michael pollak

ghana 2014 – tag 1

I am still debating if I want to write this travel log in german or english.
German keeps my friends at home in the loop, english should be more interesting to people just randomly dropping in and the local students. I suppose I just will do both and spare me the decision.

The first day was long but quite pleasent. After hanging out in the Lounge at VIE (just to be cool) the flight to FRA let me listen to the rest of the audiobook “Blink” – which is awesome.

After some running around in FRA we checked in to a quite long flight to Accra Airport (ACC) in Ghana. I wasn’t expecting it, but here at the equator the sun sets really quick and also quite early. At 18:30 we landed in the big but not tall city of Accra, in the complete dark and the intense noise and chaos of Africa. After quite a long time in the climatised jet the wall of heat and moisture also was a firm welcome. From Accra it is a two hour car ride to Keta, over some rather bad streets and through some crouded markets.

This place is intense, and I was culture-shocked for days after my arrival. It also is impressive and diverse, looking forward to learning a lot.

Deutsche Version || German Version

ghana 2014 – tag 2

All night I’ve heard music and singing from the schoolyard, so in the morning I decided to check out what they are up to. I set in the shade for quite a while, talking to some kids and observing the event. My try to acclimatise to the whole overwhelming situation.

Turns out all the music and noise was part of a big funeral, which in Africa means quite a party.

If I got it right, these guys are neither police nor military but mere students in their school uniform. And if you wondered, yes, they are drilling, exercising and marching, but only with wooden rifles. Reminds me of being a kid.

Saturday is the big washday for the students at campus. They wash their clothes by hand and to dry (and bleach) spread their shirts out on the grass. It works I guess.

In the evening I was out at the beach, it’s not as close as I’ve thought, like ten minutes to walk. A lot of fishingboats out there, not many people, nice beach, nice place. Watched them dragging out one of the boats, where 25 people pull them up on a rope. Not many fish in that boat, but really interesting to experience.

Deutsche Version || German Version

ghana 2014 – tag 3

On sunday the weather was nice so we decided to walk around Keta. The streets weren’t as busy as usual, so we walked to the lagoon and explored the area around campus. I took some klischee pictures of how africa is supposed to look, like women carrying things on their heads or old cars in the streets. That day was touristy, but at least I got a feel for the location and the area.

After our short walk we went back to Ketasco, walked through the guarded main gate and saw the remains of wash day everywhere. In the evening the task was to get the computerlab at least partially running, to start the workshop maybe the next day – but things changed. Things change all the time here in Africa, so by now – at the time of writing this – I’m getting used to it.

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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.

Deutsche Version || German Version

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 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 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.

Deutsche Version || German Version