michael pollak

ghana 2014 – tag 10

After ten days of staring at the ocean and not knowing if it is dangerous to swim in it I just asked one of the fishermen. He jumped in the ocean with me and gave me a few hints of how to deal with the crashing waves. With these pointers it was actually quite easy and fun.

He asked me afterwards if I want to help them drag their boat out to shore. So spot the white guy.

Some curious kids in a quite market street in keta followed us and we had some fun.

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ghana 2014 – tag 9

After the workshop Noah took me out to see the area. We walked to emancipation beach and I saw the sheer size of the lagoon, it is incredible.

To me the lagoon pretty much felt like a second ocean, just without the harsh waves. I asked some local girl if I can pluck a coconut. She helped me and explained me how to open one and well, after some hacking and slashing I had my first handplucked coconut to drink.

After emancipation beach we went to fort Prinzenstein, one of the “sightseeing” hotspots in keta.

Some local guy gave us the tour and it was quite strange to listen to him explaining the horrible history of slavetrade in the area. Honestly I have never felt so uncomfortable while sightseeing, hearing the stories and seeing the locations had some crazy effects on me that day. It was absolutely interesting.

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ghana 2014 – tag 8

In the morning the whole workshop group went out to some photoshooting. Noah got a certificate for his robotics project, and we handed that over to him infront of the general assembly of ketasco. Quite an impressive scene, with a lot of students attending.

After being done with the workshop I tried to see the full moon rise over the ocean. As there were a lot of clouds I wasn’t absolutely lucky, but I still felt quite priviledged to see that spectacle and enjoy the calming noise of the ocean. Good times.

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ghana 2014 – tag 7

The night was gorgeous. Because the skies were clear and we almost had a full moon I decided to walk out to the ocean and snap a few pictures. Damn I was so glad that I did, the night was brilliant. The moon lit up the ocean and the beach and I took a LOT of pictures. Most of those are not even long time exposures, it was just incredibly bright.

Some fishermen were out too, working on their boats.

Workshop was a lot of fun but also a bunch of work. Setup the blog between sessions, started to work on a header image and user credentials.

Rainy season finally got a hold of us. Honestly, this is quite fun compared to “rain” in Austria. It’s warm and quite fun to run around in.

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ghana 2014 – tag 6

We sent the students out, equiped with mobile phones and my camera, to snap pictures to a specific topic. This warmup task was really fun and I got to know the people I ll be working with. Had them show me the campus and played volleyball. Also after four days the water came back to ketasco.

Worked on the computerlab a while, but as soon as I was out of there things got connected or disconnected randomly – so I saw no point in it.

To get my mood back up again I hacked open a coconut with my trusty ESEE Izula. Gotta love that knife. Actually  I found out that coconut water is VERY corrosive and the Izula is not really equiped with the right steel for that task. The 1095 blade rusted quite badly after that.

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ghana 2014 – tag 5

Finally some work to do. After lunch we talked to Mr. Heloo and worked out a schedule for the upcoming three weeks, which included a morning session from 6 to 8 o’clock and an evening session from 17 to 19. At the time I wasn t sure about the early mornings, but here in Ghana the day is done at ten, so I tend to get to bed pretty early. On the other hand, people are out and about doing things at campus starting at 0430 or so. Basically I just never adjusted for the two hours time difference.

Thuesday afternoon was our first session, and 18 students and ten teachers showed up in the computerlab. The plan was to create micro content units for mobile phones, with the students and teachers collaborating and adding their experiences. First evening was mostly a welcome event and we assigned some topics to all the students.

And no, this is not the school bus. I’m pretty sure.

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ghana 2014 – tag 4

Monday. No workshop yet. All day long we weren t sure about if and when  the mobile learning workshop will start.

In the morning I drink coffee. Usually a lot. So I brought instant coffee here to Ghana. I can t even begin to tell you how happy I am about that move, I tried this kinda milk from the can and it was strange. No joy with this one.

On my way to the lab I also found this beauty, a car rental that brags about their armored vehicles. As a european this sounded very strange to me but, “let the competition beware”.

The beauty of the lab, I m telling you I ve spent way too much time trying to fix this mess and make the internet workable. I even set up a better network topology and content filters to allow better bandwith distribution. The main problems are that A) apx. 1000 viruses are hosted on all those windows machines and B) on almost every one of them a download manager or torrent tracker (or both) is clogging the internet. I m looking forward to Austrian internet standards. A lot.

No workshop yet, so I sent out Eldat to take pictures with my camera. Got a few funny shots of some participants.

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