Time Travel

I just woke up in a very small hotel room in a modern suburb of Istanbul. I landed at Ataturk Airport this morning at 04:30 and was told by Turkish Air that since my flight to Kathmandu doesn't leave until midnight tonight, I have the right to a free hotel room for the day. I just had to wait until 10:00 for them to clear a room. At 08:00 I went to the desk to ask them if I could go to the hotel to wait  because the airport wifi signal was too weak. The Turkish Air hostess looked at my boarding pass and said, "You are leaving tonight. No need for hotel."  I should have struck while the iron was hot.

But having slept at the Istanbul airport twice before, I decided I'd rather try my luck finding a super cheap room to chill out until my flight leaves. I went to the hotel desk at the airport and asked them if they knew a cheap hotel where I could crash for the day. The man at the desk was very polite and told me I could get a room for 100 Euros. I raised my eye (which is tough because it's black from a dance floor incident 10 days ago) and said, "Does it look like I have 100 Euros for a room?"

The man sized me up, looked around to see if there were any superiors around, then jotted down a phone number on a piece of paper. "Give this to a taxi driver," he said, "Tell them to call the number and take you there. Hotel and Taxi should cost you about $40 U.S." Now that's what I'm talkin' about!

So with sleep in my eyes and a congested nose from the horribly polluted skies of industrial Istanbul, I am opening up the Captain Crip blog which has been dormant for most of the past 5 years. And it's a great time to start writing again, because I have,  indeed,  discovered the secret of time travel.

I'm a big fan of Morgan Freeman's Science Channel show, Through the Wormhole. It's an awesome show that breaks down very complicated subjects in physics (quantum mechanics, dark matter etc.) and explains them graphically to lay people. One subject that has taken up several episodes is time travel. Einstein proved that traveling forward in time is easy as long as you get your giddyup on and approach the speed of light. Actually even the astronauts will jump ahead a millisecond or so when they reach the speeds it takes to leave the atmosphere.

But the real nugget is traveling backwards in time. A Swiss physicist, Prof. Nicholas Gesan (sp?) claims that by the process of quantum non-locality, a weird proven fact that photons can appear in two different places at the same time, has discovered that he can actually make the same photon appear in the same place at two DIFFERENT times - one just nano seconds before the other. From this he extrapolated that in the far distant future with computers getting faster and faster, eventually we could conceivably build a time machine that goes backwards. The only caveat is that you couldn't go any further backwards than the date the machine was built..

This week I figured out how to do that. You simply travel to Holland - provided you turned your time travel machine on many years earlier and have 40 years of patience to make it work. I got on my time travel machine (a Lufthansa airbus) and after 20 hours or so, I found myself in Den Haag, Holland. I went outside the station and patiently waited until my friend Maaike Leeuwenburgh, whom I hadn't seen in 27 years, popped up from around the corner. She gave me a big hug and a kiss, and threw me in her car. It's just that easy. 1) Turn on your time machine. 2) Have the sense to make really awesome choices in who you hang out with (optional, but highly recommended). 3) Remember where they are. 4) Let decades pass. 5) Go where they are.

Works like a charm. If the person isn't a tool, you just simply pick up where you left off and get going on new adventures. Maaike and I used to work as circus clowns and acrobats in the late 80s and as it turns out, no matter what kind of serious crap we've done with our lives, we have pretty much remained circus clowns and acrobats.

Although Maaike would be my keystone for the week, I still had more time travel to do. Two days later I got on another time travel portal (they're all over the frickin' place - you just have to know what's at the other end) and 90 minutes later found myself in Harderwijk, an old North Sea port town that, because of sea reclamation, is actually is no longer on the North Sea. I lived there in 1987 with a most amazing woman and just like that, she appeared at the end of the time portal and, just like Maaike, greeted me with a hug and a kiss.

Linda was one of the great loves and my life, but for one reason or another (mostly we were too young and lived on different continents) had to break things off. While my time machine tends to age my skin and physique, hers some how does not. She looks exactly as she did in 1987 - in fact now she appears even younger, if that's possible. She'd gone through a lot of soul searching over the past few years and with the grace of long solitary walks, has correctly decided that she is a most incredible mother, businesswoman (she runs her own clothing shop) and friend. Her face glows with a confidence that neither one of us had back when we were together.

I had lunch with her two sons then strolled along the medieval  city walls visiting old haunts and talking about friends past. I know some people who still live there, but I am no longer in contact with anyone except Linda. She also is not in contact with anyone I know. She is my only friend on Facebook with whom I have no other friends. But none of that seems to matter. We just walk and talk like we used to and tell each other about where our lives are going. We finished off the afternoon with a couple of drinks at Nikki's Inn, the local pub where we first met. She walked me back to my time machine and then with a hug and a kiss, we moved back towards our secular lives.

The next day I returned to the Den Haag Zentrum and had a rendez-vous with Doug Siglin, a friend of my Portland Adidas days. I'd seen him within the year just before he moved to Rotterdam to live with his girlfriend.  It was a strikingly sunny day so we meandered through the busy market streets of Den Haag and settled at an outdoor pub. There is nothing better in the world that sitting at an outdoor cafe in Holland to take in the free freak show that undoubtedly will pass by. From the outside it seemed like a pedestrian day (lit & fig!), but as I told Doug before we split, it's days like these that will give us the biggest smiles when we're on our death beds.

Later that evening, I found another time portal which was actually just a subway stop one kilometer from Maaike's apartment. There I ran into Dr. Wessel Zimmerman, who for one short year was my college diving team mate. Wessel was one of the best divers in the history of Holland and came to the University of Illinois, sight unseen, because my coach Fred Newport COLD CALLED him from Champaign.

Wessel ended up being an NCAA All-American and a cum laude graduate, but not of Illinois, rather Nebraska where he transferred after a tumultuous freshman season. But more important than that he returned to Holland and became one of the top Sports Medicine doctors in the country. He works for the military and helps soldiers put their lives back together after years of rigorous military training. He also developed some of the most successful beginning diving programs in the world and may have the biggest library of diving literature on Earth (> 400 titles).

This is where my time machine had to do it's heaviest lifting as we hadn't seen each other since 1983. Thanks to Facebook (which is quite crucial in the operation of my time machine) we hooked up again and I just figured it was time we get together. He brought his son to dinner who is also a crack drummer so I, of course, set him straight on rock and roll (I know NOTHING about drumming).

It's actually a bit scary using the time machine like that because you really have no idea who you're going to see at the other end. This is where rule No. 2 (Have the sense to make really awesome choices in who you hang out with) becomes quite crucial. If you stick with that principal you have much less to worry about when using the time machine. In this case, I couldn't have been more correct. Wessel Zimmerman, as it turns out, is still a really awesome choice.

The gas on my time machine was running thin, but I still had one more run to make. I had to visit two old friends whom I hadn't seen in quit a while. One was the city of Amsterdam. Unlike other major cities, Amsterdam is a living organism. The buildings move around at night and actually end up hugging each other during the day. Construction is not a thriving business in Amsterdam, because the buildings themselves mate and create their own offspring. Amsterdam swallowed me up in 1985 as if it were  a Borg Collective and I willingly accepted capture. I happily return to the mother ship from time to time to check in. We were very happy to see each other again.

And out from the middle of that organic stew, came one Daniel Bodner, I've actually known longer than the other participants in my time travel. We were distant friends in high school, but as my younger brothers began playing music, Dan's brother, Jon was always the drummer. Even though we only get to play once every few years, he's still the drummer. Through Jon and several other friends, I've gotten to know Dan over the years. We discovered that he moved to Holland the same year I moved away and that's why we'd never hooked up there before.

The difference is that Dan never left. Dan is a successful artist and has had lofts and studios all over Amsterdam for  more than 30 years. His partner, Robin, lives in Manhattan, so he's got a foot in each continent. But his talents were obviously much more useful to the Amsterdam Borg, so he's been kept on. We had a tremendous Indian dinner, warming my stomach up for the subcontinent, then stopped off at a local coffee shop.

Even though Oregon now has legal weed, I've been quite a slacker on the pot smoking front and have rarely taken advantage of the privilege. But when in Amsterdam...  do as the Romans do.  In short time I was spiced out of my gourd and in full paranoid blaze - much like I was on my first trip on New Year's Eve in 1985/6.  I was spaced out, got lost and, at one point, forgot who I was talking to. We strolled around his neighborhood until I had a paranoid delusion that I was late for the last train back to Den Haag. I wasn't late and it wasn't the last train either. But we rushed over to Centraal Station and, after sprinting after one train, easily made the next. Total amateur hour on my part. Thank god there was a sane experienced local to straighten my act out and get me on the train.

But now the gas in my time-travel machine read empty and it was time to cruise. Maaike and I spent so much time together that we are no longer old friends talking about war stories, but fresh new buds - actually more a brother and sister combo. One great thing about the sport of diving is that we train with the opposite sex. I often visit my old teammates and it doesn't matter whether it's a man or a woman. I love them all - we're just teammates and  friends. Very few sports have that kind of male/female camaraderie. And sure, I guess that leads to quite a bit of diver mating, but what the hell - We did a lot of sit ups so we get first choice!

After using my time machine to see five old friends (one from high school, one from college, one from my high diving days, one from my life in Holland and one from my days in Oregon at Adidas) it's time to tuck the time machine away and start re-charging the batteries. As odd as this seems, I'm sitting in a tiny hotel room, with no chance of getting into the bathroom, in an Islamic neighborhood in a city that's not sure if it's Asia or Europe - and I've never felt more at home. That just means that it's time for adventures again.

Captain Crip has officially re-opened. 

'The Real' Africa Pt. 2

So to begin with this is post No. 100 on this on again, off again blog. I figured it's best to spare you all my ranting about job hunting so those months when I'm sitting for hours at a coffee shop sending out resumes I think it's best you spend your time reading something else. But while I'm on the road it's a good yuk, so I would really like to thank the 50 to 100 of you who read it nearly every time I publish. In total I'm up to 18,000 reads so I'll keep going as long as there's something out of the ordinary to report. 

After the busy day in Tamale I made contact with John Alo, the director of the Garu Community Based Rehabilitation Center (GCBR). Garu is a village of 15,000 people located ten kilometers south of Bakino-Faso and ten kilometers west of Togo. It's 135 miles north of Tamale but the drive is broken up into two parts. You can easily cover the first 100 miles in two hours. This takes you to the village of Sakogu which is located on a 400 ft tall escarpment looking out over the plains that eventually lead to the Sahara. Once we started descending the escarpment, the roads become nearly impassable at points with creeks, boulders and huge chunks of cracked pavement reducing progress to a crawl. The last 35 miles also take close to two hours - and there is virtually no traffic on these roads. Only the occasional supply truck and random cyclists.

Along the way the villages transform from cement brick buildings to complexes consisting of several circular red-clay huts with grass roofs. Colorful, nearly psychedelic, traditional African dress is the norm with women carrying goods in baskets on their heads. The main streets are lined with shops selling everything from TV remotes to truck parts; dresses to cell phones. Nearly all these stores can sell you a small bag of cold water and there is usually a table where you can sit down, relax and gossip.

When we finally arrived in Garu Mr. Alo took me to the guest house operated by GCBR. This being the most remote location I've ever been to, I assumed I would be relegated to a sweaty bunk room far from an accessible toilet. But the GCBR takes disability advocacy very seriously and they have painstakingly made their guest house 100 percent accessible. Everything from the ramp, to the bathroom to the shower proved no obstacle to me at all. On top of that they had a 50" flat screen hooked up to a satellite dish  with 40 channels including a 24-hour soccer channel (my guest house in Accra had only 4 channels of broadcast TV). My room had a huge raft of a bed encased in a mosquito net. Malaria is quite prevalent in the North and most of the bites come at night while people are asleep. Contrary to myth, Ghanian mosquitos are not gigantic aggressive winged demons with 8-inch long stingers. Rather they are small and soft and you barely feel them or their stingers - which, of course make them much more deadly. Also the stings last only a few hours so it's very possible that you are stung w/out ever knowing it. 

I had a bit of time to kill before going to the local chapter meeting of the Garu Society of Disabled Persons so I went out into the neighborhood to shoot some standups. A person in a wheelchair is not an oddity here, but a big white guy in a wheelchair talking to a camera will draw quite a big of attention. While I was shooting a standup against a thatched roof house I noticed a group of about 50 blue-uniformed 3rd graders had stopped in their tracks trying to figure out what had just invaded their village. I turned off my camera, looked at them with a big smile and yelled, "Hello!"

This apparently was the signal for them to rush over and assume control of my chair. In seconds I was being whisked away with the kids chanting anything I said. If I said, "One-Two-Three" they would in turn scream "One-Two-Three!" If I howled like a wolf, they would howl like a wolf. I got them into a nice round of Johnny B. Goode as well as Franklins Tower. Mr Alo and his assistant Isaac were returning from their morning rounds when they came across me being escorted back to the childrens school where they wanted to show me to their teacher. Mr. Alo pulled up to me in his truck, and with a big smile said, "Well I guess you found your way to the clinic." Unbeknownst to me the clinic was right across the main road from the school. He then said something in the local language to the kids who dispersed and went back to their classroom. Then he told me that I may be one of only 3 or 4 white people they see all year - and certainly the first white person they've ever seen in a wheelchair.

Later in the afternoon Mr. Alo took me to the meeting of the Garu Society of Disabled Persons meeting where I was invited to speak. I told them about my film, but I was much more interested in hearing about their issues. Of course equipment is a big problem but most of them had solved their issues with crutches and hand bikes. Most of them suffered from birth defects and not spinal cord injury. So they could manage the short distances on crutches, but used hand bikes for getting from place to place. Eventually I saw more than a dozen hand bikes in this small community - all thanks to the work of the GCBR.

They also wanted to introduce themselves to me and tell me what they did with the organization. Again the depth of the Ghanian Society of Persons w/Disabilities blew me away. This group, in the most remote part of the country, was directly tied in to the national organization and was receiving the two percent of the annual local govt. budged that the Ghanian Persons with Disabilities Act insures them. The money is spent on education and mobility giving most of these guys not only a job, but a way to get there and back. Their leader was a blind school teacher who has also won two terms in the local assembly Oddly they seemed to be even more proud of the fact that he has two wives, who they were quick to point out,  are not disabled!  Cultural changes come slow.  I'll take the disability advocacy for now and I'll leave the polygamy and women's rights issues up to some other group.

I had no more appointments left and a big long day in the morning so I watched some local football, had a beer at a local bar (actually got a great interview w/a male nurse at the bar!), then went back to the guest house to turn in early. Ghanians are very early risers. 5 a.m. is the norm and it is not unusual to schedule 7 a.m. events.

I woke up around 5 and rolled into the main room to watch the news only to discover the flat-screen was missing. I assumed one of the teachers needed it for a presentation, but that was not the case. It got pinched! In the middle of the night with a full house full of guests! So instead of meeting the GCBR staff, Mr. Alo and I were talking to local police. The house was locked and there was no forced entry so for sure it was an inside job - which made me quite paranoid about my camera equipment!

Eventually we made it to the GCBR center where the meeting started with a 30-minute prayer session. Ghana is HYPER Christian and everything starts with at least a prayer. After that I spoke to the staff about the film and how they could help me. We broke the meeting and I got to go on rounds with Isaac and two other staff members. For the next 3 hours they took me all over the region to interview disabled people who have been helped by the GCBR. I interviewed students, street sellers, farmers and garment workers, all with moderate to severe disabilities, all who now have a trade and earn a living.

But the most impressive was an elderly woman who even when she sat on her tiny useless legs was less than three-feet tall. Her daughter suffers from the same congenital condition and up until five years ago they only made enough money off their small farm to feed themselves. But with a micro-loan from the GCBR they bought sewing equipment and started making dresses. Neither of them are tall enough to take measurements, but all they need to do is size you up with their naked eye, cut fabric and start sewing. Their technique and quality are beyond reproach and now they both are making big profits and have more orders than they can fill. They too, have a hand bike so they can pack their finished goods in to a sack, climb onto the bike and take their wares to market.

The two-day stay in Garu was way too short. Oddly enough of all the places I've visited it was THE MOST accessible. Because everything was on the ground floor I could get into every house, business, school and government building. I was afraid before I left that I would need lots of help to get around, but in fact it was here where I was most independent.

Mr. Alo and I drove the 4 hours back to Tamale in the afternoon stopping off at his parents house for tea and sandwiches. Instead of taking the main road, Mr. Alo told me he had a short cut that avoided some of the big crowded villages during rush hour. We turned off on a dirt road and spent an hour driving through corn and melon fields. Occasionally we passed through tiny hamlets where young children locked eyes with me and often times screamed for their parents to take a look. Mr. Alo told me it was very possible I was the first white man they'd ever seen.

So from a land of no pavement and grass huts, I'm off to Beijing where the hyper-urbanization and caustic pollution will most likely take a chunk of my soul.

Going to 'The Real' Africa Pt. 1

(Again I apologize for the lack of photos and videos, but believe me, when I get home I'll make you all watch my vacation slides)

This is my third trip to Africa, but not until this week did I really get to see the way most Africans live. In 1989 I spent eight hours in Tangiers, got held up three times and went running back to Spain w/my tail between my legs. Then in 1997 I spent a week in Cairo, which was my first solo trip into a third world environment in a wheelchair. (btw - 'Third World' has been labeled a derogatory term by many and is supposed to be replaced by 'Developing Nation' or 'Low Resource Environment'. But here in Ghana they say, 'Third World')   I took an all-night bus from Tel Aviv and would have been totally screwed had it not been for the help of a German and a Cypriot who carried me up stairs to a guest house not far from Tahrir Square where the Arab Spring riots took place. Seeing the Pyramids was amazing, but I'll take a pass on the muggings.

This trip to Ghana, however is getting closer to what I'd envisioned all my life. First and most obviously EVERYONE here is black. And I'm not talking about a huge majority - I'm talking EVERYONE. In three weeks, aside from airports and hospitals I have seen exactly four white people. Two of them were French expats working an agriculture gig in Garu, and the other two were professional football players I saw yesterday at a charity football match at the Accra Sports Stadium (Michael Ballack and a Danish striker who's name I can't find) It's the most homogenous population I've ever experienced in my life. Even Denmark and Taipei have black communities. If there is a white community in Ghana, I missed it.

But even here in Accra, the capitol, everyone kept telling me I had to head north to see the real Africa. One thing I know about living in third world environments is that the cities are all pitts and the countryside can be magical. So it was with great pleasure that I booked a flight to the northern city of Tamale, about a four-hour drive from the Bakino-Faso border. But booking the flight was not as simple as going on-line and buying a seat. I had to go to the airport and find out which carrier would take someone in a wheel chair. Antrak, the first airline I spoke with flat-out refused because they didn't own an airplane lift. Starbow, the next company  in line also refused, but this is where we (my Ghanian contact Gifty, a physical therapist,  was with me) started pressing and telling them what they were doing was illegal. They asked me if I would be flying with a doctor (very common request for disabled persons at third world airports) to which I scoffed and Gifty stepped in assuring them I was quite healthy.

Eventually they allowed me to buy a ticket, but they told me I had to climb up the stairs of the plane by myself. When I showed up for the flight, I saw the lift that takes disabled passengers up to the big jumbo jets parked just outside the gate. When I asked why we didn't use it, I was told it was owned by the big airlines and it would cost $300 a flight to use. So instead I climbed up the stairs on my butt and slid along the floor of the plane to the first open seat in coach. Thank god I had good elastic in my sweat pants!

It was a short one hour flight, but the option of taking a bus would not have been very practical. It's a 30-hour trip that in recent years has been menaced by bandits who take everything  - including the bus - and leave the passengers stranded. Lately the police have been waiting for groups of 100 cars to cross through the jungle and they move them in one slow caravan. So instead of riding magically through the jungle you are in a 20-hour traffic jam.

Tamale has a dinky airport with a huge runway, so although it can take big planes (doubles as an airforce runway) the actual airport has virtually no services. There is one computer, one clock and one big scrren TV showing BBC. And of course, no handicap lifts. So once more on my arse, along the plane, down the stairs and into my chair.

My contact in Tamale was Dr. Dziffa Ahadzi, a resident at the Tamale teaching hospital. I grabbed a cab into town and met her while she was giving an exam to an elderly patient. As soon as she was finished she gave me an extensive tour of the 'old' hospital which was in it's last days as a brand new and very impressive 2000-bed hospital would be opening on Friday. Nearly everything in the huge hospital complex was accessible so I rolled around exploring, while Dr. Ahadzi attended to other patients and students.

Now this 'rolling around' was quite simple but only because I am now rolling on a relatively new wheelchair. The chair I brought with me from Portland experienced yet another melt down, but this time it was quite serious. My left front wheel was continually loosening and impeding the large wheel, as well as forcing me nearly out of the chair. Gifty and I were directed towards a welder who said he could do a spot weld and fix the problem. We took the chair to him, but I was unable to observe the process. When he came back several of the main pieces were snapped in half and he informed me he thought he had the wrong kind of torch (not one for aluminum). So I took the pieces back, bought a few washers and rigged up a solution that temporarily appears to be holding. But I did NOT want to travel deep into Africa on a gimpy chair. So Gifty found a reasonable substitute and I've been riding on a borrowed chair for about a week. It's quite wide making most bathrooms inaccessible, but it's really stable and I'm not afraid of falling out when I see a curb.

The new chair was also riding in a much more agreeable city. Tamale has very little traffic and the roads are well maintained and dry. For the first time since leaving France nearly a month earlier, I actually did a workout. If I ever come back for an extended stay it will certainly be in Tamale, not Accra.

Dr. Ahadzi found a guest house that was a bit pricey and not at all accessible, but for two nights it was fine. It also had an American TV channel on the cable so after dinner I planted myself in front of the tube and mindlessly watched NCIS and CSI.

In the morning, another doctor picked me up and took me to the lecture hall at the teaching hospital. I was on the morning lecture itinerary along with an ophthalmologist from New Jersey. The ophthalmologist opened up with some graphic slides of eye operations that although quite gruesome, drastically improved hundreds of lives. I was up next and spoke to the group of 70 medical students and ten doctors about the goal of the IRF and why Andy and I started it. I then went into a practical talk about what happens when you are the victim of a spinal cord injury. I've given this talk to medical students and physical therapists in the past. Oddly enough the PT's are well versed in SCI, but the med students know nothing more than the anatomy. The actual devastating effects to the patient including bowel, bladder and sexual function are all news to them. Usually I finish up with a couple of slides from India, Turkey or some difficult area for SCI patients. But seeing as I was in the most difficult country I'd ever been to, I decided to leave those slides out.

After lunch I got to speak to a very dedicated group of physical therapists then conducted a series of with  doctors and physical therapists. Eventually I got to go on the Internet for an hour before I had to say good by to Dr. Ahadzi and head back to the guest house. Although Tamale was quite different from Accra, it still was not the Africa I'd imagined. That would come in the morning.

A Quick Note from Ghana

I have to apologize in advance because I am writing from an Internet cafe and don't have access to any of the amazing pictures and videos I've shot since arriving in Accra one week ago. Yes, I do have a thumb drive and no, I will not insert it into the machine I'm typing on now. Body parts and computer components should not be shared liberally.

First of all, flying over the Sahara is probably the closest thing to space travel I'll ever experience. It's so enormous and empty that you realize whatever is on the other side can't be anything like the place you just left.I was in the air for over an hour when I saw a small hamlet around an oil rig. It was another full two hours before I saw any other man-made structure. Sometimes I'd see a long dirt road that extended from one end of the horizon to another. At one point I flew over an intersection of two such dirt roads and wondered what would happen if you missed your turn off. Once in a while the desert grew into enormous mountains with stunning red cliffs - but again no trace of human life at all.

Eventually I arrived at Kotoka airport in Accra (how many of you have done that tired old Tirana to Accra flight?) and was surprised to be greeted by a brand new airport transfer chair. After passing through customs I was escorted to the waiting area where I hoped to find my friend, Gifty a physical therapy teacher whom I'd met twice while working with the International Rehabilitation Forum. Unfortunately Gifty mixed up the days so I ended up taking a cab to a hotel recommended to me by a Canadian NGO worker who was on her way home.

The hotel was surprisingly accessible and it even had air conditioning and wifi. Gifty found me in the morning and after apologizing profusely took me to the Monrose Guest House in the Adenta neighborhood North of Accra. The Monrose is a super-friendly place that has a big car ramp leading up to the front door. It was almost accessible except for the 10-inch step to my room. I told the manager I'd pay to have a carpenter build a ramp but he told me he'd already hired one. In less than an hour I was lying down on a huge raft of a bed in an air-conditioned room. The bathroom door was just a little tight so we just yanked it right out. As of last Tuesday the Monrose is now 100 accessible!

The first night we had an audience with the Rev. Michael Ntumy, the former head of the five-million member Church of the Pentecost. Rev. Ntumy had a severe case of cervical stenosis (shrinking of the spine in the neck area) and surgery to relieve the condition has left him a quadriplegic. He is currently the head of the German branch of the Church of the Pentecost and was luckily in Accra guest lecturing. But as happens in many areas of the world, the only time any action takes place on disability is when someone in a high position is affected. Since his surgery four years ago Rev. Ntumy has been very active in the disability community and is instrumental in the on-going process of turning one of the pastors residence in to a physical therapy and rehab ward.

A few days later we were invited to attend a meeting of the Ghanian Society of Disabled Persons' Accra chapter meeting. I sat in on a heated discussion of how they would be spending the 2% of the city's annual budget dedicated to disability programs. Having come from Albania where there is almost no governmental help for the disabled it was amazing to see how organized the Ghanian disability community has become. We got to interview the chapter president as well as their sporting director who also happens to be the African hand-cycle championship.

Sunday is Gifty's church day so she and her four kids escorted me to their church which is a fire-and-brimstone charismatic Christian church with a three hour long service. Gifty asked me if I thought I could play with the church band and I was thrilled. Three hours of church can be mighty long to an agnostic, but put a guitar in my hand and it was one big concert. I wasn't sure what to play all the time but I've learned along the road that one bad note can destroy all the good ones. So I kept my axe pretty quiet unless I knew where I was going. In the end, I passed the audition, we're going to rehearse this Saturday and do it up again Sunday morning. 

Monday was a national holiday so on Tuesday we were given a tour of the Medina Hospital of the Church of the Pentecost (If you haven't guessed it by now Ghana is VERY religious). The hospital sees about 300 patients a day and unbelievably enough all five of it's floors are accessible by ramps. But the big hit of the day was going over to see the nearly brand new pastor's mansion that is going to be turned into a PT and rehab ward. Built in 2007 shortly before Rev. Ntumy's surgery the 8-bedroom facility with a swimming pool, kitchen and huge meeting room will be a perfect rehab center serving many more people that its' original intention.

Yesterday I got to play teacher and give two presentations to Gifty's PT students. I was joined by a group of students and faculty from one of my sister Sue's alma maters, the University of North Dakota. These eight women were on the end of two-week tour and they were just beaming with spirit and pride. For some of the students it was their first trip out of the states and Ghana couldn't be a more different environment to the upper Midwest. These 8 women were also the first white people I'd seen since leaving the airport!

So with ten days left we'll be visiting some more hospitals then heading up north to Tamale to visit a Christian mission that caters to disabled people in rural areas. This is one of the most exciting places I've ever been to, but also the most difficult. It's rainy season now and the road to the Monrose is completely underwater. I actually had to take a cab 400 yards to get to the internet cafe. My chair is an a sad state of affairs as the front wheel wants to fall off - much like it did in India. My computer and camera are both having difficulty, but I've already shot enough to ensure a good video. Anything else I get is gravy.

It's just about dinner time so I'm going back to the Monrose which butts up against the local soccer pitch. I'm watching AMAZING players every night. You can see why they've risen to the top of the African competitions time and time again. I feel like I'm watching a country full of Zinedane Zidanes squaring off against each other on a nightly basis - and these are just the local guys!

So hang tight and Ill try to find a wifi so I can drop some pictures your way in the next coming days!

Albania Can't be Painted in One Picture

I would love to tell you Albania is nothing like what you think it is, but in fact, most of you have probably never thought of Albania at all. Globally there are two Albanian icons and the two are such polar opposites that you can guess from who they are just how diverse the population is.

You try to stereotype Albanians!!

So take your pick -> Think of Albanians as either people like John Belushi or Mother Teresa. I hope this leaves you with no clear stereotypes of what Albanians are like, because they represent as rich and diverse a population as we have on this planet. In the town of Shkoder where I am currently filming a report on rehabilitation medicine and disability awareness, the local mosque is the center piece of the downtown pedestrian mall, but it is just a 3-wood away from one of the largest catholic churches in the city. In between is a bustling outdoor café scene complete with beer gardens covered by Tirane Beer tents.

Beer gardens under Islamic minarets.

The center of town is undergoing a massive makeover with new cobblestone & tile streets and sidewalks being built complete with curb cuts and the occasional ramp. The mornings are congested and busy w/shops opening, students rushing off to school and businessmen hurrying to their offices. But now in the late afternoon the streets are quiet, waiting for everyone to get off work and fill up the cafes. 

This is quite different from the country isolated for decades by the dictator Enver Hoxha. Hoxha killed tens of thousands in his quest to make Albanian communism the most pure form of communism in the world. He broke off ties with the Soviet Union at one point because they weren't communist enough. So while the rest of the Balkans became Tito's Yugoslavia, Albania aligned itself temporarily with Mao and stayed an independent nation - although completely closed off from the rest of the world, much like North Korea is today.  

No ski resorts... Yet!

Behind Shkoder are the graceful peaks of the Thethi mountain range and in between are rugged rural roads used not only by late model German cars, but also tractors, horse-drawn carts and the occasional goat herd.

My job for the week is to try to capture the successes, obstacles and aspirations of the physically disabled in this challenging terrain. I have been guided here by Dr. Germano Pestelli, the Vice-President of the Italian Society of Physical and Rehabilitation Medicine. Based in Fiorli, Italy, Dr. Pestelli comes to Albania several times a year to help steer the Madonnina Del Groppa clinic into the modern world of rehabilitation medicine.

No Mom, I did not try to jump this curb. 

So far we have filmed a quadriplegic judo champion operating a gym in a small rural town;  the mother of an autistic child struggling with little resources and an honor student struck down in the prime of his life with a spinal virus that has put him in a chair and keeps him sequestered in the second floor of his parents’ house.

We have also filmed the physical therapy ward at the local hospital and interviewed one of the two practicing physiatrists in all of Albania. 

The ramp to Anton Shkoza's judo studio. Try that one in a power chair!

Helping me is Linda Cenaj, a local student who started out as my translator but has now become an integral part of the operation as a camera-person, guide,  gear mule and even a chair pusher as my front wheel temporarily broke down this morning. The clinic director, Fabrizzio just left this morning, but not before he tirelessly worked to arrange my schedule and lift me up to the second floor of the Madonnina Del Groppa for twice daily Albanian-Italian feasts.

Dinner is served up this ramp! (and up a flight of stairs unfortunately) 

So many others are pitching in and it will be so sad to leave after such an inspirational and energetic week. But in the end we will tell a great story and shed light on a situation that will soon be a great tale of victory and overcoming long odds and great obstacles.

But now I’m hungry so I’m going back to the clinic for some pasta.