Take your Doxy

You can’t really understand Africa until you sink to the bottom of one of their biggest problems; Malaria. It was bound to happen eventually. Nearly half the world’s population is at risk of getting malaria, though prevention and treatment research has drastically decreased the mortality rate. But there is a reason why it is the #1 worst disease in the world. Maybe the amount of actual deaths has gone down, but it sure makes you feel like dying when you have it. I received treatment quickly, but for the 4 days that I was infected, death would have been a merciful option. Here is how it played out.

Day 1- Friday

I went out that morning to town to buy a few things and to make repairs on my motorcycle. I felt exhausted and weak but I attributed that to the scorching hot sun and lack of fluid intake. I also figured the lack of a real workout and the massive amount of food that the Johnsons have been giving me probably wasn’t helping either. I had some more plans to do in town but I was feeling so weak that by the time I got to the moto repairer, I just sat and waited. I sat in the corner in the shade on an old piece of engine and tried to escape the sun. There was a point where the sun arched higher in the sky and my foot was exposed. I cant and even explain the scorching sensation from just being in contact with the sunlight. I jerked my foot away and cowered in the corner. It was then I felt like there must be a real problem. I have been in Africa long enough that the sun shouldn’t bother me this month. Then I felt the joint pain, headache and extreme over heating. I sped home in time to crash on my bed and pass out. I slept for a few hours, waking up every so often in pain. Even though the sun had gone down, I began to feel burning hot. I stripped out of my uncomfortable clothes and turned the fan to full blast. I lay there briefly comforted and fell back asleep. Then the real suffering came. I began to feel like I stepped outside during the 2011 Snowpacalypse in nothing but a loin cloth. I couldn’t believe how cold it was. I struggled to turn off the fan and put on every article of clothing I could reach and lay on the bed shivering, not just normal shivering but near to grand mal seizure convulsions. I don’t know how long I lay there shaking but it felt like forever. I got up but my hands were shaking so violently that I couldn’t even open a pill bottle of some medicine. It was really quite frightening. I prayed to sleep and eventually sleep came until Sister Johnson awakened me. Next thing I knew I was in a car to a small clinic where they measured my temperature at 104 degrees. They gave me drugs and I was home again in my bed, afraid to sleep in fear of the shaking to come again.

Day 2- Saturday

I was fully awake somewhere around 7:00 am and had waves of consciousness the whole day. Because of the shivering episode of the night before, I was afraid to turn on the fan so I lay there in bed melting all day. Couldn’t keep food down , fever still as high as the sky, and a pounding headache. The night before, when listing off the symptoms of Malaria and I was nodding to each of them nervously, I was relived that when they mentioned “bitter taste in the mouth” and I could say no. But day 2 it hit. Its hard to explain, but the taste in the mouth was up there on the worst part of having Malaria list.

Day 3- Sunday

Another night of quaking shivering, but I was comforted that I was able to sleep in and feel somewhat rested. Still, I felt like a sinner for missing church. For the whole day, I still sweated, couldn’t eat and huge headache but today there was also debilitating stomach pain to add to the lot. Every time I moved, it was like a knife was slid into my abdomen. Nothing would subdue it. Laying there praying was the only way to let time go by.

Day 4- Monday

After three straight days in bed, I had to get out. I don’t know whether I was 100% quite yet, but I had to get out of there. I have been loving life in Ghana but honestly one of the biggest things I have been missing is actually rock climbing. I would have these lucid dreams of climbing and than wake up to realize it was only a dream. Probably because of that whole situation is the reason that a rock climbing gym membership was the only thing I asked for a present for Christmas. I went for a walk, just to get out, trying to ignore the knife in the gut. Then for the first night in what seemed like forever, I slept without all hell freezing over.

So moral of the story is, there is a reason why Malaria is the #1 worst disease in the world. I hated having it, but after the fact, I look back and am glad that I now have better insight into the people and culture of Africa. I now have more resolve to find innovative solutions to solve problems in this world.

Me, My Motorcycle and I

When you are in a new place, there is a certain threshold that when crossed, the place doesn’t feel so new anymore. It just becomes normal life. Once you adapt to a place, you can discover new aspects of culture that a tourist passing through with his eyes in his camera is not privileged to witness.  I am now staying with the Brigham Johnson and his family in Twifo Hemang, a village about an hour north of Cape Coast. They are an amazing family that really has their life in order. They are a powerful couple with three motivated and intelligent (though sometimes very stubborn) boys centered in the gospel and in living a happy and fulfilling life. They have welcomed me as they would their family and provided for my every need. But everyday when I go out, I am by myself. Alone. I have never really been truly alone much before. My whole life growing up I was with my family, if not with family, then in school surrounded by everyone else I knew. I spent quite a bit of time away from home prior to my mission but was always with close friends. For those two years on my mission, 24 hours a day seven days a week, a companion accompanied me like a shadow. Then college; new school, new scene, but I found my people faster than any loneliness could really settle. I guess I live by the “home is where the heart is” adage and bloom wherever I am planted. Including now. But to bloom as a single tree in an empty tundra is much different than in a sheltered forest. There are different winds that blow in new ways.

To combat any feeling of loneliness, I have tired to stay busy. In the past weeks I have been here, I have purchased and learned how to ride a motorcycle. I love Ghana and all of its little intricacies but if I could pick one thing to go without, it would have to be the use of the shoddy private transportation system. There is no government run transportation with standardized prices and fares. Every taxi and tro tro (15 passenger vans that can fit double that) is individually owned and therefore has their own individual costs. These costs can widely very, especially with the introduction of a foreign skin colour. I can’t even begin to tell you the amount of time and money I have wasted standing outside a dirty taxi window fighting over a few cents they want more than then fair price. Yes, I know it is just a few cents and I should probably just give them what they want and avoid contention. But there is an unalienable principle; you don’t treat someone differently because of the colour of their skin, no matter what country or continent one may reside. No matter the amount of education or exposure one may have had. Exposure is the key. Ignorance is a hard opponent; they don’t know when they have lost.  

Naturally, the only way to really avoid any of my principle-fighting is just to get my own set of wheels. I bought a motorcycle from a friend and oh, has it been worth it! I am free to go where I want, when I want and for the price I want. Petrol is quite cheap for a motorcycle and one tank can take me pretty far. About a week and a half after I learned to ride, I set off on a solo 100 mile journey from Agona Nkwanta to Twifo Hemang. Sure, there was some difficulty along the way, like the part where the moto completely died at a top of a hill in the middle of a rainstorm. Or the part where the mud was so thick that my wheels lost traction and I flopped to the ground like and idiot. Of course it was the one place where there were tonnes of people idly sitting and watching. Or the other part where the panel that holds the battery in place fell off and I had to squeeze it tight the rest of the way with my legs. You know, that kind of stuff. You either sit and pout about it or find a solution and move on.

It’s been an adventure driving a motorcycle around the jungles of Ghana and I’m convinced that you can never truly know true freedom until you are driving through the jungle by yourself on a motorcycle hours away from any civilization. It’s quite a feeling.

The Beginnings- October

Time seems to fly when you spend majority of your time in a crusty seat in an over stuffed 15 seater van puffing away at top speed of 45 miles per hour. I even used the odometer feature on Snapchat when it came to a point we were moving considerably faster then normal on a stretch of highway and we reached all the way up to a cruising 57 miles per hour!

Having just been in the country for a week, I have already seen a lot. Jude, my trusty sidekick and brother, and I have slept in 3 regions and had daily meetings with people trying to assess the current position of Yenso Solar. We laid a good foundation when Cole and I came the first time but there were a lot of bugs in the original model. Now I have to sort out what worked and didn't work and set up new ways of testing new models. I definitely have my work cut out for me.

Some things didn't work out so well the first time around, mainly just the process of collecting credit payments. It is clear that literally everyone wants the lamp. It is the best. Perfect, even. All except that it is just too expensive for people here to buy flat out. To combat that, we attempted to offer a two-month credit plan; a third of the price as a down payment and the rest in two-month increments. In theory it should work. Our full time employees would make the deals and follow up monthly. But this is Africa. Nothing is ever that easy.

That includes life outside of business. When Jude and I were on our way to his house, he warned me that “there was a certain fault with the washroom in the house.” I come to find out that that “certain fault” was a nice way of saying that there wasn't one. So the combination of newly being reintroduced to the Ghana cuisine plus no place to relieve oneself has brought about its own sort of adventure. I will spare you the details but next time you are on your knees at night, thank your Heavenly Father for indoor plumbing. It’s a modern miracle.

Other than meetings, the week has been spent chasing down credit payers to hold to their end of their contracts. Haven't been too successful yet, but we are still faithful. Even so, I am planning on leaving Takoradi to go work closely with Brigham Johnson in Twifo Praso on some other ideas that should help Yenso grow. Brigham is the son of the late Billy Johnson who played a major part in bringing the church to Ghana and for converting nearly thousands of people. He later became the first Patriarch in Ghana and is somewhat of a beloved legend. The legend lives on through his son and I have the honor of working and learning from him.

A perk to living at Jude’s house, however, is that I actually get to sleep in a bed by myself, which seems to rarely be the case when I come back to Ghana. This has given me the chance to do things that I have always put off doing. I have time now to sit and think and expand on ideas without added stresses of school and life. I am just a guy trying to change the world. One crazy adventure at a time.