Here in Cape Town since Saturday night. Need to get the journal filled in on the between then and now.
But first, what an odd dream last night. It was Amy, and all Amy. I haven't had a dream like that in a very long time. I haven't talked to her in more than a year. Haunted by my dreams. Will I be followed by my nightmares?
Well, enough about that. Let's talk now about presidents and cities on the ocean. Cape Town definitely lives up to its reputation as a very beautiful city. Dominated by the powerful Table Mountain, the city unfolds itself over the old streets to the confluence of the Indian and Atlantic oceans.
The feeling here is much more colonial than Joburg, and that is definitely due to the history of the city. This extends not only to the architecture, but I think also to the people. It's also a much more diverse city than Joburg, with Indians, Malay, Moslems, Jews, again all due to the history of the colony. And it is history that dominates Cape Town. Dominates it to the point, almost, that the city has staked its future on its past.
Cape Town does not have the same energy and drive that Joburg does. Indeed, the city that continues to drive this revolution is not the city in which South Africa found its martyrs, its leader, its political course to a New Africa. I think that Joburg is the machine driving this country to new heights. It is Joburg that will be the center of not only a new South Africa, but a new continent.
Frequently my mind keeps coming back to the story of Cecil Rhodes. This country needs another Rhodes, just as America had Ford at that crucial crossroads of our history. A new Rhodes whose dream is not of a contiguous African political empire, but of an economic empire driving development throughout Africa. Development that not only benefits the status quo as it did Rhodes, but one that continues to develop and encourage and truly support the middle class dream that is common the world around. A dream of a decent job, a good wife, two cars and a pair of kids running around in the yard.
The fully wired racks
Fox was assigned to be pool for the Africa. We had about six weeks to put everything together, including a whirlwind 14 day survey of every stop on the trip, arranging satellite and power vendors to provide uplinks and generators, hotels and travel for all the pool producers and engineers, and sending more than 20 tons of gear from Fox in the US. The total trip of the president lasted 12 days, through 6 countries. Ghana, Uganda, Rwanda, South Africa, Botswana, and Senegal.
About the Pictures...they are from the Cape Town stop. My job on the trip was to coordinate logistical movements through Johannesburg, then go to Cape Town to help set up, run, and tear down the technical equipment needed to pull off the trip. All the pictures here are from Cape Town.
The Cape Town set up was based around a Leitch 32x32 router. The primary incoming feed was Host TV provided by South Africa Broadcasting Corp. in PAL format via microwave. PAL was converted to NTSC via a Snell & Wilcox CVR-45 standards converter. Other feeds included 2 reporter standup locations, briefing center head on camera, 3 playback VTRs (one in PAL) and local lines from each network to feed out their unilateral material.
The two outbound lines went from the workspace to the roof of the building via a Telcast Viper fiber optic line. From there they went through an analog/digital converter before being transmitted out on a dual-path digital Ku band uplink provided by NewsForce. The signal made a single hop on the PanAmSat-3 satellite and was downlinked in Canada, decoded to analog, and sent via fiber to Washington for distribution to the networks. Two local lines fed each network locally. Four local pool record machines were also fed from the router.
The other major system was an RTS/Telex intercom/IFB providing links to each camera position, each network, and IFB for both standup interruptable from the pool workspace.
The Credits... most of these folks don't get their names in the credits, so I think it's fitting to do it here.
Wendy Dawson - Production Manager: in charge of the money side of the trip. Also coordinated all pool travel, hotels, and other arrangements. Wendy was also specifically in charge of details in Cape Town and Johannesburg. The other prod. managers for other stops were Lisa Schauman, David Puente, and Carol Buonincontri.
Bob Torpey - Pool Engineer in Charge: oversaw all technical aspects of the trip, and was in charge of our technical operations in Cape Town.
The rest of the tech team in Africa: Roger Germinder, Bill Matten, Ralph Spotts, Sen Louie, Warren Langrock, Anne-Marie Willis, Peter Wharton, Bill Florio, Scott Johnson (?), Quillie Odom, NEED TO LOOK UP THE REST!!!!!!
Steve Hirsh - Cape Town City Producer: in charge of the gig in Cape Town. Operates as sort of a lieutenant to the Pool Producer, but whereas the Pool Producer travels to each stop on the trip, the city producer remains in one city. The other city producers on the trip were Dave Shott, Brian Boughton, Paul Cleveland, NEED TO LOOK UP THE REST!!!!!!!
