The Steampunk World
Some spawn of bugs gathered around our house lights and then dumped its wings (again) so that we are surrounded by a blanket of insect wings, African snow. Have you ever run your hands through a big haystack of bug wings? It feels so light and soft that tissue paper or feathers seem heavy and rough by comparison. The bugs, stupid in their mating frenzy, were collected and fried.
There are so many things that I haven't been able to write here. Being in a place like this involves experiencing moment after moment that you think you'll remember forever and want to share, but they all pile up and you have to just accept it and be in the moment. Like last night- just a few folks and a few kids hanging out on the porch at night, the air warm and fresh and the sky dark, not saying anything, just sitting there while one of us plays traditional Ghanaian songs on the harmonica.
There's so much wisdom I've gathered, from old women in the village and young men in the alleys of the city. But I've long since learned that wisdom can't be spread by words, that if you speak the truth then people will nod and agree and not change a thing. So the only wisdom I'll offer here is to get out there and help people. If you are waiting until you get your life together first, then trust that it is the best way to get your life together.
How can I express the warmth of these people, the hopelessness, the humor and the thievery? The size of the sky, the clutching and bloodsucking of the bush, the vengeful growth, the frenzy of insect life at ground level. John C. Van Dyke, the Mojave Desert explorer, said that trying to relate the beauty of natural places was like 'shooting arrows at the sun'... I guess when we write, the best we can hope is to relate the general direction of Truth.
So I spent a hectic few days in Accra and then returned for the show. The Deputy Minister of Roads and Transport was the man to impress, and I can't tell if his "Let us see this program grow to a national center" speech was a vote of support, a desire to wait before helping, or just something he wrote beforehand. Now we wait to see if folks show up to buy our bikes, and if 0sei can finagle a larger order.
To open the show we rode to Konongo, the Rat Patrol and the Cycling Sisters and whoever else wanted to show up and the police escort. My efforts here may as well have been summed up by one man's response: He sees 60-some bikes ride past, some of them reconstructed into amazing contraptions, and what does it occur to him to say? "White man! White man!"
The news was there, Ghana Television as well as a Kumasi station that packed up as soon as the Deputy Minister spoke, they must have been out at his urging. They 'caught' me 'working' on a bike for an interview, I was breathless from the ride and didn't realize it at first that they'd started rolling but at least I was dressed in my own clothes. I saw it later on the news, they got a good clip of 0sei's emotional speech, a good clear shot of one of our cargo bikes, and a hilarious clip from the interview where I sound like an asthmatic.
---
When I was in college and everyone around me was idealist and radical, I was cynical and bitter and didn't believe in much of anything. Afterwards I tried the high-roller thing but it never really satisfied me, not even (as things were when the meteor came) making $100 an hour and working 10 hours a week. Now, at a time when most of my alums are concerned with graduating from Ikea to Crate & Barrel, I seem to have come under the thumb of conscience, and I will never again be able to waste and splurge without thinking of my friends, my Rat Patrol brothers and sisters, going hungry and suffering simply because of where they were born.
And so I've joined this war, against the Rat Race. The same system which traps Americans in a cycle of spending and misery is the one which keeps the developing world mired in grinding poverty. The world is no longer a battle between leftists and rightists, it is a battle between organized money and organized people. Organized money is winning.
My primary mission is to replace crystal meth with Rat Patrol as the activity of choice among small-town bored youth. Just as 0sei returned to remove the biggest obstacle that he faced (no opportunity), I have schemes to return to my roots and rescue those who wallow in boredom as I did. Boredom seems like a minor problem until you learn that reality can be shaped, in the light of what I now know, I am almost angry that there were no role models for me in my small town. Just petty people preoccupied with being the biggest fish in a small, small pond.
I'm constantly preoccupied with staying alive, in a way you might call paranoia... or intense self-preservation. In this war, I'm willing to give my life. I have certainly risked it by coming here! Ironically, the car has been one of the most powerful tools for addicting a society to the System, and it has also been the tool with the greatest chance of ridding the System of the one who will undo it. So I want to tell you here and now that should I die in pursuit of a just world then my death will be no tragedy, it will be one of the sacrifices which must be made to win any war. If the war is just, the death is justified... I don't mean to say that I have faced the terror that a soldier faces, but if health workers in Afghanistan get grenaded to death, haven't they made as much of a sacrifice as a soldier? All battles are not fought the same way, but death is death. And my life is something that I give willingly to fight this battle.
There are so many things that I haven't been able to write here. Being in a place like this involves experiencing moment after moment that you think you'll remember forever and want to share, but they all pile up and you have to just accept it and be in the moment. Like last night- just a few folks and a few kids hanging out on the porch at night, the air warm and fresh and the sky dark, not saying anything, just sitting there while one of us plays traditional Ghanaian songs on the harmonica.
There's so much wisdom I've gathered, from old women in the village and young men in the alleys of the city. But I've long since learned that wisdom can't be spread by words, that if you speak the truth then people will nod and agree and not change a thing. So the only wisdom I'll offer here is to get out there and help people. If you are waiting until you get your life together first, then trust that it is the best way to get your life together.
How can I express the warmth of these people, the hopelessness, the humor and the thievery? The size of the sky, the clutching and bloodsucking of the bush, the vengeful growth, the frenzy of insect life at ground level. John C. Van Dyke, the Mojave Desert explorer, said that trying to relate the beauty of natural places was like 'shooting arrows at the sun'... I guess when we write, the best we can hope is to relate the general direction of Truth.
So I spent a hectic few days in Accra and then returned for the show. The Deputy Minister of Roads and Transport was the man to impress, and I can't tell if his "Let us see this program grow to a national center" speech was a vote of support, a desire to wait before helping, or just something he wrote beforehand. Now we wait to see if folks show up to buy our bikes, and if 0sei can finagle a larger order.
To open the show we rode to Konongo, the Rat Patrol and the Cycling Sisters and whoever else wanted to show up and the police escort. My efforts here may as well have been summed up by one man's response: He sees 60-some bikes ride past, some of them reconstructed into amazing contraptions, and what does it occur to him to say? "White man! White man!"
The news was there, Ghana Television as well as a Kumasi station that packed up as soon as the Deputy Minister spoke, they must have been out at his urging. They 'caught' me 'working' on a bike for an interview, I was breathless from the ride and didn't realize it at first that they'd started rolling but at least I was dressed in my own clothes. I saw it later on the news, they got a good clip of 0sei's emotional speech, a good clear shot of one of our cargo bikes, and a hilarious clip from the interview where I sound like an asthmatic.
---
When I was in college and everyone around me was idealist and radical, I was cynical and bitter and didn't believe in much of anything. Afterwards I tried the high-roller thing but it never really satisfied me, not even (as things were when the meteor came) making $100 an hour and working 10 hours a week. Now, at a time when most of my alums are concerned with graduating from Ikea to Crate & Barrel, I seem to have come under the thumb of conscience, and I will never again be able to waste and splurge without thinking of my friends, my Rat Patrol brothers and sisters, going hungry and suffering simply because of where they were born.
And so I've joined this war, against the Rat Race. The same system which traps Americans in a cycle of spending and misery is the one which keeps the developing world mired in grinding poverty. The world is no longer a battle between leftists and rightists, it is a battle between organized money and organized people. Organized money is winning.
My primary mission is to replace crystal meth with Rat Patrol as the activity of choice among small-town bored youth. Just as 0sei returned to remove the biggest obstacle that he faced (no opportunity), I have schemes to return to my roots and rescue those who wallow in boredom as I did. Boredom seems like a minor problem until you learn that reality can be shaped, in the light of what I now know, I am almost angry that there were no role models for me in my small town. Just petty people preoccupied with being the biggest fish in a small, small pond.
I'm constantly preoccupied with staying alive, in a way you might call paranoia... or intense self-preservation. In this war, I'm willing to give my life. I have certainly risked it by coming here! Ironically, the car has been one of the most powerful tools for addicting a society to the System, and it has also been the tool with the greatest chance of ridding the System of the one who will undo it. So I want to tell you here and now that should I die in pursuit of a just world then my death will be no tragedy, it will be one of the sacrifices which must be made to win any war. If the war is just, the death is justified... I don't mean to say that I have faced the terror that a soldier faces, but if health workers in Afghanistan get grenaded to death, haven't they made as much of a sacrifice as a soldier? All battles are not fought the same way, but death is death. And my life is something that I give willingly to fight this battle.
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