Ghana 8. Football Vest

You know something, somewhere, has gone horribly wrong when you start wearing vests again. As a child, the coming of winter was marked by my mother sowing me into my underwear until spring came around. I thought I had left those thermal-clad days behind until I found myself needing to look smart in a tropical climate.

Out here men wear vests not to stay warm but to soak up sweat. There’s no point in leaving for work in your best threads if by the time you reach the office you’re damper than a paedophile in a nursery. Thus now each morning I don my singlet, my slacks and my best nylon shirt before shuffling out into the blazing heat to join the Ghanaian rat race.

This will be my fifth week as head of production for The Network, one of the big three terrestrial TV stations here in Ghana. Back in the mists of the New Year while Louisa was doing battle with Malaria, I met a South African man who works for the channel. With freelance work thin on the ground, when he mentioned that they were looking for a new head of production I jumped at the opportunity.

I then sat around waiting for over a month while the senior management procrastinated, postponed and put off giving me a contract in accordance with the Ghanaian management maxim “why do today what you can put off until tomorrow?” Just when I had decided that this job was never going to happen, I was told to start on Monday.

My wardrobe since arriving in Ghana has consisted mainly of a handful of limp t-shirts and several pairs of shorts that would look dirty even on location with Time Team. I was suddenly faced with the need to smarten up for work in a way I’ve never needed to even in the UK. Thankfully Ghana is the Mecca of the second-hand clothing world. Every year thousands of tonnes of used clothes make their way from the West to the shores of Africa where they are re-tailored by armies of seamstresses into new garments.

Cantamento Market in central Accra is a rabbit warren of second-hand clothing stalls that stretches for miles. Six shirts, two pairs of trousers and some creaky black leather shoes later and I was set to become Mr. Middle Management.

In the UK the head of production is usually a benevolent god-like figure who drifts around the channel giving his blessing to new productions and gently intervening where a programme is going belly-up. Here in Ghana, Head of Production might be more accurately entitled Head Master, as overseeing productions here is equivalent to corralling twelve-year-olds during a field-trip to a sugar factory.

On Friday I returned to the office from a meeting to find crew wandering aimlessly around the main entrance when they should have left for a shoot in town an hour previously. Despite them knowing exactly when and where they were supposed to be filming, no one had issued an order to depart, so there they stayed. The week before last the entire news department managed to lock themselves out of the news studio thirty minutes before the lunchtime bulletin because someone lost the studio key.

It’s not all Carry-On Camera; the news department have won several awards for one of their current affairs programmes, and we are the only station in West Africa providing live sports coverage to Super Sport and, on occasion, even the BBC.

Perhaps the biggest irony in this whole affair is the fact that I’m in charge of Ghana’s premier sports channel when I don’t know the offside rule from my elbow. If you thought Britain was football obsessed, you should come to Ghana, where even the most cholera-infested slum* will have signboards advertising the next Chelsea-Arsenal fixture. And in the midst of this here am I, with a greater interest in Belgian tax law than in the Great Game.

That said, the process of providing live coverage of anything here makes for an interesting challenge, regardless of what’s going on in front of the lens. Other than the state broadcaster we are the only network here to have an outside broadcast van, which coughs and splutters its way between the nation’s sporting arenas. With Ghana’s road network bumpier than the Middle East peace process it’s a miracle that it makes it to most locations without the satellite dish falling off the roof.

The scale of the matches we cover varies massively. One of the first FA Cup fixtures I tagged along for had goats grazing on the side of the pitch. In contrast, a couple of weeks ago we had to resort to sign language in order to communicate amidst the din at Accra’s Ohene Djan stadium when two of the biggest Premier League teams were playing a grudge match.

By far the biggest sporting event of the last few weeks was the England-Ghana friendly played in the UK at Wembley Stadium. For a country enviously obsessed with its old colonial master’s Premier League, after Britain’s appalling World Cup performance this was seen as an opportunity for David to give Goliath a really good kicking.

The Network was picking up a live feed from the UK by satellite, and after our own pre-match studio debate here we switched to the live coverage. The studio team immediately downed tools and fought for space in front of various TV monitors to watch the kick-off. We were twenty minutes into the first half when suddenly all the lights went out and everything in the main control room of the nation’s third biggest TV network switched itself off.

Power cuts here are common enough that anyone who can afford it has a generator. While various back-up battery systems kicked in I dashed outside in the dark to our generator to see why it wasn’t yet belching into life. Illuminated by a couple of mobile phones, several technicians were kissing their teeth in frustration as a stack of car batteries failed to produce enough charge to jump-start the engine. Eventually another battery with some charge left in it was found under a bush by the front gate, and the oily monster was shocked into action.

Back in the control room everyone had crowded around the few consoles still being powered by the back-up batteries. The main concern was not that we had briefly ceased broadcasting, but that we might have missed a goal. As the rest of the equipment flickered back into life the general mood of mild anxiety caused by this technical hiccup dissipated. The volume level rose accordingly as Ghanaian discussion of live football settled in at a cruising level of 120 decibels. Relieved, I looked down at the rings of sweat emanating from my armpits, alone on my otherwise dry torso, and once again marvelled at the absorbent power of my vest.

*This is not an exaggeration. We currently have an outbreak of cholera in Accra. Which is nice.