7.8.08

Another long gap of time, and so many things have happened! I’ve had some technology issues with the laptop (it stopped functioning, and its now in the repair shop in Accra), and this is part of the reason why I haven’t written as often. The other part is that I’ve been super busy, and for a few days, utterly exhausted. I’ve recovered fully, and am again in full swing, living in righteous Ghana.

Two Fridays ago, Hilda and Kwabena from EEFSA came to meet me in Tema to try to clear the container at the port, or at least to begin the process. We received all of our necessary documents the day before in Accra, and I crashed with a musician friend of Emmanuel – an interesting house – filled with young people, musicians, artists, rastas trying to make it in the tough job, music, art market. I woke up to my cell phone ringing at 6:00 am. Its Hilda – she says where are you. I tell her I’m in Adenta, and she says she’s on her way, so I get up and go. Traffic, ususal, but I made it in relatively good time. We follow Hilda’s orchestration of documents, photocopies, stamps, signatures at the shipping company, the clearing agent, and various customs offices. The day ended with waiting for authorization from the US-based shipping company to release the container as well as waiting for the documents to be processed at customs. Hilda enlisted one of her old friends to “wait” for us, a long task. The man basically hung out at customs, imposed a physical presence on our behalf and made sure that our paperwork flowed and got finished. Hilda used to work as a shipping agent at the Tema port. She knew everyone there, it was neat to see her use her contacts for our benefit – yep, we’ll take it. We resigned to come back to Tema the next Monday to continue the job. Sliding into the weekend, we went straight into residential Tema and to the bar. Hilda’s old neighborhood, and we saw her good friends, boyfriend etc. I got a marriage proposal, standard. We enjoyed, and felt pretty tight – inhibitions released.

A weekend of good times with friends, spotted with alcohol, good food, positive vibes. I then went to the wheelchair basketball practice, and was reminded why I’m here. The social scene is awesome in Koforidua, but physically challenged people are struggling to assert themselves in a society that largely leaves them by the roadside, or in the house, without jobs. I can channel my energy and effort into this project more fully – a challenge to myself, which I accepted.

Monday in Tema, we arrive at the shipping company – the authorization is in, we process our paperwork and pay the fees. Then customs, the guy who waited for us handed us our completed paperwork, awesome. The port terminal. We pull into the complex – a handful of administrative buildings in the foreground, and mountains of 40 and 20 ft containers in the background. Hilda leads the way, we visit the customs office to submit paperwork, the paperwork is returned, with the ‘hold for inspection’ box checked. Hilda is not happy with this, and the customs officer assigned to our container, was openly hostile to her, yao. We then continued the process, into a trailer at the mouth of the container yard, we see the terminal workers, Hilda hands one of them our paperwork, then shakes his hand with a few Ghana cedis. Hilda later informed me that if you don’t bribe the workers, they will deliberately delay your paperwork. We made this worker very happy, and he immediately led us out into the tar caked container yard, avoiding the paths of the monstrous crane vehicles, like enormous mechanical scorpions, to one of the crane drivers, who he coerced to get us our container immediately. Wow, that’s worth a few bucks, but the corruption aspect of this system is not something I embrace. We spend the next few hours at various trailer offices, and waiting until we are fully cooked in this enormous oven of tar, exhaust and metal containers – the whole experience though was pretty cool – a micro-universe of social relations, cultural hierarchy, competing intentions, corruption, a good education for the next time. Finally the customs officer – we swept alongside him on the way to the container, it all happened so fast. He seemed like a nice guy. He asked me a couple of questions on the way and I appealed directly to his highest values of social justice and empowering development in my responses. We arrived at the container, he looked inside, while I explained the nature of the project, and the uses for the bikes, parts, tools, random sink, and in about 3 minutes, he took our paperwork, signed off on it, and wished us well. Easy. Our trucker arrived, I helped him park near the container, and then waiting for Hilda to finish collecting paperwork at various offices, getting signatures and stamps, and handing out more bribes, I zoned in the truck cabin listening to Ghanaian politics on the radio while digesting my fried rice, in the generally fried environment of the container yard. I also daydreamed various fight scenarios and relationships between the action figures glued to the dashboard. I finalized things with Hilda, and then we got out.

I joined the container to Koforidua, a journey of over 5 hours carrying that weight (normally 2 1/2 hours). It rained, I was at peace. Getting near to Koforidua, it was about 8:30 pm, and I spoke to the EEFSA guys and they wanted to unload as many bikes as possible that night – cool, lets do it. We pull into town, see the guys, back into the store driveway, and take down some power lines with the highcube – sparks everywhere, (insert obsenity of your choice). A bit scary, I’ve heard horror stories of powerline accidents in Ghana, but we stayed cool, got the electric company to turn the electricity off, and clear the lines, and then we started the job around 9:30 pm, without lights. We had one flashlight and a battery powered lamp. Luckily, there was moonlight. We worked until 2:30 am, and finished the job, filling the two rear stores. I did my best to organize the goods – we managed to separate adult bikes from youth bikes, and to keep the parts and tools all in one location. An excellent job done under the circumstances. I slept around 3:00 am, and woke at 6 to pay the electric company as they reinstalled the power lines – 20 bucks damage.

I stayed awake with tea and coca-cola and filmed the wheelchair basketball match between Eastern Region (us) and Asante Region (them) – the mens team won and the ladies team met defeat, with all the appropriate drama and glory. It was actually an amazing day, and I was given the chance to weave myself into the lives of the players, the potential trainees. I had spent the previous weekend working with Eric to repair the disfunctioning sports wheelchairs. We flipped tires, patched blowouts on tubes, cut pieces of old tires to cover gaping holes in tires to prevent further blowouts, we used gravity to strategically reinstall a wheel mount (a big nut stuck within and a big bolt without), we twisted broken spokes to reattach broken footrests and to mend a broken cloth seat where the bolts had sheared off. We put at least 3 more sports wheelchairs in action and repaired the others that were already being used. Everyone thanked me at the match. I felt pretty good. I also patched a blowout moments before the match start. I then began to crash. Stimulants no longer had power over my waning consciousness. I met with potential trainees after the match, and I invited some to join me to see the stores. We arrived, and the tension of my exhaustion and my trying to reassure everyone that we are going to get the money to make the developments to the stores to make them beautiful and effective overcame me, because plain fact, the stores are not currently beautiful or wheelchair accessible. My head felt like it was cracking and my life pouring out of me, so I decided to go home and sleep on it.

I slept for about 3 days – not straight through, but the majority of the time – crazy, talk about losing yourself. This time was mixed with thoughts about what are we going to do next. What is my relationship with Emmanuel and EEFSA. How are we going to start the training without the money to develop the workshop.

I came to senses on the fourth day with a renewed sense of purpose. I started meeting with potential trainees, talking with them at length in groups and individually, visiting them in their houses, attending GSPD meetings. I went to the stores and started sorting through the tools. One of the trainees, Sule, came by on his motor-scooter (he can’t ride a bicycle because he doesn’t have any muscle strength in his legs, but he’s a hulk from the waist up, and a true rasta with an amazing positive vibe, make you smile just being with him.) His rear hub was loose – I looked at it, just like a bicycle hub. We grabbed the tools we needed, removed the wheel, removed the nuts and a cone on the one side of the axle – there were sealed bearings that had a wider inner diameter than the axle diameter – this causing the looseness. The cone on the one side jammed into the one bearing and stabilized it, but there was no cone (or room for a cone on the other side). We sorted through some small parts, found a slightly conical washer, shaved it so it fit over the axle, put it on, tightened the hub, it worked. Fight problems due to mismatched parts with mismatched parts, and make a solution. Awesome time with Sule. Another trainee, Julius (a kente cloth weaver) called me, said he was in town, and he would be at the stores in 10 minutes. Sule and I hung out, and Julius swings around the corner into the back. We slap fives and chat – mixing business with various other topics. Sule mentions that the Batik Tie and Die workshop for the GSPD is not being used currently and it’s a few blocks away. He says that he knows the Batik chairman and that we could most likely get permission to use that space for the training. Righteous. I had known about the space, but had not considered the possibility of using it. Talk with people, bring them into the situation in which they have a stake, and problems that one person can’t handle will be solved by the group. We are currently waiting on a response, but if we can use this workshop, we can pack the tools and some bikes there, set up a temporary bike workshop, and then have more time to get money and develop the stores.

I met with the EEFSA folks yesterday, and we have resolved to look into using this alternate space for the training, to marketing some of our raw bikes to other bike sellers in order to bring in some cash, and to organize a day-long program to meet with the trainees, the EEFSA folks, and myself to hash out the content and purpose of this project, to develop a common vision and direction, to voice expectations and concerns, and to develop more unity and group identity. We’ll see how things work out. My strategy is flexibility but one-pointed purpose, to pull us together and get us working together as quickly as possible. I can feel the immense power of this project. We are dealing with peoples lives, with our lives, with our society.