Here's a photo from our trip on Monday over the mountains to Kumasi. I think this rest stop is a breeding ground for big red tour busses, as we saw several of the species in which we were riding.
We even saw one that is more important than ours: it's a "V"VIP…
Today (Tuesday) was our first day at the Palace.
After taking the Palace Museum tour, (below: students listening to lore of drums in Ghana)
we set up our workstations and began trying them out.
I was also dealing with some new information: instead of 3 separate rooms for our 3 workstations we only had 2. One of them can easily accommodate 2 workstations in the physical space, but the point of separate rooms was the acoustic isolation for each working team. So be it.
Here I am showing the setup while doing my Groucho Marx impression to a stunned audience.
My co-leader Kwasi Ampene is in the background:
I was also dealing with some new information: instead of 3 separate rooms for our 3 workstations we only had 2. One of them can easily accommodate 2 workstations in the physical space, but the point of separate rooms was the acoustic isolation for each working team. So be it.
Here I am showing the setup while doing my Groucho Marx impression to a stunned audience.
My co-leader Kwasi Ampene is in the background:
I had re-worked the hardware design to have everything buss-powered so we would not need to get UPS's for each workstation, but Kwasi surprised me by going out and buying them locally, so we are using them. I was impressed, as I tried very hard form the US to find a local source for them. They are far to heavy to ship. (turns out later it was a really good idea to have them)
We also have the beautiful overstuffed comfy chairs with carved wooden arm rests that take up most of the floor space instead of smaller desk chairs, but that too we can work with.
After our initial set up and mini training we had a long lunch and debriefed about everyone's first night with their host families. Most of that was really great, but there were a few outliers, all due to communication barriers and cultural misunderstandings. The lunch was held at a place called "Jofel Caterers", which is a large restaurant with indoor and outdoor seating. I remembered eating there last summer with Kelly & Kwasi.
After lunch we returned to the Palace and the students finally got a look at the Archive room with all the tapes. I just wanted to see all of them in the room at once, and I promise to post a photo ASAP to show you the scene: there was literally just enough space for all of them to get into the room at once.
Our task of numbering the tapes to give each a unique identifier then began, and will be as finished as we can make it before I leave.
(New Information: turns out that the tapes are not particularly in date order; close but all. And many tapes that look like edited programs and that are piled on top of the top shelves are in fact original recordings that were just packaged better because they were important. And completely out of date sequence with all the tapes that have already been numbered. The good news is that each tape *will* have a unique number and a unique combination of date & name on the spine label.)
As with each step of the process, I emphasized to the students that I am not here to give them the answer on how to do the digitizing and cataloging, but just to help them frame the task and understand the kind of issues they will face once I am gone. They will be able to communicating with me via email, text or perhaps cell phone, but that is not the same as being there. I leave in 3 days and then they are on their own.
(New Information: turns out that the tapes are not particularly in date order; close but all. And many tapes that look like edited programs and that are piled on top of the top shelves are in fact original recordings that were just packaged better because they were important. And completely out of date sequence with all the tapes that have already been numbered. The good news is that each tape *will* have a unique number and a unique combination of date & name on the spine label.)
As with each step of the process, I emphasized to the students that I am not here to give them the answer on how to do the digitizing and cataloging, but just to help them frame the task and understand the kind of issues they will face once I am gone. They will be able to communicating with me via email, text or perhaps cell phone, but that is not the same as being there. I leave in 3 days and then they are on their own.
They are a very smart bunch, and have made excellent suggestions that have already been worked into the plan. I expect that they will do just fine without me.
As I write this, Kwasi is still out solving our hosting issues (it is now 8:00 pm). I have just arrived back at the KNUST Engineering Guest House lodge after a 90+ minute ride home. After a bite to eat - and yes, a cold beer - I'll begin tweaking the database to for our project incorporate suggestions from the students and the new realities of the tape library.
And updating the blog of course.
And finalizing my presentation to the King, which is supposed to be tomorrow. Apparently there is already going to be a big meeting with many Chiefs, and so they decided why not have me present to the entire large group.
And did I mention that tradition says that whatever a Chief - let alone the King - decides, no one can question it? Even beheading someone? That actually came up in conversation 2 days ago with one of the Chiefs hosting a student.
So: no pressure.
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