Somewhere Over the Atlantic

(The following are our notes between leaving Los Angeles and our first arrivals in Accra, Ghana)

6/21/09
The packing of one’s life into an 8-foot by 10-foot by 8-foot cube is a bit humbling. As with most things in life, good friends with a quick wit and the promise of a Father’s Office burger and brew seem to make it a much better arrangement. We have to give a sincere thank you to the timely assistance from Joe, Amanda, Elizabeth, Brendan, Raoul, and Ryan all made our move out of 841 S. Serrano Ave. in Los Angeles possible. The closing of our storage locker in Culver City signaled the beginning of my realization that we were actually leaving Los Angeles for Accra, Ghana in four days – in between we need to have two deep teeth cleanings, one crown fitting, finish two jobs, collect one last paycheck, pack for three months, obtain one set of Malaria pills and find a home for any remaining material possessions. Ok, go.

6/26/09 1:00 AM
48 hours ago we broke down everything remaining to be done before our 3:45 AM pick-up this morning (two hours from writing this journal entry). The Volvo still needed to be fixed and was at the mechanic (Zen Volvo in Studio City – great place and great owner, Luis!). The main hurdle came from giving out our last "would you please borrow this from me" items to trusted friends. This actually just wrapped up about 5 minutes ago - we had a rolling band of well wishers coming through and taking things like our TV (Amanda), the keys to the Volvo (Oscar), clothes for the Salvation Army (Vikram), bicycle parts for the bike kitchen (Mike + Kim), and even a few bicycles (Gordon and Oscar again). Once I jot this down, it's literally off to the airport. And then...Ghana.

6/27/09 8:20 AM
So we've landed in Accra - a surprisingly easy 20 hours. The flight was hilarious - in my mind it was like an American version of coming to Ghana. We were perpetually looking for that first sign of a truly “authentic” African vibe, as though a blinking light would somehow go on over our heads somewhere off the coast of New York that said, “You are now really, really going to Africa.” Yet, when we boarded our fellow Delta passengers could pretty much be lumped into two categories: well-dressed Ghanaians or sweat-wearing college aged girls with missionary intentions.

Of the 20 hours in-flight, I managed to sleep for approximately 18.3. I somehow managed to avoid staying awake for either take-off or landing (Dad - those motorcycle rides in Jacksonville has paid huge dividends...I've also slept through two earthquakes in LA). I'm afraid to say that Meg's luck with sleeping hasn't gone quite as well.

Landing in Accra brought about a sense of awe, something kind of like your first day of school as a freshman. We made it with our completely over-sized carry-on bags to the main baggage pick-up before realizing the first of several misplaced items: Meghan’s glasses and a well-worn Detroit Tigers cap. I suppose it could have been worse but those are going to be two sorely missed items. The glasses especially!

After haggling with luggage and customs, we spilled outside to find a smiling and happy friend-of-a-friend named Percy with our names on his sign! Seeing him brought time back to normal speed, as though the past 24 hours since leaving Los Angeles were some time warp and we’d come out the other side with most things intact and a gregarious Ghanaian welcoming us.

Percy was telling us all about Ghana on our drive to the guest house at which he’d made arrangements to – the culture, the history, the humor – when suddenly a large pack of a few hundred men were running towards us. Meghan and I looked at each other and for that split second thought, “Dear God, is this how it ends? We’re young, lots of living yet to do, such a shame if…” And then again time caught up to us and Percy yelled out, “Look, it is the Vice President of Ghana jogging!” Literally, the Vice President of Ghana was running down the street in the opposite direction of our car for a public health campaign. Percy joked that he had arranged a welcoming party…I have a feeling he's not joking. He has that fun look in his eye.

OBAMA'S 1st NIGHT!!

We thought we'd start out our first blog entry with a bang. So we enlisted the help of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue to bring a little luster to our cause. We've been in Ghana for 14 days - although to be straight it feels like 14 months. Much has happened, and we'll catch everyone up in time. For now though, enjoy the following from last night's "Obama Night!" - a small window into our life here in Ghana, and the the people, culture and quirky-ness that lies within...

10/07/2009 (Told in the voice of the lovely and talented Meghan Corroon) -

Tonight was the much anticipated Obama arrival to Ghana! The build-up here has been intense with Obama music videos, Obama t-shirts, Obama African Fabric (which I will be making an outfit out of soon), even Obama cookies.

The afternoon started by getting out of work early as they were practically evacuating all the Ministry buildings. Mathew had taken the day off entirely because his office is on the outskits of town and traffic was awful. While at work, I started feeling ill for some reason (lots of possible reasons!) and grabbed a taxi home - and proceeded to vomit for the afternoon (ahhh... the digestive system in West Africa!). But I slept so I could rally for Obama night!

After some rest, we went to dinner with our good friend Patience at her brother's restaurant that had a wide variety of Ghanaian cuisine (I was still feeling a bit shaky but managed to eat a good amount). We were able to see all the lead up coverage on TV with the peanut gallery commentary of Patience's family...hilarious! In one scene, the interviewer asked former Ghana President Rawlings to comment on sitting near another former President Kukuofur - to which Rawlings snorted and chuckled, saying "I mean have you met the man? I cannot stand him." (This would be like Clinton and Bush I going at it...)

After dinner Patience was determined that we were going to find a way to score free Obama T-shirts - someone had been giving them out all over town. So we went with Patience to the NDC Headquarters (current party in power, with President Atta Mills). When we got there, a crowd of people clustered around this gate that was on the backside of the headquarters / house. They were about to riot for Obama T-shirts, and some had been there all day! We were by far the only whites (aka Obrunis) in the crown. Everyone was chanting OBAMA, OBAMA! and then singing the national anthem of Ghana. People will go far for a free T-shirt in Ghana!!!

Patience knew one of the party officials inside the gate and told them that we were Americans and had voted for Obama so should get t-shirts. Next thing we know we are getting squished inside the gate while they are pushing back the rest of the crowd and are taken into the inner sanctum of the political offices... The crowd outside begins yelling for t-shirts even louder and shaking the gate!

Once inside the NDC offices there were all these distinguished dudes just sitting around watching a field hockey game on TV! (Incidently, the match on TV was the first match at Ghana's new field hockey stadium, a very important indication of development and thus a very big deal.) We were introduced to the man in charge and asked lots of questions about where we're from and what we're doing in Ghana. This is the point where I remember the peace corps rule never to get involved in African political parties or events and to keep it neutral and low-profile - Oh well we are on a quest for Obama T-shirts!. So after a lot of serious questioning the big men start smiling and saying 'you are welcome/Akwaaba'! and they gave us t-shirts out of their own personal stash! At this point Patience is calling and saying we should come out since the crowd is getting rowdy - we wait a polite amount of time and then ask to exit, thanking everyone profusely and chanting OBAMA, OBAMA! They invite us back for the next day and say they will give us even more t-shirts. We are then escorted out of the gated offices, find Patience and run down the street with out new-found Booty!!!!!!! Wa HOO !Obama!!!

The night goes on in revelry as we traipse around the city in our new t-shirts with everyone on the street chanting Obama and wearing their t-shirts too. We end up watching his actual arrival standing on the street in a crowd of Ghanaians on a TV that a bar has put outside. No better way to experience the arrival of the progical son of Africa I would say than with the people in the streets under the African sky! What a night...

Communities plan for a low-energy future

‘Transition initiatives,’ begun in Britain, aim to empower people to tackle effects of climate change and decline of oil.

By Judith D. Schwartz| Contributor of The Christian Science Monitor/ September 11, 2008 edition

http://features.csmonitor.com/environment/2008/09/11/communities-plan-for-a-low-energy-future/

A year ago, Pat Proulx-Lough felt so overwhelmed by reports about climate change that she couldn’t even listen to the news. “My husband was finishing a dissertation on water resources, and I became hopeless and fearful,” says Ms. Proulx-Lough, a therapist in Portland, Maine.

Fast-forward to summer ’08 and Proulx-Lough is not just hopeful, but excited about the future.

What happened? She tapped into the Transition movement.

Transition Towns (or districts, or islands) designate places where local groups have organized to embrace the challenge of adapting to a low-oil economy. As the movement’s website (www.transitiontowns.org) states, it’s an experiment in grass-roots optimism: Can motivated citizens rouse their neighbors to act in the face of diminished oil resources and climate change?

“We don’t know if this will work,” says Ben Brangwyn of Totnes, England, who in 2007 helped launch the Transition Network to support Transition Towns worldwide, “but if we leave it to the government it will be too little, too late. If we do it on a personal level, it won’t be enough. But if we do this as a community, it may be just enough, just in time.”

The Transition movement is high-concept and hands-on, combining homespun common sense and camaraderie (bread-baking workshops, “seed-sharing Sundays”) and sophisticated 21st-century organizing (Skype audio conferencing, online wikis, open space technology).

Each Transition “initiative,” as it’s called, begins with a core group willing to serve as a steering committee. In Sandpoint, Idaho, for instance, Richard Kuhnel assembled a group through small discussions at his home. Next comes an action plan and lots of old-fashioned unpaid legwork.

While the concerns – climate change and peak oil (the idea that the world will soon pass its maximum petroleum production and start to decline) – are somber, the approach is upbeat. As the movement’s founder, Rob Hopkins, is fond of saying, “It’s more like a party than a protest march.”

Such ebullience is not typical of ecological realism. According to Michael Brownlee, who was active in the Boulder County, Colo., Transition launch, “the gloom many people feel stems in part from a sense of powerlessness.” The Transition movement advocates no-nonsense routes to local preparedness, rather than waiting for government to step in. “People come in very concerned about climate change, the economy,” Mr. Brownlee says, “but as they become involved in projects … they rediscover community. Once they feel reconnected to those around them, it changes their whole outlook. The anxiety and depression fall away.”

The movement began, improbably, three years ago with a student project. Mr. Hopkins, a teacher of permaculture – a holistic, ecologically based approach to agriculture, energy usage, and building design – was working with students at the Kinsale (Ireland) Further Education College. They were trying to devise a plan to wean the town off fossil fuels by applying ecological principles on a large scale.
Hopkins brought the model to his home town of Totnes, in southwest England, in 2006, and the idea quickly caught on and spread. Ben Brangwyn was inspired by “Transition Totnes” to leave his job in information technology and devote himself to organizing Transition’s online communication and resources. His hope, he says, is “to encourage every community to proactively prepare for reducing carbon [output] and increasing resilience.”

Rooted in England, sprouting in US

The Transition model still hovers below the radar in the United States. In late July, Ketchum, Idaho, became the third US Transition Town, joining Boulder County, Colo., and Sandpoint, Idaho. (Boulder is holding the first-ever Transition training in the US on Sept. 13 and 14, in fact.) In the UK, where it began, the Transition movement is a cultural phenomenon, with more than 70 Transition Towns in place and many more mulling it over. There’s even a Transition story line on “The Archers,” Britain’s long-running radio soap opera. In all, worldwide, some 100 communities from Fujino, Japan, to Waiheke Island in New Zealand have met the criteria to claim the Transition mantle.

To Glen Brand, director of the Sierra Club’s national Cool Cities campaign, which promotes clean energy solutions, the Transition movement “provides a fresh perspective for educating the public on local sustainability in an era of looming climate change and depletion of fossil fuels.” The key, he says, is to “make sure that ‘Transition’ means meaningful action with local clean energy and other sustainable solutions.” Aaron Heurtas, spokesman for the Union of Concerned Scientists, says such local efforts “help to drive all levels of government to take the actions which will be needed to address these issues.”

The goal is not to replace ongoing en­­­­­viron­­mental and economic projects. Sand­­­point Mayor Gretchen Hellar says the movement serves to “bring together all groups” working on sustainability, organizing community efforts while not duplicating effort.

A tool kit for responding to warming

Since its founding three years ago, the movement has made “raising awareness” the first step. But, says Jennifer Gray, who spearheaded the effort to launch the second Transition Initiative in Penwith, Cornwall, “We’ve got raised awareness. The climate is changing. Prices are rising…. Transition initiatives are about more than awareness. It’s a tool kit, a template for how to respond, practical projects people can get their teeth into.”

One item in the Transition tool kit is “reskilling” – reviving energy-frugal skills that past generations took for granted, such as how to repair something rather than buying new and how to grow and preserve food. Says Proulx-Lough, who has spent time in Totnes twice this year: “A workshop on darning socks – that’s practical action, and an excuse to do things together!”
Among other Transition activities:

• Planting nut trees on street corners and orchards in the city.

• Signing up 50 people to buy solar hot-water heaters so the units can be purchased at a discount.

• Interviewing seniors who recall what living a low-energy life was like.

• Holding bicycle-repair workshops

If a Transition Town outwardly looks no different from any other community, it’s because much of the “action” takes place behind the scenes: organizing lectures and films that build awareness; networking with other locations on the Web; meeting with city officials.

Every initiative is different. “It’s all about asking questions of your community and encouraging people to solve their own problems,” says Proulx-Lough. Creative, idiosyncratic responses reflect a town’s culture and history or piggyback on other local programs. Lewes, in East Sussex, a market town for the better part of eight centuries, is poised to launch its own currency. The goal is to stimulate the local economy and help insulate it from the vagaries of the national and global markets. (The Totnes Pound, accepted in about 60 local shops, has been in circulation for more than a year.)

Some communities, like Totnes and Boulder, with their reputations for alternative lifestyles, might seem natural spots for Transition groups. The same could not be said for Penwith, a high-poverty area at the southwestern tip of Britain. Ms. Gray describes the challenge of persuading a population struggling with day-to-day subsistence to devote time and resources to such an ideal:

“Penwith is like an island,” Gray says. “People feel insular, and there are high levels of drug addiction and unemployment.” She ran a dairy farm there for several years and now lives in northern California. As a farmer, a parish councilor, and someone with a business background, she could speak to people with diverse backgrounds. “To do this, you need someone who’s a bit of a chameleon,” she says.

While there were plenty of naysayers, Gray did gain community support. “Everybody has a hook,” she says. “You just have to find it. Rising oil prices: They get that hook. Penwith is at the end of the supply chain. If oil goes high enough, people won’t get it here. Therefore it’s important for laying the structure” for a low-carbon future. Ironically, Penwith’s very isolation may mean an easier shift away from oil: “People in Penwith actually remember what life was like without oil. People made do,” she says.

US size, car dependence are hurdles

The fact that, unlike the UK, most US communities were built around the car is a challenge for the Transition movement in the US. Another is the na­­tion’s sheer size. “It’s difficult to know how best to organize,” says Pamela Gray (Jennifer’s mother), a trustee of the Transition Network, whose focus is building resilience into healthcare systems. Britain has a strong, cohesive media that reaches a broad audience, she notes, whereas in the US it’s more diffuse.

Still, interest is mounting. “The Tran­sition Movement is about to break on these shores,” Brownlee, the activist from Boulder County, Colo., predicts.

As Portland Mayor Edward Suslovic observes, “financial pain is increasing [people’s] receptivity to sustainability practices in general.” Whether you believe in climate change or peak oil makes no difference, says Sandpoint Mayor Hellar. The sustainable principles embodied in Transition “are not only good for the pocketbook, but good for the community.”

12 key steps toward transition

This is An edited version of a list that appears on the Transition Network’s website (transitiontowns.org/TransitionNetwork/12Steps):

1. Set up a steering group and design its demise. Once a minimum of four subgroups has formed (see Step 5, below), the steering group should disband and reform with a representative from each subgroup.

2. Raise awareness of the potential effects of peak oil and climate change by showing films, holding panel discussions, lectures, etc. Identify your key allies, build networks, “prepare the community … for the launch of your Transition initiative.”

3. Lay the foundation. Network with existing groups and activists. Make it clear that a Transition initiative is designed to incorporate their efforts.

4. Organize a “great unleashing,” a memorable event to mark the project’s coming of age, probably 6 to 12 months after your first conscious-raising event. This builds momentum and “celebrates your community’s desire to take action.” The Unleashing should be “in a spirit of ‘we can do something about this’ rather than doom and gloom.”

5. Form subgroups. Smaller groups should focus on specific aspects, such as food, waste, energy, education, youth, economics, transportation, water, local government, and so on. The question for each: What’s the best way to make the community more resilient and reduce its carbon footprint?

6. Use open space technology for meetings. OST is an organizational strategy with “no agenda, no timetable, no obvious coordinator, and no minute-takers.” (See: “Open Space Technology: A User’s Guide,” by Harrison Owen. More information is available online.)

7. Do things. “Your project needs, from an early stage, to begin to create practical, high visibility manifestations in your community.”

8. Facilitate the “great reskilling.” For society to adjust to a lower-energy future, the thinking goes, people must relearn skills that sustained past generations: repairing, cooking, bicycle maintenance, gardening, etc. They are empowering as well as fun.

9. Build a bridge to local government. “You will not progress too far unless you have cultivated a positive and productive relationship with your local authority.”

10. Honor elders. “To rebuild that picture of a lower-energy society, we have to engage with those who directly remember the transition to the age of Cheap Oil, especially the period between 1930 and 1960.”

11. Let it go where it wants to go. “Your role is not to come up with all the answers, but to act as a catalyst for the community.”

12. Create an “energy descent” plan. “Each subgroup will have been focusing on practical actions to increase community resilience and reduce the carbon footprint.” Combined, these will help create an “energy descent” action plan in response to peak oil and climate change.

The future's greener: Vertical farms and computerised car convoys could be just around the corner

By Meg Carter Thursday, 11 September 2008
http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/green-living/the-futures-greener-vertical-farms-and-computerised-car-convoys-could-be-just-around-the-corner-925394.html

A world in which we harvest energy generated by our own bodies, grow our own food on rooftops and balconies, and use virtual windows to cut down on long-distance travel sounds like science fiction. Yet, according to a project designed to visualise life in a low-carbon future, these are just some of the products we could be using within 15 years.

Low Carbon Living 2022 is an attempt to bring to life some of the issues surrounding climate change, according to James Goodman, head of futures at sustainability charity Forum for the Future, which is behind the initiative and has come up with a dozen ideas for low-carbon products and services.

"With much of the current debate on climate change verging on the apocalyptic, we wanted to encourage people to think positively about how our daily lives will have to change in the future," he explains. "While the science is deadly serious, emphasising only the negatives about climate change can leave people feeling disempowered."

Some of the low-carbon products may seem outlandish, yet all are informed by emerging research and evolving technology developments. "I suppose you could call them potentially viable," Goodman says. "The point is, changes we will have to make do not need to be negative. The impetus climate change creates could benefit our daily lives."

Back in the Saddle

Hey there...

So it's taken me some time to realize the importance of writing...often. Anyhow, I'll do my best to take at least one night a week to go through and post stories, pictures, and articles that I happen across. And I encourage you to do the same!

And here. We. Go.