013

Our view of Lion's Head from Camps Bay

I'm sad to say that I feel like I missed out on Cape Town's full potential, but I couldn't help the days I was exhausted nor the day when I wasn't feeling well.  I was reminded of the fact that just before this, I had spent twenty days exploring Auroville then Phnom Penh.  I might just have been tuckered out from three weeks of traveling.  Maybe it was okay to take it easy here in Cape Town.

I do wish I had seen the townships, though.  There are places around Cape Town that have been set up by the government and many of the housing was built for free and people live in it for the cost of electricity if they want it.  Archbishop Desmond Tutu would describe South Africa as the most beautiful place on earth, but also the most unequal.  I wish I could have experienced the other side of Cape Town.  We stuck to the wealthy, city areas for the most part.

The wind in Camps Bay would blow these clouds
off the top of Table Mountain and they
would dissolve in front of our eyes.

We made this day a pretty chill day as well in that we didn't have anything we needed to film.  We went down to the waterfront and had crepes for breakfast again.  I went back to my favorite fruit stand and had the man chop me up a mango and mini pineapple for breakfast.  As I've noted before, I'm going to miss fresh fruit.

Most of the film crew had joined together to have breakfast and Minh came around as well.  We had good conversation and a nice sit with one another as we enjoyed our last day of land food.  There was talk of seeing a movie and also talk of going over to Haut Bay.  We ultimately decided to compromise with the much closer Camps Bay to enjoy the beach and climb the rocks that hang out near the ocean.

Cheers!

Part of the team headed for the cinema, part of the team went with Tendekayi to a visit over to one of the townships, Du Noon, and I went with the crew that was off to explore Camps Bay.  I didn't realize until later that we had a chance to visit the township, or I would have jumped on the opportunity.  It's a pretty sensitive place for tours and especially for filming because people don't want to be exploited.  What would you feel like if foreigners came into your front yard and took photos of you getting your mail or washing your car.  It's just not appropriate unless you get permission or have people expecting you.  Tendekayi had friends from high school who lived in this particular place, so they went and visited them.  They were able to film a little.

I had a nice time at Camps Bay, but it was unreasonably windy, and we ended up settling for a run to the grocery store and a long lunch to escape from the wind.  We enjoyed some mojitos and fresh fruit juice to celebrate our last day in Cape Town.  I went for a butternut squash salad to say goodbye to fresh vegetables.

We conquered the wind...then fell
off this rock.

We decided to brave the wind and play out on the giant boulders sitting by the ocean.  It was the place on the beach with the least amount of sand, so we didn't get as sandblasted as the other brave souls that ventured out into the open.  We took some silly photos, then decided we had had enough battering, and headed back for the ship to make sure we made it back for on-ship time.  You get in big trouble if you delay the ship's departure, so we make sure to be on with plenty of time to spare.

Because of the crazy-bad winds, the ship wasn't able to leave at it's expected 8pm, so we all had dinner out on the deck and then hung out together appreciating the stillness of the ship.  We heard later that if we had left that night during the storm, we would have found ourselves back in 10 meter waves.  I appreciate the choice to stay.