Robbed of my Spidey Sense

Surrounded by stories of robbery. I’m not sure whether I’m just more aware of it now that I’ve been robbed – and have been robbed of that arrogance that assures it will happen to everyone but you – but it seems like everyone has either had a bag snatched or knows someone who’s been mugged or been tricked by a cab driver or pick-pocketed by a petty thief or had their cell phone or small cash stolen by someone with quick fingers.

Emily had her bag grabbed from her shoulder by someone passing in a car. Sarah had her bag grabbed the same way, but because she was wearing it slung over her shoulder, she was dragged for several metres. Jaime was robbed outside a drinking spot by a group of guys getting out of a cab; they were carrying a machete and she lost a substantial amount of money. Orla was robbed and nearly strangled and raped by a cab driver after leaving a club in Kampala, Uganda.

My roommate, Nick, was nearly robbed two nights ago in our driveway when someone feigning that they needed directions, then had him lean in so they could hear him. They grabbed on to the strap of his laptop bag, but he dug in his heels and was dragged to the ditch. He had the presence of mind to fiddle with the clip on his bag, but didn’t yell “thief,” which would have brought a vigilante style mob. He told me a woman living in the compound was robbed on the street the other night by a passing car and when she yelled “thief,” Ghanaians started throwing rocks at the car, which responded with gunshots.

What is going on?

I remember writing to Nancy and saying within a week that I was “over” getting mugged, that I had dealt with it and was just really upset at how much work it was taking to get everything replaced. Well, that was a big fat lie.

I suppose I didn’t really realize how scared I was feeling because I was in a new environment and everything felt unfamiliar. Plus, I was virtually always with Rose whenever I went anywhere in Dakar, so being out at night was pleasant, not panic-inducing.

I thought it was only natural that I should be a bit nervous in Liberia, afterall the country is full of soldiers and rapists and kids who have been seriously screwed up from so many years of war. I was warned and warned that going near the market or into some of the rougher neighbourhoods was a guarantee of getting pick pocketed. I was sure to lose my money or my phone. I was advised never to go out at night and heard repeatedly about the recent rash of armed robberies in some of the wealthier suburbs.

Being alone in the house in Ganta was the first time I really noticed how paranoid I had become. It was also the first time I’d stayed anywhere alone since arriving. Every sound I heard was someone stalking through the house, looking to steal or rape. Every little scritch or scratch or cry from a rooster or buzz of a bug. Anything that was loud enough o wake me up had my eyelids popping open and my heart racing.

Getting into the shared cab in Ganta, I was simply filled with dread, tempered only by the fact that a woman and her children were getting in as well. I’m not sure why I’m so comforted by the presence of women and children here, but I consider them almost like lucky charms now, that nothing can go seriously wrong so long as there are women and children around.

When I arrived in Ghana it became really obvious that the worst thing about being robbed in Dakar was not losing my camera. This is a place I know and love, a place where I know the people and how things work, where virtually everyone is a devout Christian, who is open and honest and trustworthy. But I was so paranoid. It was difficult walking down the street alone, even during the day. If someone brushed past me, I nearly jumped out of my skin. If someone came walking at me too quickly, my heart started racing and I went to grab my bag.

When night comes, it comes quickly, the sun dropping suddenly like a stone and at 6.15 p.m. here it can seem like 11.30 at home. There's almost something menacing about the dark here. At night, I never carry more than a little cash with me, usually tucked into my bra strap, in the manner of the market women. I never, never, never carry a bag. I leave my cell phone at home. But I haven’t yet screwed up the courage to go walking alone at night, instead I pay the dollar to have a cab drop me right at the gate. That doesn’t really reduce my fear, it just reduces the likelihood that I’m going to get robbed or hassled on my way home. But every negotiation with a cab driver is just pure hell, every ride is like being on pins, waiting for something bad to happen.

I used to rely so much on my “spidey sense” to tell me when something was amiss, but now it’s in overdrive and I don’t know when to trust it and when to dismiss it as being irrational. Once, in the middle of the day, I got into a cab in a neighbourhood called Pig Farm and we stopped at a gas station for the guy to put something in the trunk. Then we drove through Nima, a rough neighbourhood not far from my neighbourhood. It was all too much. I became convinced that the guy was going to rob me, although all he had done was put some plantain in the trunk and drive a regularly traveled route home. At one point, he turned to me with his full body and said “What’s wrong?!” and I nearly burst into tears. I could really only choke out “Nothing. What’s wrong with you?” By the end of the ride, I was laughing with him, but I got out and was soaked in sweat.

I’ve tried a new technique for dealing with it. I don’t get into cabs that require too much negotiation. I’m willing to pay the extra 5,000 cedis if it keeps both of us happy. And I start talking to the driver as soon as I’m in the car, as though my being chatty and interested will convince them that I’m too nice and innocent to rob. So far I’ve really not had any problems, but of course, I likely would not have had any problems anyway. But it’s being alone that’s got me so worked up. I’m going to have to get used to it, or get over it, as that’s going to be my natural state for the next long while.

Stay Awake for the Vote

Returned to Ouagadougou to cover what may be the most difficult assignment of my freelance career thus far: how to turn a deadly dull election into a compelling story about the ins and outs of African politics.

Less than a week after Liberians voted in the continent’s first woman – as much a surprise to them as the rest of the world – Burkina is displaying all the politic tendencies that paints Africa as the model of political regression, where big men with big guns, big ambitions, big streaks of malevolence and little brains, sympathy or human decency rule by fear, intimidation and oppression.

The city is literally awash in the green, red and yellow campaign photo of Blaise Compaore, the military leader who took power 18 years ago. There are billboards, signboards, placards, posters, framed portraits, yellow and white T-shirts, black and white ball caps, watches and scarves. Women and men wear entire outfits fashioned out of material with Compaore’s portrait woven into the fabric. Buses, cars, taxis, even bicycles and mobylettes, are plastered with posters saying “Votez Blaise Compaore.”

Compaore is the sort of man who’s a throwback, the Idi Amin figure who’s more interested in making himself and his friends comfortable than doing anything for his country, who pops up on the world’s radar screen every now and again in an attempt to improve his image.

For nearly two decades, Burkina, a dustbowl on the edge of the Sahara, packed with gentle, sophisticated round-faced creative types who adore proper cinema – not the trash produced hastily in Nigeria – and make incredible music, has hovered at the bottom of nearly every development index produced.

If it weren’t for the Burkinabe, the country would have no redeeming qualities. There are no forests, no water, no coastlines or lakes, no fish, no arable land, no high quality herds, no diamonds, little gold, no oil or bauxite or any other minerals the world longs for, no industry to speak of. A flour mill and sugar refinery in the Banfora region both went bankrupt. All farming is subsistence; the cotton industry limps along with handouts of donor aid. Literacy is about 20 per cent, employment is staggeringly high and the country is seriously overpopulated, with most of its residents under the age of 15.

Yet there has been an enormous amount of fighting between people who want to own the place: between 1980 and 1987 alone there were five coups, each fairly bloody. The most notable feature army captain Thomas Sankara, whose Marxist-Leninist leanings have been remembered well in history, as a progressive thinking that saw enough doctors for each rural village, 350 new schools built and government corruption cut.

It was Sankara’s promise that he would open his bank accounts to public scrutiny that was the start of his undoing. Skimming from the government’s coffers was a well-honoured tradition amongst most Africa leaders and Sankara’s supporters were not about to let utopian ideals get in the way of the easy life they envisioned.

So in 1987, Compaore, who had helped bring Sankara to power and had served as his minister of state, enlisted two more army men to organize another coup. Sankara and 12 of his aides were rounded up and executed. (Two years later, Compaore had his comrades arrested and killed.)

By 2000, a constitution was put in place, one that allowed for a multi-party state and a fairly free press. But the reality was much different than the document suggested. Of the two men who challenged Compaore for the presidency in his first election, one was murdered and the other was attacked and seriously injured. The press was muzzled; in fact, a well-known journalist was burned to death.

The next election hardly fared any better. Only a quarter of all eligible Burkinabe voted, since campaign irregularities, including intimidation and threats, had caused all of the other parties to boycott the election. (There are some 100 registered political parties in Burkina, some with no more than a handful of members.) There was only one other competitor, a candidate named Ram Ouedraogo, who used to be a showbiz manager.

This time around, Compaore enlisted the help of the Supreme Court to hold onto his presidency, since the constitution clearly states no one can seek a third term. But Compaore argued, successfully, that since the constitution came into effect after he was last elected president, it shouldn’t apply retroactively.

Ouedraogo is running again, under the banner of the Green Party and on a platform of development through environmental protection. He sees doom in the brush fires that are deliberately set in Burkina’s tall grasses at the end of each rainy season. He knows there is already not enough rain and climate change is only going to make things worse. He speaks of job creation through recycling plants and production of new forms of energy, like combustible brickettes that use recycled materials and produce no smoke.

Very esoteric stuff for a population that is largely illiterate.

All the same, Ouedraogo said he saw “total misery” when he campaigned in Burkina’s sparse countryside. While Ouagadougou is a relative oasis of gardens, museums, restaurants and cinemas, the rural towns are clusters of crumbling mudhuts, baked under a relentless sun that has killed all their crops for the past three years.

Last year, when locusts descended, the world heard about starvation in Niger and Mali. Burkina Faso, which is sandwiched between them, also saw several thousand people die of hunger. When they needed it most, the millions in donor money that flows into Burkina each year failed to reach them.

Voters were probably thinking about that neglect when Compaore’s helicopters reached their dried out towns. He came carrying gifts: the T-shirts, ball caps and handkerchiefs so ubiquitous in the city, worn in such great quantities, one would think Compaore was a popular, well-loved guy.

Ouedraogo is confident it’s all a façade. Voters are afraid, he said, and they feel intimidated and oppressed.

“These people are very poor. Very poor! If you give them a T-shirt, they’re going to wear it,” he told me.

“That’s not engagement, that’s not politics, that’s just clothes.”

“He’s used these things to corrupt these people, in order to get them to vote for him,” adds his campaign manager, Yabre Hermann.

Local journalist Jean Ky, who provided media training to a handful of the 12 candidates vying for president, calls the tactic “empty belly politics.”

There are rumours that Compaore spent billions of CFA on his campaign, flying five helicopters and two planes all over the country to distribute off his image-laden graft, occasionally dropping a few million CFA to local councils and making promises to re-open privatized and bankrupted salt refineries and flour mills.

(It’s unlikely there are even five helicopters in the country, but judging by the amount of Compaore T-shirts and ball caps on display in the capital alone, the campaign budget was clearly high.)

Despite Compaore’s dismal record, weary voters remember well the violent struggle for power in the 1980s and say they have no viable alternative. The opposition is so fractured and weak, even the two coalition parties couldn’t agree on a single candidate and instead, they each submitted three.

The desperation to stay president is largely fuelled by Compaore’s dirty hands, Ouedraogo said.

“He’s worried that if he’s no longer president, they’ll come after him for killing all those people,” he said.

While he may be easily, if not ethically, returned to the office, he will have to deal with the growing unrest of a hungry population that has seen the riches of his campaign.

He’ll also have to appease the more than 300,000 Burkinabe who were expelled from Cote D’Ivoire, as part of that country’s campaign to cleanse itself of all but “pure” Ivoirians, one that has led to civil war. Compaore did little to quell the racial overtones coming from his country’s biggest trading partner and some saw his pronouncements as fuel for the fire.

The two countries have a long, imbalanced relationship, with Cote D’Ivoire’s rich mining and cocoa plantations providing jobs to Burkinabe, who propped up the economy with their remittances to family.

Now, with exiles returning in droves with little more than suitcases, there is even more poverty.

Still, the chances of being toppled are dim, yet Compaore is pulling out all the stops. He has even barred a Burkinabe human rights group from monitoring the elections, claiming they failed to make an application for observer status before the deadline.

Yet Fako Bruno Ouattara, national coordinator of the MBDHP, the French acronym for the group, pulls out several copies of the letter sent to the national elections commission, dated well before the October deadline, offering to staff each of the 12,000 polling stations with two independent observers.

He said they’re most bothered by the fact that voters can obtain a ballot using any one of seven pieces of identification, rather than a voters registration card, a highly unusual circumstance.

“It’s like that in Africa,” he said. “In the west, the people tell the chief when he is chief. But in Africa here, the chief tells you when he is chief.

“When the chief gives you something, you say, ‘merci.’ When he gives you nothing, you say nothing. That’s how it is.”

Mock the vote

Election run-off day in Liberia, the crucial, history-making decision for the little country that’s come to represent so much about my freelance career.

Here in Ghana, where 42,000 Liberians live on a refugee camp about an hour outside the capital, asylum-seekers were refused the right to vote by the electoral commission. With Liberia’s roads and communications networks a mess, it was enough of a job to do the election in the country itself without trying to coordinate voting for expatriates and exiles as well. (I also suspect the lure of voting in Liberia was also meant to help refugees make up their minds about going.)

Dave, one of the JHR volunteers, has been working with Cephas and Semantics out at the camp on the Vision and in addition to getting them up and running on the web, they did a live blogcast on the day of the first vote. For today, they dreamt up the idea of doing a mock election but because of the non-political nature of the camp, and to win UNHCR approval, they decided to call it an election survey.

At the disastrous Thursday Quiz Nite fiasco, Dave casually asked what I was doing on Tuesday and whether I’d come out to the camp for the mock vote. I initially thought, no, um, sounds quaint but not really my thing. But then the Star sent me an email about doing something on the day of the election and I thought it would be a good starting point, the only way to really weave in a Ghana angle.

Emily and I met this morning at 8 a.m. – me with slick, greasy hair and already plastered in sweat, as it has been stupidly hot and humid and we were without water – and we made our way to the camp with her reporter, Grace. The ride was much, MUCH smoother than the weekend when I went out by myself. We landed, headed to the Internet café and then began searching for the polling station.

I have to confess, I don’t know Dave at all and what little I do know of him has been largely gleaned from his blog. He is incredibly intense and he and Emily seem to have a blood feud that has made getting to know him a little difficult. But I really got the impression that this was just something he was doing to fill his time. I got the impression that he was a budding gonzo journalist and he was just looking for a way to make the story more interesting to him. Or at least make the story interesting. I didn’t realize that he’s really into electoral and democratic issues and is in the midst of putting together a dissertation on the subject.

Anyway, things were a scramble when we arrived. Under a UNHCR tarp, there were four tables, one for registering, one for ballots, one holding a voting screen made out of a cardboard box cut in half and one with the ballot box, which looked like a white, plastic postal box with a cardboard lid taped on top. Cephas was running around, Semantics and a woman named Claire looked overwhelmed. Dave was running around. Gabby, as usual, was in the middle of a crowd. Stephanie and Vanessa, conscripted on their time off from Bolgatanga, barely looked harried. Kari was in the middle of a mob, nodding her head. Lisa was hovering around the voting screen and ballot box. It was just chaos.

Dave’s blog mentioned they’d tried to do a bit of impromptu voter education, but there is no network for communication at the camp, other than signs, so once word spread that this was happening, people wandered by to figure out what was going on. It was immediately apparent that I had no appreciation for the kind of hard work that went into producing such a smooth election in Liberia. Voting, to me, seems intuitive. I’m not sure why, I guess because we do so many election-type things when we’re young, like electing students councils and church councils and mock elections when we’re too young and to vote. But a lot of Liberians have never voted, or they voted once, in a rigged and wholly unfair election, or they voted but it was more than 20 years ago.

So the masses were masses. And, being Liberians, they were loud. A woman I interviewed in Liberia told me that Liberians are volatile, just like their weather. It changes minute to minute. One minute there’s sunshine and it’s fine. Then suddenly there’s thunder and buckets of rain. Then, nothing but puddles and sun. Their temperament was on display today, as they crowded around and debated whether they should even be doing this kind of experiment. Engaging in political activity at the camp is enough to get them kicked out, so would voting in this survey qualify? Who was in charge, what was their rationale, did they understand the consequences? Liberians, I find, tend to just give their opinion and outline their reasoning and whoever talks the loudest wins. So within five minutes of our arrival, there was shouting, arms waving, fingers point, veins popping. I worried someone would throw a punch and then we’d be sunk. There was no way of controlling an out-of-control crowd. It was utter chaos.

It was marvelous.

I gave Cephas a big hug and he promptly put me to work. He was working away, dressed like he’d been sent down by Central Casting in a fisherman’s hat and a photographer’s vest, all in khaki and tan. He was lugging a rather professional looking digital camera and yakking away on a camera phone. And he was running a beautiful show.

At first people argued about needing identification. What the heck for, I registered with you people yesterday! I’m a refugee, I don’t have identification! It wasn’t until we started saying, “But now you tell us you’re Jeff Smith, what about if you come back an hour from now and tell us you’re Dave Jones and vote again? And then come back two hours later and tell us you’re Thomas Sutherland and vote again?” That seemed to silence the arguments.

No one could understand Claire, who has a distinct English accent. “What zone do you live in?” was like Greek to the Liberians, who would respond with something that sounded like it came from the most southern tip of Alabama.

A man came along with a microphone and a loudspeaker. He spoke for a few minutes, but it was so tinny I have no idea what he was saying. No one else did either. Gabby worked the crowd, Claire and Semantics patiently explained the importance of identification and since I was stationed at the first point people would come to as they walked toward the polling station, I was giving the shpiel on what was going on. “We’re doing a mock election, a survey, if you will. It will have no impact on the results at home in Liberia. It doesn’t count for the official vote. But it does let the world know what the refugees think. If you want to participate, show your identification to those ladies down there and they’ll register you to vote. Then see these two at this table and they’ll give you a ballot. Visit this man and he’ll mark your thumb to show you voted, then go to the voting screen, mark your ballot for your candidate and then fold it up and put it here, in the ballot box.”

Through the course of the three hours I watched the voting, there were some pretty vigorous arguments, most in incomprehensible patois and at a deafening volume. Crowds had to be shooed away from the voting screens; pens to mark ballots disappeared within minutes of the polls opening. Some were confused about how to mark their choice, one woman wondered where she should write her name on the ballot, so her candidate would know she voted for him, and a few voters couldn't be dissuaded from shouting who they'd voted for as they dropped their ballot in the box.

There were 600 people pre-registered, but based on the number of people who popped up without any idea what was going on, we thought there were going to be many more “voting.” In the end, there were just 300 and they put their support solidly behind Weah.

Taking chances

Once, when Miriam and I were coming back from a trip to the bead market at Koforidua, the lush, colonial capital of the central region that’s set high up in the mountains and studded with tall, spindly trees, I looked over the edge of the winding ridge of the road and noticed a huge kite. Turns out there was someone strapped into that kite and they were gently but determinedly riding air patterns up and down the cliff-face in a sport known as “paragliding.”

I think people react to Africa in one of two ways: the risk it takes to come here and live here – and really live here, soak up the culture and take part in the daily madness and frenzy that is African life -- either opens you up like a flower to the possibilities around you (the main justification for the next crazy adventure or interesting opportunity being, simply, well, I am in Africa) or it causes you to close up like a shell, wrapping yourself in all the things that make you feel protected and safe in an environment that’s challenging enough just doing the day-to-day things without stepping out on any limbs or taking any wild chances.

I fall into that first category, which is probably why, on Sunday afternoon, I found myself at the edge of that cliff face, standing in a harness, hooked onto a guy named Juan and waiting for his signal to simply step off the edge.

I was wearing a brain-bucket and a pair of running shoes on loan from my roommate, Sophie, who is a gorgeous, leggy Norwegian girl with hair down to her waist. She makes friends rather easily with men, including Walter and Juan, who had become fast friends when they found each over the Internet on a site devoted to connecting paragliders. They’re the only two enthusiasts in the country. On Saturday, Sophie spent 40 minutes with Walter floating gently in the air, nipping in and out of clouds and playing with the circling birds. She made it sound easy and amazing.

So there I was, thinking about health insurance, wondering about exactly how quickly I was to run to the edge of the cliff and whether running off a cliff is the sign of mental incompetence my brother needed to declare me incapacitated. While he snapped and secured my harness, Juan, a Mexican/Colombian working at God knows what in Ghana but making serious coin at it, told me that when we launched, we would simply run, leaning forward and putting our weight into it and within a few steps, we would be airborne. Then I simply needed to lean back and the harness would turn into a chair of sorts. Then I could just take it all in.

“What about landing,” I asked. “What do I need to know about that?”

“Well,” he answered, with characteristic glibness, “the thing about paragliding is that launching is optional. You go or you don’t. But landing is mandatory.”

We had driven for two hours out of the city, up into the mountains, then climbed, up up up to a satellite tower perched on the cliffs between Koforidua and Kumasi. Walter, who builds these towers, had discovered this spot a few years earlier and had returned, often, with a machete to clear the land. He'd lined it with sandbags to make sure that heavy rains didn’t wash away the launch strip.

As we pulled into the launch, Juan turned to Walter and asked, “So remind me, how do I use the brake? I mean, how do we get back to the ground?” My eyes widened slightly, thinking about stepping off a cliff with someone who had done this only once or twice before. Walter responded that this particular glider hadn’t come with a brake. They’d ordered it off e-Bay, he explained, and it had been gently used. “They’re joking,” Sophie said.

Juan and Walter are both licensed pilots and licensed paragliding instructors. Walter refers reverently to paragliding as “aviation.” Juan, who is not quite so serious, once worked full-time doing tandem launches and lessons. He’d seen a poster with a paraglider on it 11 years earlier and declared: I wanted to learn how to do that. About the only poster that’s ever produced that kind of reaction from me is one of people lying on a white beach.

We waited for a breeze and Juan counted down. I moved forward and was immediately pulled back. I was shocked at how much resistance the kite put up so quickly. I could barely take more than two steps. Our first and second launch didn’t take and apparently it had nothing to do with how I couldn’t move, it had to do with wind power and the laying of the lines. But on the third, suddenly after two steps I could no longer touch the ground.

And then we were suspended out over the edge, looking down on a huge canyon stuffed with green.

When we started, we were about 600 metres up, looking down over a classically Ghanaian town, filled with hawkers and children and tro-tros and winding roads and open sewers. We were high enough up that we could see the rusty, corrugated roofs, but it was difficult to distinguish one type of building from another. In front of us was a huge, empty soccer pitch.

It’s difficult to describe how the landscape changes when you’re directly on top of it, when there’s nothing between you and it but your shoes. Juan shifted and suddenly I was leaning back. I couldn’t tell what he was doing back there, in terms of how he was controlling the paraglider, but he was wearing a kind of monitor that measured air currents and emitted a fast-paced beep whenever we’d hit a thermal, which would push us further up up up.

He decided to glide us over to where there were a couple hawks circling. The birds are the best guide for a paraglider, as they’re trying to do exactly what we’re doing: ride the air currents higher and further. But soon they were flying over to us and the little doo-hickey was beeping like crazy and we were, in a blink, 1,200 metres in the air, soaring high above where we’d launched and able to see way over the hills, the cliffs and into the distance. The town turned into a speck and they only discernible thing was the soccer pitch.

Roughly five minutes into the journey, I started to feel queasy. I found it hard to look down, like my perspective was all wrong. I felt cross-eyed. Looking down is like looking down at a landscaping plan, where all the trees are perfectly round. Juan kept us moving and kept talking here and there. I was just concentrating on not throwing up.

About 20 minutes into it, behind the launch had turned slate grey with a massive cloud that looked like rain. That was our cue to leave. Juan angled us toward the ground and we swirled toward the soccer pitch like a maple key caught in the wind. As we came in closer and closer, Juan told me we would either land and try to run to keep pace with glider, or if we were coming in too quickly, merely slide on our bums.

We slid.

By the time we came to a rest, I was shaking and sweating as though all the water in my body was doing an evacuation drill. That’s when Juan told me that air sickness is the most common first reaction to paragliding – your inner ear can’t handle the perspective, which essentially collapses what we’re used to seeing in 3D – and that he’s had his shoes puked on more times than he can count.

Juan wanted to get the kite packed up quickly, as he’d learned from experience that an audience of Ghanaian children makes it almost impossible and can sometimes lead to damage to the kite. We were locked inside the soccer pitch, so the only people who came to investigate were the caretakers. Neither of them spoke very good English and my Twi couldn’t keep up, so we weren’t able to tell them what we’d been doing up there. We simply packed up the gear and headed for the pool.

The weather kept changing and changing. By the time we hit the ground, there was a text message from Walter saying it was pouring rain up at the launch. The sun was shining where we landed. We had planned to take a cab back to the launch and send Sophie and Walter out, but they decided instead to drive down and meet us at the hotel for lunch, then see if the weather had improved. About 20 minutes later, it poured rain down at the hotel.

It took about an hour for my stomach to calm down enough that I could put food into it. While we waited, Walter and Juan swapped jokes about how they’d carried dogs, furniture, sometimes packs of beer with them on flights, and horror stories about worst clients and worst accidents. (A friend of Juan’s had died a few weeks earlier when she forgot to check her harness. She was doing a tandem launch with a Spanish reporter at the time and they were about seven minutes into the flight when she slipped out and fell away screaming. The reporter, who had no idea how to steer or land the glider, managed to get it to swing back around to the mountain where they launched and he landed heavily but safely. Apparently he couldn’t speak for several days and had to be kept heavily medicated. No one knows when the instructor realized she wasn’t hooked in properly. That’s when I told them I was also a reporter and was severely disappointed they hadn’t thought to provide me with such a great story.)

By the time we’d finished lunch and headed back up, there were more clouds and we decided to pack it in without Sophie and Walter going out. (Apparently this is just how it goes with paragliding, although Juan and Walter agreed they’d never seen weather change as quickly as it does in the mountains in Ghana.)