Thursday morning Hannah, Tania, and I met at the academic center at 7:00 AM to pick up film equipment for another day behind the camera. We took a cab to 37, one of the nearby medium-sized tro-tro stations. The station is mostly filled with tro-tros (go figure) and also a fair number of vendors selling mostly food, water, and novelty items. We weren't really sure how to go about filming there. All we knew was that there would definitely be trash there and there would definitely be people there, and on this day, we wanted to get some interviews with the residents of Accra. We surveyed the area, the whole while getting funny looks because we were carrying film equipment. We saw a few women sweeping up some trash and thought that they would be good for filming. We tried to ask one of the women for permission to film her, but she didn't speak English. Then some man came up to us and we explained to him what we wanted to do, so he asked the woman and she didn't seem to care. It's kind of funny that people are so willing to be filmed because we were told repeatedly when we first came to Ghana that people here don't like to be photographed. And it's sort of true; I've seen many people get made at some of my friends for taking pictures of them. I get around the problem by not having a camera, at least when I'm not making a film anyway.
After we filmed the women, this guy who we had seen on the beach the day before came up to us and started talking to us. At first we tried to shoo him away, but the day before he hadn't seemed so friendly, but then we realized maybe he'd want to give us an interview. And he did. So we found a little spot to set up the camera and a bench for him to sit on, and we asked him a few questions about waste in Accra. His answers were good, but we feared he might have just been saying things to please us. Or maybe he was sincere. We did three more interviews that day, and everyone sort of gave us the standard, "Oh, yes, the problem's bad," answer. All were unanimous that the AMA were to blame for the problem (which is probably why the WMD of the AMA is being so reluctant to give us an interview), although they all seemed to equally put blame on the citizens of Accra themselves. People are uneducated, they don't know it's bad to litter, etc, etc. They were probably being honest, though, because one woman we interviewed was a nurse, and another man was a teacher. We also got an interview with a little girl selling water so that we could ask her about people's habits of throwing water sachets on the ground after their done with them. She didn't speak English, but we got Richard (the first guy we interviewed) to translate for us. Twice during the day somebody got mad at us for filming, insisting that they had to seek their permission before we could film. The first guy we were pretty sure was legit - he was the station manager. But the other guy was just some guy who was probably upset he wasn't in the film.
After we were done filming, we went back to the academic center to drop off the film equipment. On my way home from the academic center, a man who was eating banku with some sort of meat stopped me and asked me if I wanted to join him. I had just eaten, but I was curious as to what the meat was because it didn't look like anything I had ever taken before. I asked him what the meat was, and he looked up at me and said, "Meow" while making a clawlike motion with his hand. Joseph! That's what they call cats that you eat here, Joseph. I don't know why, they just do. I'm a little surprised I was as eager to eat the cat as I was - I can't deny I was curious. Plus, I don't see why I should discriminate against eating certain animals. The cat was already dead, and if I didn't help him eat it, I didn't know who would. So I had some, not too much. The meat was dark like dark chicken meat or rabbit meat. It was very tender and sweet, although it tasted a little bit like a cat smells. Not in a bad way, though, just the way a cat smells.
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The next day of filming was not quite as sucessful. We met at 7:00 AM, as usual. Our plan was to go to a place called Ogbojo where Alpha had told us there was a landfill right in the middle of this community of people. We wanted to go get shots of the landfill and then interview people about how the landfill affected their lives and their community and so on and so on. Alpha was going to go with us, but he had to film somewhere, so he just gave us directions to give the cab driver. Basically we just needed to find Ogbojo and then ask where the 'bola' is. We waved down a taxi and hopped in. The driver kind of knew where Ogbojo was, but kind of didn't. He knew the general direction, so we drove for about 45 minutes and then started asking people where it was. We kept being pointed in different directions, and I felt as though we were going deeping and deeping into some sort of maze of dirt roads. We finally got to Ogjobo and asked where the 'bola' was. A man told us we were in bola, which now I realize doesn't really make sense because I think that 'bola' means trash. We drove around the area for a long time, asking people where the landfill was. Finally someone gave us a definite answer, but they told us it was this highly vegetated area where you could see some trash, but that clearly wasn't being used as a landfill. So we asked some more people and we found out that, yes, this was the landfill, but that it hadn't been used in over a year. Upon hearing this, I wanted to cry because I was working on three hours of sleep and I was so ridiculously hot it wasn't even funny, but I couldn't cry because I was losing too much water from sweating as it was (we much be practical about things), so instead, I just sweated, only with more dismay now.
We didn't really know what to do. We tried to call Alpha but he didn't answer. So we did the only thing we could do, which was make the long drive back into Accra without filming anything. When I got back, I actually didn't go to bed. Instead, I spent the next five hours finishing a 21-page paper on the dynamics of control over the environment and resources of the developing world for my Globalization and the Developing World class. I've been working on it for some time now, and I must say, this is the first time I've ever finished such a large assignment three weeks before it's due. That helped ease the pain of the miserable morning I spent inside a pool of sweat. Then later that night I went to a Highlife concert at the University of Legon. Highlife is the national music of Ghana. It's a combination of jazz, marching band music, and dance band music. It's very upbeat and somewhat swing-ish. Unfortunately, Highlife is suffering right now for a variety of reasons. Now Gospel music is the most popular music in Ghana, although Hiplife (a really bad combination of Highlife and American Hip-Hop) is starting to emerge. But one of my professors who works at Legon, John Collins, partnered with the World Bank (I know, weird right?) to sponsor this Highlife event. The concert was pretty fun, a nice night to relax and forget about papers and films and all that other jive...
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