Wastage

You always have to prepare for if things go wrong. Today, unfortunately, that did not happen.

We met Emmanuel to go and visit one of his projects in the Volta region, a sustainable irrigation system powered by clean energy. He had talked about it at the CSD so I was really looking forward to seeing how it all worked. This could be a main feature of the documentary.

Problem number one was the lateness of Emmanuel’s friend Dixon, who had kindly agreed to drive us to the project site. He was very apologetic, but we were resultantly pushed for time to reach our destination in the hours of daylight (you can’t film anything when it’s dark). Nevertheless, we were pretty much on schedule until the next complication emerged…

The car broke down.

Thankfully this happened quite near a village, so Dixon got a lift down there and returned with mechanics to tow the car back. If we’d had the accident somewhere in the middle of the countryside it would have been much harder finding assistance.

So we went to the mechanics’ shop and sat around for the best part of two hours while three men tried to fix the engine using nothing but a screwdriver. The main guy seemed determined to achieve the feat with no other tools, despite repeated coughing and spitting from the vehicle whenever it was switched on. For a while it seemed like they were making things worse, intensifying the problem and further wasting our valuable time.

Moreover, we knew there were financial difficulties on the way. We had spent our money on petrol for the journey, so there was very little left to pay out incompetent friends. When they did finally repair the engine fault, we had to take one of their crew in the car with us and hunt for an ATM.

It had been decided we would make one last surge to reach the project that day, since there were no other times Emmanuel could show us around. So we set off in that direction again, keeping a sharp eye out for banks. Chances of finding one seemed increasingly unlikely as we passed through rural communities. Most of the people here probably do not have bank accounts.

Then the unthinkable happened (not for the first time on this trip): our car broke down again. It was the same fault; only a makeshift job had been done back at the village. We were stuck again, in a small roadside settlement where street sellers swarmed around every passing vehicle, aggressively shoving their products through windows in hope of a sale.

The town was located near a large lake and I witnessed a new natural phenomenon that evening: the fastest sunset I have ever seen. In under ten minutes the distant orange circle sunk down and disappeared from view; with it went our final chances of doing any filming at all today. Frustration.

After more sitting around, waiting to see if local mechanics could be found, we decided to give up on the car. Emmanuel did return with a possible repairman, but it was too dark to fix anything. We pushed the sorry vehicle to a safe spot near the police checkpoint and got on a bus back to Accra. The whole sequence of events was like a bad dream.

And it was the World Cup football results which turned my bad dream into a nightmare. England lost to Portugal on penalties, a repeat of the European Championship quarter-final tow years ago. I didn’t see anything on TV, since I was in one of those remote villages waiting for the car to be fixed. Instead I borrowed Emmanuel’s phone and tuned into the radio commentary, which made depressive listening. Goodbye Sven, you won’t be missed.