These Days

These days I seem to think a lot...

So where to start... How about Thursday? It was early afternoon, and I was on my way to my class titled, "Topics in Pan-Africanism: Workshop in Pan-African and Diasporic Jazz Improvization." (What a long and drawn out name. The class is supposed to be about improvization, but really it's just a class where we play the same four beats on a big cowbell every week. So anyway, I was on my way to this class, hoping that today we would do more than play bells, and I decided on a whim to take the short cut to class. It's not really a whole lot shorter - more of an alternate path that seems more direct. I didn't start using it at all until maybe a month ago when it occured to me that I wanted to spice my life up a bit, take a different path for a change. This alternate path goes right by one of those large sewage streams that violate my nostrils. Well, this particular day there were several men in the ditch shoveling out trash and mud so that the sewage could flow more easily. I put no blame on anyone for what happened when I walked by that sewage stream, because, I suppose I should've let them know I was passing by. How could that nice man working to clean out that ditch have intentionally shoveled sewage on me? No, no one was to blame. This was what we call an unfortunate experience. I had gross, smelly sewage mud all over my shorts, my arm, and my water bottle. I instantly froze and tried to assess the reality of the situation.

The men instantly realized what had just happened, and they felt pretty bad. One guy got out of the ditch and started trying to clean me off, which was nice, but I just wanted to get out of there. Now, if you know me, then you know that I don't let foul smells stop me from my daily activity. I walked to the academic center and washed my right hand and arm thoroughly (and they say it's the left hand that's dirty) thoroughly. I washed my shorts as best as I could, and then went into class with one of my dad and my sister's new fragrances... "Sewage Shovel... by Ralph Lauren." Luckily, we had class outside. In class, we actually did something than play bells! We got litte bamboo reed flutes, which are pretty cool. The tone quality is not so hot, but it's fun to play, and it's pretty much impossible to make it sound bad. As long as you can breathe properly and move your fingers a bit, you're in business (meaning I'm in business).

I'm still worried about the fate of the class... we're supposed to have some sort of little concert as our final, but it seems that we've done so little in the way of actually improvising or playing instruments other than bells and bamboo flutes. Actually, I have been playing Henry's drum for a little while now. He got a beautiful drum made, and it sounds AMAZING! I'm actually going to the Arts Center tomorrow to get one made. I'm going to the same guy who made Henry's drum, so I know I will be getting quality. I've also begun to pick up Dipesh's guitar recently and strum a few bum-diddlies. I haven't been singing quite as much as a result of all these other things, but hey, sometimes you gotta try out new things - or revisit past loves.

Speaking of new things, we are starting to make films in my "Documenting the African City" course. During the first half of the semester, we learned a few things about how to use the cameras - lighting, focus, setting time codes, hooking up microphones, etc., etc. In another class we took a field trip to Jamestown and Nima. We've also had some pretty cool guest lecture filmmakers. We've watched some movies. It's a pretty good class. Two classes, one before Spring Break and then one the day after Spring Break ended, we made short little films in the compound just to let us get some practice using the cameras. Seeing as how the academic center isn't very big, there wasn't a whole lot to film, but we all came up with some pretty creative ideas. Some worked, some failed. As films do.

But now we're actually off making two films. The main one we're making is a 15-minute documentary about the waste management situation in Accra. In many parts of the city, there is no infrastructure for waste management. There are no trashcans around, no public authority enforcing proper waste disposal, and so people just throw their plastic water bags on the ground like it's the most normal thing in the world. We're going to perform an experiment where we set up five trash cans 50 meters apart along a busy stretch of road. On each trashcan, we're going to attach a sign that says, "Please put your trash here." We've chosen two locations: Ring Road near Labone Junction and Jamestown, both very busy areas where there are no trashcans. We're going to monitor the amount of trash that goes into the trashcans and onto the ground, one for the purpose of just seeing if people would use trashcans if they were around, and two to interview both people that use the trashcans and don't to find out their motives. Then we're going to interview a few students at La Yahoushua Primary and Junior Secondary School to find out if they are taught anything about waste management in school. We also want to look at the institutional side of the equation as well, both government and private waste management services. It's a pretty ambitious project, and I look forward to starting.

But we haven't started filming that yet. Right now we're working on a five-minute documentary to give us practice for the longer one. Hannah, Tania, and I (my fellow filmmakers on both projects) sat around and thought about what a person could possibly make a five-minute documentary on. We knew we should try to focus on one simple thing, a process. "What about the chicken thing, killing and eating a chicken?" Hannah so brilliantly suggested. So this past Sunday, we went to Apapa, a nearby neighborhood, and purchased two chickens, just like last time. Only Hannah and Tania weren't present last time (in fact neither of them have seen this been done, and they were both reluctant at first, even Hannah who had the idea in the first place). So the three of us and Rasheed went and got us some chickens.

We got out the camera and set it up on the tripod, white balanced the camera, adjusted for the current lighting, and action after action after action. This is when I discovered that making films isn't quite so easy. It seems like you could just point the camera and shoot, but oh no, there's so much more to it. The difficulty isn't just in the technical aspects of adjusting the camera and the lens' setting, but also in framing a nice shot and having it look like it's just happening - there's not actually a camera pointed at those two people, and a boom mike hovering above them. Yes, documentary filmmaking, where fact and fiction intermingle ever so intricately.

However, there was no fiction to be found in the fate of those chickens. We captured some shots of Rasheed and Hannah entering the chicken place (well, I'm sure it's someone's house or something, but to me it's the chicken place), a few shots of the chickens in the cage, some shots of the chicken man (same logic as above) getting the chickens for Hannah and Rasheed, and then finally a few shots of Rahsheed cleaning chicken poo off of his shirt. Oh Rahsheed. You're such a great sport. After that, we cabbed it over to Rasheed's house for the slaughter. We were in a hurry because we didn't want to run out of the daylight. The whole lighting thing makes filming so much more inconvenient. Unless it's overcast outside, you can't film from maybe 10AM to 3PM because it's too bright outside. But once it hits 6PM, the light's almost out.

We did not run out of light that night, and luckily, no one ran out of patience, although Rahsheed almost lost it once. We wanted to get lots of different shots of the chicken and the people watching the slaughter, the de-feathering, cleaning, de-gutting, etc, and so we had to stop him in the process many times and ask him to wait for us to set up a new shot. He was fine, though, and we were all happy with the shoot, our first filmmaking. Today we filmed another scene at the Top-in-Town supermarket in Osu. We had Hannah browsing the freezer aisle and picking up a packet of pre-cut packaged chicken, and then proceeding to the checkout to purchase the chicken. We're also going to film a short little interview with her about where she gets her chicken and whatnot, and then tomorrow night we're going to cook the chicken which is currently sitting in my freezer. We'll get shots of putting the chicken in the oven, and then shots of Rahsheed and Hannah chomping down on some tasty chicken. Hopefully it won't be too chewy this time. This weekend, we edit, which I'm sure will be a whole new adventure.

So I've got a lot ahead of me just with those films. It kind of sucks, though, because all my classes seemed to have saved all the work for the end of the semester. The first half of this semester, I didn't even feel like I was in school. We hardly did anything in my classes, had practically no work at all, and the week of independence I only had 1 out of my 4 classes, and then the week after that was Spring Break. And now I've got these films to work on, this concert to think about which I still have no idea how we're going to pull off, and two big research projects to do, one for my African Popular Music class, and the other for my Globlization and the Developing World. I'm actually excited about working on all of these projects, but it sucks that I have to do them all in about a month.

One thing I realized recently is that, in terms of the pace of life here, I actually kind of feel like I'm in Douglas for the summer. Every day I wake up, it's really hot. And every day I wake up, I wonder, "What am I going to do today?" Of course, I always find something, it just seems like nothing happens here. Don't get me wrong - I didn't say that nothing happens here, just that sometimes it seems that way. Maybe the heat has something to do with it. I also think the weather in general here might be to blame. I was talking to Meagan the other day and I said to her, "Don't you think it's weird that the weather just doesn't really change here? It's just always hot, all year long. Half the year it doesn't rain at all, and half the year it rains some, but that's about the only change." Then she said to me, "I think it's weirder that in New York it can be 100 degrees outside but then a few months later it snows." She's probably right. That is strange now that I think about it. But nevertheless, I'm used to seasons changing. Normally I would be witnessing the emergence of spring this time of year, but instead, it's still just really hot. On top of that, when I finally do get back home (I'm speaking of Douglas home, not New York home), the South Georgia weather will pretty much pick up where Ghana left off.

We in Accra did receive a pleasant surprise this past Monday, though, when we received our first rain of the year. I'm sure some sort of precipitation has fallen somewhere in Accra before this happened. Perhaps there was an invisible drizzle one night as I lay in my unconscious. But this was the first for real rain. It started pouring when I was in my "Documenting" class, and I immediately knew that I needed to be in that rain as soon as possible. I stepped outside after class and became nice and wet, but most surprising, COOL! I never thought this would happen in Accra, but I was actually kind of cool walking around outside. I expected that the rain would be hot (I love hot rain, warming up my foot in a nice puddle by the road), but this rain was actually kind of cold. Of course I didn't complain. I need some cool weather after endless days of heat. It stayed pretty cool for the rest of the day and night. It was incredible. In fact, we actually had a power-out night (the water level in the Volta Lake Dam is low again) that same night, and I had no trouble sleeping at all because it was so nice and cool. (In all reality, it was probably more like lukewarm, although those sorts of words are usually saved to describe water).

That's pretty much what's been going on with me. On Saturday and Sunday, I'm going to a small village outside of Accra to participate in a Habitat-for-Humanity build. I'm looking forward to it. If you are not familiar with Habitat for Humanity, go look it up. Peace.