Month: February 2014

This Morning’s Ghana Missive

Ivi updates me today, to quote an excerpt:

Jaaa, all is well, I very nearly have a complete schedule. Intro to Oral Literature, Intro to African Literature, Twi Language, Music & Dance (where I get to do some drumming), Traditional Dance (which is just a giant dance class), and History of Ghana in the 19th and 20th Centuries are the courses I’ve settled on so far. Most have only met once and we’re barely getting started (moving on Ghana time), so more info to come. 

Haven’t gotten any tailored clothes or anything yet, still figuring out what my budget for that will be. I have to get taxis to go like anywhere in the city and so I’m kind of budgeting for experience over material things, at least so far.
Eating so well it’s unbelievable. I feel super healthy from all the fruit and water that I take in, and plenty full. No preservatives in anything. And, as I’ve said before, my host family cooks SO WELL. ugh. I love it.

 

An African Election

Africa, of course, is on our minds these days.  So tonight we tried something a bit different and simply did a search on Netflix for everything that matched the keyword, “Africa”. The most promising search result seemed to be a film called “An African Election”.  And it turned out to be a documentary of the 2008 Ghanaian presidential elections.  Highly recommended, even for those who may not be tuned into Ivi’s current adventure there.  Here is the trailer for that fascinating film:

Btw, I heard three distinctly different pronunciations by different Ghanaians in the film of the name of the Ghana capital, Accra (where Ivi is living now).

So Here’s What Happened …

Remember this?

 

So I went into the office early this morning, right after Ivi asked me in email in our earlier exchanges today about getting pictures of Charlie, found a video clip and posted it to YouTube.  Minutes later, the guys in our office who monitor DMCA violations* started laughing and showed me this:

 
 So we inspected the video, and realized that some music — apparently that copyrighted by WMG (Warner Music Group, one of the “big three” recording companies) — happening to be playing in the background, escaping my notice while I was innocently documenting Ivi and Charlie’s antics.  Minutes later.

*DMCA, by the way, refers to the Digital Millennium Copyright Act of 1996.  We, speaking of my employer, receive DMCA notices regularly, mostly for our subscribers who are caught in the act of downloading mostly movies, and are required to take “appropriate action” (we typically notify the offending customer and warn them that we will suspend or relinquish their Internet access if they do it again, as we as an ISP — Internet Services Provider — may be held liable or could be threatened with direct legal action).  Anyway, the whole office got a great laugh at my expense today.

So — it would seem that NSA has nothing on the reach and view of the recording companies.  Well, on the other hand: