hellolightbulbmoments

[hellolightbulbmoments]

Our daughters birth story

Everyone has heard birth horror stories, emergency c-sections, incredibly long labours, and the dreaded third-degree stitches. Ours wasn't amazing, but in my opinion, it wasn't too bad either.

It was a Sunday morning and we had suitcases and bags packed expecting to reach the hospital and get the process started by about 9-10 am. As I mentioned in the previous article Hannah had preeclampsia so needed to be induced at 37 weeks and today was induction day. We phoned the King's maternity ward to find out when we should arrive and were told that we would be called back, fair enough. So we waited. An hour, two hours, three hours went by, so I called again. Margret, the midwife who answered the call told me they were waiting for a neonatal bed to be available after the doctors did their rounds, since our child had a health condition there would be a high chance this bed will be needed, so we waited again. Eventually, we were called back. We had the all-clear and got to the hospital around 15:20, so not the between 9 and 10 am we were originally expecting but, late is better than never.

We were shown into Hannah's room on the fourth floor and a midwife called Olivia came in to check she had everything she needed, also see how dilated she was. 2cm, which wasn't bad for someone who hadn't been induced chemically yet. Also enough to have Hannah's waters broken manually she thought, but she went to get a second opinion.

Emily, a doctor came in and suggested the cervix should be softened instead with a pessary, which is a tampon shaped device that goes behind the cervix and slowly releases chemicals. These usually have a 10-30% chance of working in the first 24 hours so we weren't expecting our baby to be born until Tuesday. We were in for the long haul, or so we thought.

Very soon after the pessary Hannah started to feel some slight cramping pain in her stomach, we weren't sure what they were. We thought they were the initial period-esk pains before a contraction. After getting something to eat in the hospital's Costa we were met by Lydia. A midwife who was the sister of Eric, the man who married my mother the day before. To help speed up the pregnancy she encouraged Hannah to do as much walking as possible. We walked down the stairs for the fourth floor to the reception, to M&S to get some drinks, then back to the lobby area, then back to M&S, then back up to the fourth. Her heart was in the right place but it was difficult to see my wife hobbling around the hospital in pain. I tried my best to end it but she was very adamant.

After the painful walks, we went back to Hannah's room and were greeted by Jeralyn, a new midwife as Hannah went to sit on a yoga ball. Some final checks were made to Hannah's blood pressure and I was asked at around 20:30 kindly to leave the hospital. During covid times husbands were only allowed to visit between the hours of 2 and 8 pm so, I said my goodbyes and drove home. After getting something to eat and reflecting on the day I went to sleep not expecting to get up until the following morning.

At exactly 00:14 the next day I was woken up by a very brief call from Hannah who sounded like she was out of breath after throwing up. She said she is over 4cm and I needed to make my way to the hospital as soon as I could. Wow, that was quick, I thought in my barely awake mind. I got up, put the same clothes on I wore the day before, and started to pack a bag. A frozen bottle of water, a homemade ice pop, a laptop, some snacks, and a towel to wrap the cold things in. I didn't know how long I was going to be in the hospital for. Assuming I would be there for a long, long time I proceeded to order an Uber which was more difficult than expected. For some reason, the app wasn't letting me set my destination so I had to manually set a pointer to the King's car park on Google maps.

When the driver arrived I asked him to double-check the location was okay just to make sure I didn't make any mistakes and luckily, he got sent the correct location, so we set off. It's amazing how empty the roads are super early in the morning. The journey was quick, I jumped out of the car and lightly jogged to the hospital mask in hand. Once I got to the fourth floor and buzzed in I realised I didn't have a key piece of information, what room Hannah was in. The lady behind the desk asked for her name then said it would take a while to find her room. Just as she started going through the computer a long-haired midwife called Georgina swung the doors opened the doors and asked if I was Oliver, when I responded she rushed me into Hannah's room as quickly as she could and I saw my wife giving birth.

In the time I woke up and got to the hospital Hannah had reached 10cm and has started pushing. I only got to the room around 00:34! She was sat up at a 45-degree angle on a hospital bed with her legs spread apart and two midwives by her side. Georgina, who ushered me in was in her right and Katherine, who was at Hannah's base was checking everything was okay with the birth. As I walked in she pointed towards the top part of our daughter's head poking out of Hannah, she had so much hair. I couldn't believe all this was happening so quickly. I grabbed my wife's free hand, the other was holding the gas and air mask. Kissed her forehead, and handed her the ice-pop I packed with me which she greatly appreciated.

Both midwives were encouraging Hannah to push her hardest when the contractions came, then to take a break when they went away. Hannah looked like she was in a crazy amount of pain, taking in gas and air whenever she pushed. She had taken so much she seemed out of it, saying random things in between contractions. I didn't know what to do just standing there, I felt like a spare part. Then something went wrong. After a few hard pushes, our daughter's heart rate began to drop, which meant she was in distress. The midwife's needed to act fast. They enlisted the help of another person, Katherine who seemed to be a more senior midwife, and a handful of other healthcare professionals. Katherine asked Hannah to do one last big push, she tried but it wasn't as big as they expected so they decided to give her an episiotomy. A cut into the vaginal wall to make more space for the baby to come out. The more senior Kat was instructing the junior Kat throughout the whole process. The incision was made very quickly, but I'm sure it felt like a long and painful process for Hannah. After another large push our daughter's head came out, that was the hardest bit. Soon afterwards the rest of the body came out and I say my daughter for the first time.

Her skin was pale bluish-grey. She was covered in all sort of fluids and she had loads of hair, lots more than I expected. Also, she had long nails which is something else I didn't expect. It was beautiful, magical, but also scary. She didn't cry, or scream, she was completely silent and she wasn't breathing. They placed her on Hannah's chest as soon as she was born which she refused immediately and asked her to bee looked after by a member of staff. This request was in the birth plan but I guess they assumed all mothers want to hold their child as soon as they're born. I didn't know who to focus my attention on, my wife on gas and air in the most amount of pain she has ever been in her life or my daughter, who was being rubbed with a towel by a nurse who was trying to get her to breathe.

After about 5 minutes of rubbing, an incubator was wheeled in from the neo-natal unit. Our daughter's complexion had turned less blue which meant there was blood moving around her and she did start to breathe but not properly. It was very fast as if she were in distress, and her stomach was being pushed in and out exposing her rigs, this didn't look normal to me but I didn't know what to expect from a newborn. The nurse looking after her told me they weren't too happy with her breathing so a few more checks needed to be made at the neo-natal unit which we sort of expected because of her condition, good thing they had a bed prepped from the morning.

Back to Hannah who had honestly done such a great job of pushing our child out without any epidural as well as having a mini surgery down below. I couldn't be more proud of her at that moment but the midwives weren't quite finished yet. They gave Hannah an injection in her top left thigh to encourage contractions so that the placenta could come out, this was easier for Hannah than the birth (I think), so she calmed herself down by eating the ice pop I brought to her. The process was fairly quick and the once empty metal bowl beside me was filled with blood and the placenta that was giving Hannah preeclampsia. The student Kat accidentally dropped it over Hannah's left leg which was a somewhat comedic moment for me watching her scurrying to pick it up and Hannah still a bit out of it asking what had suddenly made her leg feel so warm. After that tension rose as both Katerines began the process of stitching Hannah up.

The student Katherine continually asked the more experienced Katherine question on how to stitch the wound. This didn't fill Hannah and me with confidence but there was not much we could do about it. Maybe in her next birth plan (if we have another child), Hannah could write no student midwives depending on what sort of pregnancy it is.

After a while, it was just Hannah, the student Katherine and I in the room, it felt different, much emptier and quieter for obvious reasons. Our midwife was making a few notes on the computer and I honestly can't remember what we talked about at this stage but I do know we were waiting for the go-ahead from the neonatal team to see Nova, our daughter. When we did, Hannah was too weak to walk so I went to see her.

The room was dark, loud, and there were so many beeping sounds. I looked around lost and started reading the files outside each incubator until I saw the one for Baby Bray. Our daughter was in there with a healthy skin colour, moving around and crying. I wanted to touch her, to lift her up, but I couldn't. A staff member came up to me, asked if I was her parent, I replied. She then asked if I consented to them using a dummy on her. I said it was okay and they quickly put a green dummy in her mouth which stopped her crying in an instant. I sat in a plastic yellow seat close-by and starred at her. She had so many cabled and wires attached to her nose, chest and fingers. I didn't know what they were all for but I'm glad that she was breathing and moving. So many things could have gone wrong and we thank God it didn't. I am super grateful for all those who had prayed for us, friends, family, and church members. The child that we had wanted for so many years was before my eyes.

Unfortunately, this wasn't the worst of it and we had to stay in the hospital for much longer than we expected without our child close-by.

Photo by Christian Bowen from Unsplash.

[hellolightbulbmoments]

That pregnancy glow

Before we got pregnant we, (well Hannah), watched a lot of a programme called One born every minute. A show about different women in the UK given by birth in different ways. It didn't really focus on pregnancy, the third trimester, the three months before giving birth. This is a stage that we didn't think about too much, we thought, for the most part, it would be peaches and roses until labour, but we were wrong.

Let me preface this post by saying everyone and every pregnancy is different. What we have gone through will not be the experience of many people who read this so please keep that in mind.

Lockdown and preeclampsia are a horrible combination of things to have during pregnancy. One of those things is bad enough but the two of them together, well three if you want to add in a child with bronchial pulmonary sequestration, are all things that can induce stress, anxiety, and massive discomfort. We had heard Hannah's mother was glowing through her three pregnancies so I assumed are first would be the same, like mother like daughter right? This couldn't have been more wrong in our case.

For those who don't know what preeclampsia is, Google is your friend, but I'll give a super brief description. It's a condition with the placenta which causes the mother to have high blood pressure, low platelet levels in their blood and protein in their urine. No one knows exactly what causes it but in extreme cases, it could cause issues with the liver and the kidneys of the mother, so the quicker they get the placenta out, the better. You can imagine how much stress this caused when we found out Hannah had this. Now, this is not to say the pregnancy was all good before this diagnosis. Hannah got a lot of headaches and became dizzy from time to time and knowing this helped us pinpoint the issue. She took tablets to out the blood pressure down and had regular appointments at the hospital, which I couldn't attend because of coronavirus, but yeah, this wasn't a fun time.

To top it off there were a lot of weird things that happened to Hannah. She got frequent nosebleeds, stomach aches, sciatica, haemorrhoids, lower back pains. There was a period when Hannah felt like she was going to throw up so she slept with a bucket next to her for a few days. Hannah's bladder was weak which means wherever we went there needed to be a toilet close by. Prior to the lockdown, this would have been fine but during it, a lot of places, and toilets were shut so we could only make it to close by parks. And even further into the pregnancy, Hannah's pelvis was in pain the more she walked. So we ended up keeping walking to a minimum.

There were plenty of times where Hannah was very convinced she would die giving birth. She felt it in her heart, she felt weak and uncomfortable which was always worrying to hear. I told her it wouldn't happen and I was sure of that, but sometimes when she spoke about life insurance and what would happen after she dies thoughts did crop into my mind. The fact is that in 100,000 women less than 10 of them in the UK die from childbirth. But the chances of maternal mortality increase with preeclampsia so I can understand why she had those thoughts.

Now I don't want to keep this article all bad, there were some good things that came out of this. Firstly, we were pregnant, something that we had tried for years and we're finally here. I could not only feel our daughter's kicks but hear her heartbeat which was a good way to check she was still alive when her kicks had reduced. Hannah lost the desire to drink tea whilst being pregnant which is great in my opinion since she is less dependent on caffeine. Hannah was induced which meant we got to see our daughter three to five weeks earlier than we planned. This leads on nicely to the next post plan to write. One all about the given by birth process. With that teaser, I will end this article here.

[hellolightbulbmoments]

A bit about race

This month has been an interesting one for the Bray family. Our child is growing strong, we've started posting a lot of videos on YouTube, but the most interesting of all has been our chats about race.

The death of George Floyd has sparked up peaceful protests and conversations about race all over the world. It's brought into the question police in America treat people of colour in unjustly but it has also brought up conversations about racial injustice in all parts of the world, not just overt racism but covert racism. Conversations at work, church, and all over popular media. Personally, I believe it's a good thing for people to talk about their experiences and let others know the negative things people of colour have to go through on a regular basis. It's important for those experiences not just to be heard and forgotten about but for deliberate and well thought out actions to be planned in order to prevent these experiences from happening to future generations.

I've been very fortunate in the fact that I've grown up in a very diverse part of the UK, went to diverse schools, a primarily black church and had diverse friends. I haven't had the experience of being the only or one of the few people of colour in an area, a school or a group of friends. I haven't been stopped and searched by the police, falsely accused of a crime or treated outwardly differently from most others. This is not to say I haven't experienced any indirect racism or know of others that have experienced racism in the UK.

During my time at university in Kent, I have been one of the few people of colour in a pub when a racist joke was readout. I have heard the n-word used on various occasions to refer to people of colour and have been starred at by all the members of staff in a small supermarket whilst walking out having not purchased any items. I believe there have been smaller less obvious occasions but they've been removed out of my mind. But where most racism occurs is in the shadows, in communities and groups of similar races and like-minded people.

On our trip to Ghana last year we heard a lot of racist comments being made to the Chinese, Hannah has informed me of times people have said racist things about black people, I have heard racist things said about white people in groups of black people, these sorts of comments, in my opinion, are what contributes to keeping racism alive in this day and age and it's important (especially as Christians) to stop these sorts of comments from going further and call out our brothers and sisters who say them. We live in a fallen broken world and nothing is perfect, racism isn't something that we can't completely eradicate but I think it's something we should work towards, especially in the church. We tend to bring up topics like homophobia, adultery and pre-marital sex in Christian circles but it's very rare to talk about race and it hasn't been until recently that these topics have been spoken about more and more, racism is a sin, and we see it spoken about time and time again in the new testament. Christians should be the ones who bring people together, break down barriers and lead people to Christ.

[hellolightbulbmoments]

Golfball sized tumour

For those of you who regularly read this blog you'll know that we've been trying for a child for some time now and this year, well last year, our prayers and the prayers of many others had been answered, my wife Hannah became pregnant with our first. Our child is healthy in all the ways apart from her lungs, one of them is tumorous, which is not good. I wrote about this in the last post and in this post we have some updates.

As I write this post my wife is 27 weeks pregnant and our child still has the tumour, in fact, it's getting bigger, it’s the size of a golf ball at the moment. This is mostly what we both think, pray, and worry about during these lockdown times. We're currently waiting on the decisions of healthcare professionals but we've heard there are two possible options in our scenario. An operation in the womb (which is fairly risky), or an operation outside of the womb straight after our child is born. We genuinely don't know what option they will go for but we both want the tumour out as quickly as possible so their lungs will develop properly and increase the possibility of them breathing straight away after birth.

We've seen scans and been given measurements of the tumour, the more we see it the more worried we get and reading posts or articles of children who have not survived because of problems with their lungs doesn't fill us with hope, but we still have it. We're continuously grateful for those who are caring and praying for us, our friends, family members, and our church family. It's easy to think of the worst-case scenario but we believe in a God who can and has done the impossible. We don't know what His plan is for our child's life but we're trusting in Him through this incredibly tough time.

[hellolightbulbmoments]

Coronavirus, Autism and Lungs

You'll probably know that March 2020 was a big month for the UK and a lot has changed in a very short amount of time. I'd say in the space of about two weeks it went from, people walking happily streets, going to gatherings and getting whatever food they wanted from their local shop to, no one being allowed to leave their homes, no gatherings whatsoever, and queuing up to go into stores then struggling to find essential items because all or most of them will be gone. Coronavirus, COVID-19 has hit the country hard.

I've had to work from home for the foreseeable future, Hannah is at home with as well no longer working as a teaching assistant and we only ever leave the house to go on walks or buy food when we can find it. It's unusual and like many others, we're looking to a time when this will be over but we don't know when it will be. All church meetings are happening on Zoom (which is a video conferencing site that has taken the world by storm since the virus). All gyms are closed so I'm using an app called Fiit to exercise form the house, and we tend to spend a lot of time talking, praying, and watching Netflix when we're not working on personal projects. Hannah has taken to sewing and I'm, actually doing more work at home since I'm talking to fewer people and spending less time for lunch I guess? Anyway, the world is very different now than it was in early March. I won't go into detail about everything since I'm sure a quick Google search will reveal all the details but it's weird and scary. People are wearing masks now. I mean, I only saw that sort of stuff in Japan and I thought it was odd but now most people here are doing it. Nevertheless, we believe in a God who knows the future, who knows when this pandemic will end and we have put our faith in Him so whatever happens, He's in control.

Some good news in this weirdness our first ever game jam game, Maisey and Kevin(https://hellolightbulb.itch.io/maisy-and-kevin), was one of the three shortlisted games which is awesome news for us. Not only does it give our little game studio Hello Lightbulb a tiny bit of exposure but it also affirms the fact that we're good at making games, and Hannah is a great animator. I honestly think we wouldn't have got shortlisted if it wasn't for her great design abilities. Not to put my coding skills down, yes the game ran well on web but one of the judges who was playing it on a live stream did find the only bug in the game which is annoying but yay for us. We plan to do more game jams in the future (especially with this coronavirus lockdown) so watch this space. 

I also managed to finish the first draft of my book which is a huge weight off my shoulders. I've sent the first 5 chapters to a literary agent and have an excel spreadsheet with a few others I plan to contact but it'll take some time. A lot less time than proofreading a small novel, so I have more time to dedicate to other things which is great.

Annnnnnnd now back to the bad news, well, very unexpected and not amazing news. We found out our child (who is a girl by the way), has a complication with her lungs. There is a large mass of lung tissue under one of her lungs which is putting pressure on her heart. We saw it in a scan and it didn't look good. Hannah and I were both incredibly shocked at the news and very upset, this could be really bad. An appointment was scheduled at one of the top foetal research facilities to see what can be done but unfortunately, we got told to go home upon entering the building, Hannah had a cough. And amidst this coronavirus fear it meant she had to quarantine herself for 14 days. 14 days is a long time to delay potentially life-saving treatment.

We're hoping it's not too late and something can and will be done before (or soon after) our daughter is born. With the situation getting worse in London we're not even sure if the appointment will still go ahead since there are a lot of other health-related appointments that have been cancelled (cancer treatments, whooping cough vaccinations, even all our NCT meetings). 

There are a lot of people praying for us right now, families, friends, our church, and we really appreciate that. We believe in a good God who cares for us and we are believing in him through this tough time. 

[hellolightbulbmoments]

Our first game jam

Since we've been a game Dev duo outside of our full-time jobs we've heard a lot about game jams. That there a good way to get ideas out quickly, try new tools and meet more people, so this month we thought we'd give it a go.

The game jam we've chosen to participate in is hosed by a charity called Autistica and an organisation called Tentacle Zone. We were particularly drawn to this jam because of the relaxed nature of it. The majority of jams I've seen online are around two to three days long and although they don't encourage it, participants tend to work around the clock to produce the best game they can. As first-time jammers and part-time game developers that wouldn't be something for us. Due to the nature of Hannah's job she can't take time off whenever she wants, only during school holidays so that isn't an option for us unless we find a jam that matches with holidays. On top of the fact that she is pregnant and struggles to stay up past 9 pm means we can't pull any all-nighters. The Autistica Play jam runs from the 2nd to the 9th of March, a lot more time than what I've seen in other great jams. Of course, not enough time to release a fully-fledged game but I'm confident we can produce something playable in our evenings and weekends.

This post has been written after the themes of the jam have been announced but before it has officially ended so we've had time to think about what we will create, one of the advantages of living together. Our experience with autism is quite small so we did a lot of research reading various blogs and watching videos on what we can do to translate the topic to a playable game. We like the idea of having playable animals in our game (if you hadn't guessed that from our previous game), and we like the idea of shells. Coming out of them or staying in them so a tortoise is a natural fit. An autistic tortoise who struggles to go about his day.

We want to make the game really accessible so that even our mothers could play it, (or father's), so we've opted for a point and click one. It's not something we've done before so will be an interesting thing to try. If it goes well the control scheme could translate well to an iPad or mobile phone.

Having full-time jobs are not the only thing that will take up our time in the week of the game jam, we've agreed to a few social events too. Meeting my family in the weekend, sewing costumes for world book day, and helping out at a homeless centre are a few of the things that will take up our time this week. On another note twitch, the site that is used for daily updates, as well as discord, the site used to communicate with other jammers around the world, are both blocked at work. So I'm unable to participate in the daily updates or keep up with what is going on. And even though we have so many obstacles, I'm confident will have something playable by the deadline. Fingers crossed.

[hellolightbulbmoments]

Pressures of work

Do you remember in the previous post I talked about all the things I hoped to achieve in 2020? Finishing the book, finishing the game, doing a bunch of other things? I think I sort of overloaded myself? To the point where I got into work at around 8:15 on a Thursday and continued working until about 19:00 to get things done. How did I get there you ask? Or maybe you didn't ask? I'll tell you nevertheless.

It was a lot of small little things that built up, things I committed to one of which was work. I wasn't enjoying my job for most of the latter part of last year mainly because I was just fixing old stuff and not building new stuff, so I voiced it out and I was heard. I was given new stuff to work on, lots of new stuff. More than I could handle sort of new stuff but I held my head up and said I'd get it done by the beginning of February which seemed like a reasonable goal. Software development is a very unpredictable process and it turned out there were more unexpected things that cropped up causing that deadline to be moved, only by a few weeks or so but I still felt bad missing the original deadline. So I stayed late and work overtime to get things completed. This has sort of pushed a lot of other projects back for me, like a few talks I planned to do. By about the second week of January, I already had about three talks lined up to do for work. One I asked to do last year November-ish, but got pushed back to Jan, and two others scheduled for February were because of two different rotas I'm on. I'd say it takes me about two weeks to plan each talk, excluding weekends. Since completing the main project I'm on takes priority to me over talks, I'm super behind on writing them which makes me put a lot of pressure on myself to get the project work done quickly so I can write the talks. Something we started at work this year (I bet you're seeing the pattern) was a team wellness challenge. This involves grouping up in teams of five and completing sporty or mindfulness activities to get points for your team. As the slightly competitive person I am my focus was to be in the top ten, so I planned to aim for about three points a day which I'd achieve by meditating and doing two 20 minute walks. But because of the huge project I talked about at the beginning of this article, there's no way I could get that done and squeeze in walks every day, so that's sort of started sliding too. Maybe it's my fault for caring so much and wanting to be competitive but I put a bit of pressure on myself for that too.

Lastly, the two things I talked about in my previous post, the game and the book. If writing talks have fallen behind because of the project, then my side projects have definitely fallen behind. I know it's only been one month but that's one month of free time I've given to work and not the things I truly enjoy doing. Things I do to relax and unwind. Furthermore, these things will be a month behind deadline, and as much as I enjoy doing them I'd much rather they be done before 2021 than continue working on them. Phew, that's a lot. The good news is, none of that stuff is important. The game, book, wellness challenge, even work. And that's a fact I need to remind myself when I'm woken up in the middle of the night thinking about how I'm going to fix problems at work or when I spend time with Hannah and I'm worried I should be working on my projects instead. If I don't do any of those things the world will still exist. It will still keep spinning and people won't care, much. What is important though is my relationship with Jesus and sharing the gospel with others. It's easy to make idols out of worldly achievements. They feel nice, you get praised, people cheer for you, but my life on Earth wasn't given to me to make my name great it was given to make His great. I pray this year that I keep that at the forefront of my mind this year.

[hellolightbulbmoments]

Hello 2020

I'm not really one for new years resolutions, reflecting on the past year, or generally being sentiment about going from December to January. However, I do like to loosely plan things at different points in the year and in this post I'll talk about a few of them I hope to achieve, preferably by this year (God willing).

For the three of you who regularly follow this blog, you would have probably picked up on the fact we've been struggling to have a baby for the past few years and even has a miscarriage last year. 2020 is when that will all change. At the end of last year we found out Hannah was pregnant and this time we've actually seen the baby, and its heartbeat. Well, we've seen a scan of our 7 and a half week old baby but I have no doubt we will see them face to face this year.

I'm about halfway through editing the second draft of my book and I'm hoping to get it finished towards the end half of the year which means I can start reaching out to publishers 😁. I have a few in mind. Curtis Brown Creative is one of them and Knights Of the other. I'm not planning to make lots of money from this so if no one wants to publish it then I'm more than happy to self publish, or even just put it somewhere online for free. It's been fun writing and editing this book on my journeys back from work and I have some more ideas all in the same universe as Crimson, which I'm super excited to work on.

Something else we've had fun doing is working on our game Scales. I would say it's about halfway done now and we're planning to release it around, you've guessed it, this year. Again this isn't something that will make us the 'big bucks' but we're planning to use the knowledge from this to make something better.

Last and most importantly 2020 is a year that God has given us and although it's good to have goals and personal projects, it's more important for us as Christians to share the gospel whenever and wherever we can. I'm looking forward to sharing my faith with new non-Christians and the talking points that lead on from that. Having socials and meaningful discussions with my church family. Seeing how God changes the hearts of many others to be more like his, including my own.

Ollie

[hellolightbulbmoments]

Dealing with the unexpected

Describing this month as tough would be a bit of an understatement, it's a month where I saw my wife go through the most amount of physical pain she has ever gone through and felt a great loss for someone who we had longed for and thought would certainly be part of our lives. 

Some of you may know that Hannah and I have been trying for a child for over two years. We'd considered trying an IUI, adoption and discussed applying to a foster-to-adopt scheme. However three months ago Hannah fell pregnant. This was such a shock and a surprise to us that we weren't originally convinced. After a few more days and about 20 positive pregnancy tests later nothing could change our mind, the thing we thought wouldn't happen has happened. It was such an answer to prayer and we were exceedingly happy. Weeks went by and we began to share the good news, with friends, family members and work colleagues. We received gifts and cards, bought new clothes, got a baby-on-board badge, we began to think of the future and the changes a newborn would bring to our lives. It was such a joyful time of our lives, but it all turned around unexpectedly. 

Ten weeks and five days into the pregnancy Hannah started spotting lightly, we weren't too worried about this because we read it's not unusual to bleed a tiny bit during pregnancy. The next day the spotting continued, just to be sure we phoned 111 and we're told to get to A&E immediately. Hannah was checked by two doctors then was given an appointment for the following morning to the [UPAE]. We were worried but assumed the baby was fine and the bleeding was caused by some sort of infection. We prayed the night before and booked the morning off from our relative places of employment. 

The following day we waited in the hospital for what felt like hours before Hannah was called to have her scans after which we received the devastating news that our child had stopped growing and lost its heartbeat. I was lost for words, Hannah was in tears. We sat in the quiet room in the hospital not knowing what to talk about, we had lost the person we were hoping to see for so long, the child we were praying for, had made so many preparations for. We were called back in and told to go home and wait to pass the baby naturally, in hindsight this wasn't a good idea and we should have insisted on having an operation, but we didn't know much at the time so agreed to it. 

I have never seen Hannah in so much pain before. She spent hours in the bathroom in agony giving birth to our child. Similar to labour with immense emotional distress. The pain continued for most of the week passing what was in her with two hot water bottles one her stomach and the other on her back. She struggled to sleep because of the pain and we had to get stronger painkillers as her compilation of paracetamol and ibuprofen wasn't strong enough. She was too incapacitated to walk properly let alone cook, or even know she needed to eat. I spent the week working from home and did my best to help wherever I could. We spent a lot of time in prayer but it was difficult in these times to understand God's plan for us as a family. Why did He give us a child to take it away? Why is He not taking away the immense pain that Hannah is going through? 

Prior to this experience, I was fairly ignorant of what someone goes through when they have a miscarriage. I knew it wasn't a nice experience but I wouldn't think about the emotional or physical impact it could have on a couple. After going through this ordeal my mind has completely changed. I now feel an immense amount of sympathy for anyone who has gone through more or less than what we did and I wouldn't wish it upon anyone. A child is such a precious gift from God and it hurts so much when one is taken away even if it's unborn. We are trusting in God that his plans are great and one day we will meet our child in heaven. 

We named him Kwabena, which means Tuesday born in Ghanaian birth.

[hellolightbulbmoments]

Browsing Berlin

Writing a blog post every month has made me realise how repetitive my openings are. I'll usually start off by talking about my past, and then talk about what the posts hopes to achieve. So this time I will try and mix it up.

Berlin is a western European city which is similar to many others, decent transport, familiar architecture (mostly), and a wide choice of food options. It is also somewhat different from many other western European countries because of its past. Being the place which held the last major battle of world war two and an area that was owned by two world leaders at the time, the Soviet Union and the USA up until 1989 the area still somewhat feels like two very different halves.

The Eastside had most of the museum, attractions, and more character. Plenty of red brick buildings with shopping malls and the famous Berlin television tower. We frequented the busy Alexanderplatz which seems to be the central spot between our holding Inn and other parts of Berlin. The East was also dirtier, had more homeless and more construction going on than the West from what I could see, although we did spend much more time in the East than West so our opinion could be biased. Speaking of the West it was cleaner, had more tall glass buildings and on the whole had fewer people around it than the Eastside, but apart from that, there wasn't much different. If you were oblivious to Berlin's history and didn't visit any museums/attractions you wouldn't have known the place was divided.

In terms of attractions, we visited the DDR museum, the Berlin Wall Museum, Checkpoint Charlie and the East side gallery. Things all focused on the division of Berlin which I knew very little about before visiting. I enjoyed walking through the model home (of flat) the people of East Berlin were given by the Soviet Union and seeing pictures of how they lived in the DDR museum. Seeing the sigh for entering and leaving the American side of Berlin at checkpoint Charlie. And especially seeing all the art on a long strip of the Berlin wall at the East side gallery. I almost forgot the Berlin Wall museum which not only had great photography and media on what it was like living on either side but also an art installation which both Hannah and I took part in. The idea was for two complete strangers to talk to each other, find something in common, and shake hands in-between a piece of clay to create a weird mould of concave fingers. This clay way then hung on a string with many others.

As expected the Berlin transport system was very good and it was easy to get around the city. Trams, trains and metros were more or less on time. We had some difficulty figuring out how the tickets worked. It was odd to stamp tickets in a machine after purchase but we figured it out, and it was near impossible for us to purchase s ticket on the trams which only accepted cash, so we usually bought them from trains stations. Speaking of trams we ran into a really odd situation when trying to find a tram stop coming out of a train station. Google maps said it was close by but we couldn't locate it for a while and when we did we were sort of shocked. The stop was in the middle of the road taking up one of the two lanes. The team would stop opposite the team stop and commuters were expected to walk on the road with cars on and jump onto the tram. Drivers seemed happy to stop and let people walk in front of them but it was incredibly odd.

In conclusion, our trip to Berlin was, 'all right'. Although we would visit the German capital again there wasn't anything that was specifically unique about it. There were no outstanding buildings or attractions, and as I said at the start of this post it's very similar to most Western European countries.

[hellolightbulbmoments]

A change of routines

It's been nearly a month into Hannah's new job as a teaching assistant and it's been, somewhat of an adjustment for her getting back into the working world. Sleeping earlier, eating later, and taking public transport on a daily basis are just some of the things she's had to get used to. But funnily enough, I've had to make a few changes with her too which surprisingly haven't been as easy as I thought they would be. We've both had to adjust our daily patterns in different ways and below are some of the biggest changes, in my opinion.

First of all, we go to be a lot earlier than we used to. 11PM or 23:00 (if you're like me and prefer 24-hour times) was when we used to go to bed. Now, we'd be pushing it after half nine. Since both our days start at 06:20 our early bedtimes help us to get a decent amount of sleep, although we both haven't cracked it yet and somehow wake up mid-sleep most nights. The school Hannah works at is based in London Bridge which isn't too far from where we live (about a 15-minute train journey), my place of work is a bit further away and the quickest route requires me to go to a different station than the one Hannah goes to. Nevertheless, I've opted to go the same route as Hannah taking two trains to work instead of one for a few reasons. One, Hannah doesn't usually take public transport, if possible taking a car would be her preferred mode of transport which is understandable. Because of this, I wanted to accompany her the first few times just to ease any nerves and dispel any confusion. The second reason was to spend more time with her. Since we go to bed earlier than usual spend 2-3 fewer hours with each other in the evenings, so the 15 ish minutes I spend walking and being on the train with her don't exactly make up for it but it's better than nothing. When Hannah was working from home she would take care of a lot of household chores, washing the dishes, cooking, keeping the house clean, which made sense. Now that she's working outside of the house more of those responsibilities have fallen into me. This is not to say that it's a bad thing, just that it's different. There are more dishes in the sink than usual, more bits to pick up and wipe around the house. And I cook more around the house than I used to which gives Hannah a break if she's had a long day at work. This point is a bit of a continuation from the commute on because we sleep a lot earlier now we don't really have any evening activities. We used to watch a TV series or play some games in the evening before bed, now we just eat, then sleep, maybe with some talking in-between. This makes our weekends more valuable to us. We're both super blessed for where we are in life and although this is a post talking somewhat negatively about the changes we've made we couldn't be more grateful to our friends, family, and our saviour for it all.

[hellolightbulbmoments]

Game development... part 2

If you've read our 'game development as a hobby' post you'll know that we've been working on a game for the past few months. This post isn't a, we've realised how hard it is and are thinking of giving up type post, in fact, I still find it a super fun project and think about working on it when I'm at my 9 to 5. This is more of an update post, as in, a lot has changed since the previous article we wrote.

We were inspired by the art from Guacamelee when we first started so that was the look Hannah focused on for all the art assets. However, after watching a few popular indie game documentaries we decided to go down the route of pixel art. Pixel art ages very well, you could pick up say the early Zelda games release on the Super Nintendo games, release them now in 2019, and it will hold up as a modern game. From Katana Zero to, dead cells, many new games have adopted the pixel art style and it doesn't seem to be going downhill in terms of popularity anytime soon. Also, it's easier to produce, and make pixel art look good, so that's less work for us.

A problem I had when playing the game multiple times for testing was the collectables, which in our case are bugs. My problem was not the way they looked or where to put them in the game but why they exist, what is their purpose? Originally they were meant to be a currency and the player would be able to buy new abilities for the pangolin if they had enough, but that would have been a lot of work for us for our first game. We would have to come up with abilities, then animate then, then come up with a store system, and test the game to figure out how many bugs is enough for the ability. I didn't want to introduce loads of features so I scrapped that idea. What replaced it however was a goals system. This is something I picked up from Assassin's Creed Odessey which has a list of talks on the top left of the screen. The way the goals work is you'll have a certain amount of bugs to collect each level to complete it. If you don't, the game will prevent you until you do. The list of goals will be placed in the top right of the screen and they will vary based on level. Certain levels could even have multiple goals, from things like; collect at least 10 bugs, to jump on 3 enemies. These goals will incentivise the player to collect the bugs.

Those who have played early builds of the game will know of a feature which allowed the character to jump back and forth between different stages in the level, that feature had now been removed, well partially removed for various reasons. First it's not an experience I want for the player, ideally, I'd like them to keep moving forward without any reason to go back to the previous sections. Also, it took a long time to implement and test, think about it. If a player only got two collectables, then jumped to another part of the level, got three collectables then went back to the previous stage, the game would have to remember exactly which collectables were picked up and store that data temporarily. The code for this exists in the game, I just think it will include an unnecessary amount of complexity so I've taken it out for now.

So those are most of the bigger changes that were made, there are some smaller ones like; the name of the game has changed from Pangolin Panic to, Scales: A pangolins story. We're also planning to change the music and sound effects but, I feel like that's quite far off. As usual, we will keep updating our progress on the blog.

[hellolightbulbmoments]

Home D.I.Y

I remember once during our marriage prep I was asked what one thing about living together I wouldn't enjoy. Without hesitation jumped to D.I.Y. It's something we always paid someone to do growing up and therefore something I have little to no experience of doing, aside from the woodwork DT lessons. Hannah however, is the completed opposite. She enjoys decorating, painting, building shelves, drilling into walls and assembling things. So when she suggested we paint the walls of both bedrooms in our flat as well as the ceilings, radiators, doors, and skirting boards, and strip the old carpet in under a week! I thought it was an impossible task.

We got to work buying the correct paints from B&Q, mainly whites but also gloss paint, and a saturated blue colour for the statement wall in the main bedroom. Since the carpets, we're going to change we didn't bother covering them, but we did so to everything else. The ceiling was the first thing to be painted and it took us most of the day to get 70% of it done. Something about having our arms in a vertical position for a long period of time got us tired really quick. This didn't bode well for our task ahead.

The next day we started on the walls which were a lot simpler, mainly because the paint was less thick. We got through two white walls before starting on the statement wall and realising the paint on the tin wasn't the colour that ended up on the wall. At first, we thought it's because the paint was wet, so we did the whole wall and left it to dry overnight. The next day it was still the wrong type of blue. So we made a quick trip to B&Q before church and got a new colour.

The paint pots available weren't what Hannah and I really wanted for the wall. We did some research on Pinterest and the one we had in mind wasn't around, our only option was to have a colour mixed for us. We looked at a wall of paint cards with about two thousand different colours which, made it really hard to choose a colour. We had about seven types of dark greens to choose from in varying levels of saturation. We picked the closest card to the future carpet colour – light grey and placed one on top of the other. Eventually, we landed on one and picked a few tester pots for the statement wall in the spare room since the amounts they had were more than what we needed.

Once back home we got straight to work with the new green paint and it was perfect, almost makes me wish we did the research first so we wouldn't have made the mistake we did, ah well. From this point onwards it was pretty much Hannah doing the painting while I was at work. She did the doors and white skirting board in one day, I manage to get gloss paint on my jacket which means we'll need a new one soon. She did the radiators and ceiling in the spare room on another day. Then the white and statement wall of the spare room on the third day. She also took off the old carpet and underlay in the main bedroom which revealed the uneven concrete floor we'd been standing on for over two years. She bought some fast-drying concrete from B&Q and managed to smooth out the unevenness. I'm super impressed she managed to get this all done just before the carpet fitters arrived and out he new carpet on.

Moral of this story, we should have done more research and maybe got a professional painter, and carpets are really expensive. But on a serious note, I always enjoy working on a project together with Hannah and this was no exception, even though it's not our usual sort of creative thing to do I enjoyed seeing her in her element and the excitement on her face when everything came together, she has a real talent for any and every type of design.

[hellolightbulbmoments]

Our trip to Ghana (part 2)

Keta

This village town is about two hours drive East of Accra. It's got great views of the Volta River, it's got its own lagoon and is close to the sea so a great place for water lovers. We came here to stay in the holiday home of my mum's friend's brother-in-law. His place was really nice, large rooms with en-suite, a swimming pool and plenty of things to do in the river like canoeing, paddle boarding, jet skiing. It was the first place that I have ever kayaked, and the place where Hannah got terrible sunburn in her legs but it was fun.

We drove far east of Ghana and were almost an hour away from the capital of the next country. During the journey back we stopped over at our first slave trade fort, Prinzenstein one owned by the Danes. It was in pretty bad condition considering more than half of it was washed away by the sea, but there was enough of it left for us to get an idea of what went on. Our tour guide told showed us where the women used to bathe, where they slept, and where they were sold. We saw a model of the full fort which looked large. Unfortunately, the upstairs was too dangerous for us to walk on but that's where the generals quarters would have been.

Cape coast

Our time in Accra and Keta was fun and although we enjoyed the tourist attractions we seemed to be the only ones around. That was all about to change when we entered the former capital of Ghana. Cape Coast is a place booming with tourists attractions as well as local and international tourists.

Cape Coast castle

The first of two castles we visited at Cape Coast and I would say the first proper museum we visited in Ghana not because it was large and had loads of tourists in it (we were unfortunate to have a large group of schoolgirls in front of us), but because of the information that was provided. There were books and pamphlets in the ticket hall, a gift shop, and the self-guided tour section had loads of pictures and text to go along with it. There was a section that replicated the inside of a slave ship and another that replicated the ring where slaves would be sold. It was impressive and added to the effect of the area's sad history.

The castle itself was very well built and was better preserved than the one in Keta. Originally built by the Swiss for trading slaves it was taken over by the British who did the same thing. We saw the dungeons where the male and female slaves were kept. Our tour guide was very good and simulating what it felt like to be down there by giving us detailed descriptions while turning off all electric lights as there wouldn't have been any in those times. The floors which were originally brick were caked with a layer of hard grey which was years of human [faeces] and dirt which was a surprise to me, as well as the bad sanitation that was in the dungeons.

We saw a prison that was used for both slaves and misbehaving officers which was built in an interesting way. The first section had a door with holes where the white soldiers were kept for a day. The second section behind the first had a much thicker door which no holes and it lead to a place which no ventilation whatsoever. This is where the misbehaving slaves were kept and were left there until they died. We walked along the edge of the castle closest to the sea which had loads of cannons, these were used to fend off invading pirates and attacking countries. Each castle had a fort nearby built on a hill so a lookout could spot the enemy from afar. Unfortunately, we didn't have time to visit any forts in Cape Coast but we might do that on a future trip.

We then walked up to the place where the governors would stay which was a drastic difference to the dungeons. They had large rooms with plenty of windows, there were kitchens and bathrooms. Many of those rooms had been modified and were being used as offices. I know Osu castle (which we didn't visit) has been completely taken over by those in government and used as offices.

Cape Coast castle was such a great tourist attraction and I recommend it for anyone visiting Ghana.

Elmina castle

This castle is a similar size to Cape Coast castle but was originally built for a different purpose. This was the first castle built in Africa around 1400 by the Portuguese to share the gospel and for fair trade. They traded gold for things like mirrors, guns, gunpowder and so on. However, when Columbus discovered the Caribbean islands and the riches it contained, they realised they needed people to work on them, for various reasons they decided to take the people from Ghana to those islands and the castle changed from a place of goods trade to a place of the slave trade.

I don't want to go too much into the history of what happened but I will say once again our tour guide did a very good job of explaining it to us and showing us around.  We started in a church at the centre of the castle, then moved to the storage places which later became the dungeons for slaves. There were loads of similarities between this place and Cape Coast castle. The conditions in which the slaves were kept in was worse than animals. Misbehaving officers were kept in a prison with air and light for a day whereas misbehaving/revolting slaves were kept in a much worse prison and left to die. We saw a ball and chain in the courtyard of the women which was used to torture the slaves who refused to sleep with the generals that requested them. It was all very moving, especially seeing the gate of no return, the place where the slaves would leave to go on boats.

This castle, unlike Cape Coast, showed clear signs of a takeover. The Portuguese lost it to the Dutch who had reinforced it after destroying parts of it and built their own protestant church as opposed the Catholic Portuguese one and built their own kitchen.

I think it's amazing how much of the castle was preserved in the condition that it was. This castle, in particular, was around 600 year old and rooms were still being used as offices and gift shops.

Kakum National Park

Our final tourist attraction in Cape Coast was the Kakum National Park. I had heard a lot about this place before visiting Ghana, the famous canopy walkway that was so high up people were so afraid to set foot on it. I spoke to someone at work who closed her eyes all the way across.  So upon entering the park I was pretty nervous, I didn't know what to expect.

Upon paying for our tickets we sat in the wooden waiting area and watched a documentary on the cape cost tourism board. A group of American students also came to the waiting area before our tour began.  Once again, we were touring with school kids. We let them go ahead of us as we toured through the rainforest.  We were told there were 240 elephants in Kakum, all sorts of snakes and birds, but unfortunately, we didn't see any of them, what we did see however were large ants, driver ants. Our tour guide told us not to step on them as their death would all an army of them to attack. Inevitably someone didn't listen and killed a few ants, we were told to run quickly across the path as not to get swarmed, so we did, this made the tour feel a bit rushed.

We got to the canopy which was really high up above the ground but it was incredibly well reinforced. The wooden walkway was on top of a metal ladder type structure placed horizontally. The walkway was walled with a thick rope mesh and there were ropes all around it to keep it from falling, this put my nerves at ease, this and the knowledge that since the park had been built no one has ever fallen through the walkway.

We walked through first and the Americans walked behind us. There were about 20 students overall which made the bride feel very wobbly but safe enough for us to take videos and pictures of it. We were on and off all 4 bridges in less than 15 minutes and I wanted to do the whole thing again.

Conclusion

Although I wasn't a huge fan of the humid heat, the long long car journeys, and the mosquito bites I enjoyed my time in Ghana overall.

I really missed having Hausa Koko, Tom brown or Cerelac for breakfast with hard dough bread. The taste of fried plantain and beans, goat meat kebabs, grilled chicken with Jollof, Malta Guinness, and of course, Milo with evaporated milk. Fresh coconut juice, watermelons, sugar cane, pawpaws, and mangos were also great additions to my diet.

I enjoyed having conversations with family members I hadn't seen in a while and brushing up on my [Fante]. It was weird at first seeing billboard, adverts and TV shows with just black people on them, especially for brands that are in the UK as well like Vodafone and Barclays, but I got used to it after a while and it was actually sort of refreshing. It was also quite shocking to see loads people on the roads selling food, open shipping containers on dirt pavements with shops, and driving on bumpy dirt roads. A lot Ghana to my surprise looked very third world, even in Accra, the capital. I was shocked to see that at first, but like most things there I got used to it.

For those who have been swung by this article and really want to visit Ghana, I have a few tips for you. Make sure you keep the fan on when you sleep, it makes it harder for the mosquitos to bite you. Don't drink water from the taps or eat any vegetables. The water is safe to drink and eating vegetables that have been washed in said water isn't good either. Take a face towel with you or buy one when you're there, you'll sweat so much that it will be uncomfortable so the towel will be your best friend. Take money out of an ATM instead of a forex bureau, the exchange rates are usually better. And finally, be a generous tipper.

[hellolightbulbmoments]

Our trip to Ghana (part 1)

We've travelled a lot as a couple and we've got a pretty solid process for it. Pick a location, pay for flights and accommodation, pack light, as in–hand luggage only light. And spend as little as possible if we can. It's a process that has worked for us quite well, but it didn't quite work on our trip to Ghana.

For starters, my mother and her friend accompanied us which meant we didn't have to sort out accommodation or activities. Also, Ghana isn't one of those countries you can hop on a plane and just fly to if you're from the UK, you have to get a visa from the Ghana high commission (£60). Get a bunch of vaccinations including yellow fever (£50). And take anti-malaria medication around two weeks before your flight (£27). Not forgetting sun cream, mosquito repellent and before you know it, you've spent £150 per person on top of the cost of the flight.

The British Airways flight we took was a leg up from our typical easyJet/Ryanair flights. They allowed for two 23kg suitcases as well as two sets of hand luggage per person. One person's allowance was more than enough for both of us, but other people had plans for that extra space. My dad paid for our tickets so it was only fair that we allowed him to take a few things with our extra space. My mum and her friend travelling with us added a few things as well.

Boti falls

Our first tourist stop around four hours from Accra. This place is famous for its twin waterfalls located at the bottom of Kwame Nkrumah's house. Unfortunately for us the waterfall had but almost dried out, apparently the best time to see them is between July and August, we visited in May. So instead we did something else.

Our tour guide Kennedy took us on a hike nearby and showed us some sights as we walked past them. One, a large footprint on a rock that was said to have been made by the giants of old. We walked past a rocky wall almost cavelike, with loads of holes in it. We were told these were old banks, people would place their gold inside for safe keeping. We later passed another was a rock in the shape of an umbrella (or mushroom). It was such an unusual natural sight and the views of mountains around it were breathtaking. Our final sight was a three-headed palm tree with a so-called, 'fertility rock' at its base. Most palm trees have one head, but this was the only one with three, it's told that if you sit on the rock you're more likely to have twins or triplets.

Aburi botanical gardens

This was one of my favourite tourist attractions in Ghana. Aburi is about two hours drive from Accra and is up on a hill so much cooler than the capital. The gardens itself was huge and apparently would have taken a few days to see everything, so our tour guide only showed us the highlights.

We first saw a row of cedar trees brought from Lebanon, apparently, these were the exact same trees Solomon used to build his temple. Unfortunately, these trees were being attacked by parasite trees, ones that attack from above and hollow out a tree. In fact, many of the trees in the botanical gardens were being taken over by the parasites which were a sad sight to behold.

We saw some hibiscus plants, nutmeg trees, smelt some cinnamon barks and saw an amazing work of art called, 'the tree if life'. A tree carved by someone called Micheal who took 5 years to do it. It started with people struggling at the bottom of the tree at its roots with animals in the middle and people climbing to the top. The top had kinds and people who had made the climb successfully, it was such an interesting thing to behold and I'm glad we saw it in person, as well as seeing the person who made it.

Black star square

This place was pretty underwhelming. It was a large square with seats all around it and a large arch that lead to the sea. We were told that this part of Accra gets busy during the Ghana independence day celebrations.

The square also has a statue of a soldier near its entrance behind a bowl which looks like it is used for a flame. The roundabout in front of the square gave a good view of Accra, with the independence Arc similar to the Arc de Triumph in Paris.

Kwame Nkrumah museum

One of the few museums in the capital of Ghana. It consists of the burial place of Ghana's first president and his wife which is surrounded by a large park, and a small museum with pictures and certain belongings of Kwame Nkrumah, we started our tour there. Our tour guide gave a great description of what each item was from his desk to his casket, and also gave clear explanations of most of the pictures on the wall.

We were not allowed to take pictures whilst in the museum but we were allowed to outside. We were told about his grave that it was designed like a tree that was cut short to represent his unfinished work. There was a large sculpture of Kwame pointing forwards above the place where he proclaimed Ghana's independence as well as a few smaller sculptures blowing trumpets and playing drums to represent the funeral ceremony.

All in all, it was a very educational trip and was to be the first of many things we learnt about Ghana's history.

Arts centre

This is the part of Ghana that reminded us most of the markets in Marrakech. It was an indoor market with people selling all sorts of things from bracelets, to fabrics, to wooden carved items. All the sellers tried every trick in the book to get your attention. Offering you free items, invading your personal space to explain how great their items were, and of course, tourist get the inflated price so this isn't somewhere to come to if you don't like bartering.

What's more, people continued selling you things outside of the market as you tried to walk away. At one point there was a crowd of four people around us who wouldn't take no for an answer. We had to slam the door to our car and start driving before they gave up.

[hellolightbulbmoments]

Game development as a hobby

Despite being a programmer, and someone with an interest in computer games it has never crossed mind to make a game. Well–I've helped make a small game in the past by contributing 3D assets and I have, kind of, made games before. One game, but it was really basic. A game that required clicking a moving target which got faster each time it was clicked. I've never thought about programming my own game from scratch, a game that could work on computers, maybe phones, or even game consoles. I always thought that was for the realm of the super talented, those who have experience in the gaming industry or have graduated in computer science. Nevertheless, after creating a Udemy course teaching people how to write fairly complicated web development code I thought, maybe I'm ready, maybe now I'm good enough to try and make my own game. I spoke to Hannah about this idea and she was incredibly excited, she had all sorts of ideas on what we could make. We had plenty of discussions on a 2D adventure game we could make called, 'Yaa and the Golden Stool'. The story would be based off Yaa Asantewaa, a Ghanian woman who fought back the British opposition trying to capture the sacred golden stool. We came up with a storyboard, some mechanics, and talked about some of the bosses fights. 

In the end–we decided to archive that idea. It was far too complicated for two people who had never built a game before. We came up with something more simple, an infinite runner (like Temple Run or Jetpack Joyride), where you play as an armadillo and collect bugs. Hannah was really excited about designing the environment and animating the characters. We later discovered there are loads of games with armadillo's in them already, so the animal changed to a pangolin. A bit like an armadillo but more prehistoric and endangered. In fact, the pangolin is the world's most trafficked animal. We also thought it better to make a platformer ( like Mario or Sonic), instead of an infinite runner since we wanted the player to control their direction. Hannah quickly began sketching characters and environments using Procreate on her iPad, then transferring them to Photoshop for sprite and tilesheets. I looked into what game engine to use. Unity and Unreal are the big ones most people gravitate to but I didn't have that luxury. I planned to programme the game during work hours (we're given 10% of our time to work on whatever we want), which meant using the work laptop, and finance companies are pretty strict about what bits of software you can install. So instead of getting a piece of software I got a programming language instead, one called Haxe. I chose to use Haxe because it is lightweight, and can be exported into other languages (useful for running the same game on different platforms). The game engine I went with was one called HaxeFlixel, mainly because it had good documentation and people had made multi-platform games with it before. 

It has been over a month of working on this game now I'm still very much enjoying the process. It's what I think about doing most when I'm at work or commuting. I enjoy coming up with ideas and bouncing them off Hannah, hearing some of her ideas and seeing new artwork she produces. We've both watched a lot of indie game documentaries to inspire us and give us tips on how to fine-tune our workflow. Our favourites have been the Hades series from NoClip and Building the Bastion.

Trello and Slack have been our main project management tool for communication and sharing assets.

And we're currently testing the game in a web browser, but we plan to have the finished game running as a native application on PC, Mac, and Linux. No mobile platforms at the moment.

We're aiming to keep the game short, no longer than an hour, it's kind of a test bed for us to see how difficult it is to make a game. It's been good to go back and watch old videos, to see how much we've learned, and what we can do to improve the game.

I'm super thankful to Hannah for creating all the design assets so far, there's no way I could make the game look as good as it is without her. Gaming creation was _my_ interest and now it's become our interest. I'm glad she's taken it on board as her own and has as much passion and enthusiasm as I do when it comes to game creation. 

Most developers say the first game you make won't be good, but even if this game won't be good, I certainly will have a lot of fun playing it and watching others play it as well.

[hellolightbulbmoments]

We’re not in control

I like to think that I have everything under control, well–most things. I choose the time I wake up; the time I get into work, what I have for breakfast and so on. To a certain extent that is true, the alarm on my phone was set by me and I know what food is in the house so I can plan what to eat, but it's really an illusion, I'm not in control at all. My phone could suddenly die causing the alarm not to go off and even if it didn't, maybe I could be so tired that it doesn't wake me up anyway. There could be problems with my train making it difficult for me to get into work on time, or at all. I like to cling on to the little control I have over my life and it's often a shock when something happens that makes me realise that I'm not in control at all. Nothing has brought me closer to that realisation that what's been on our minds for most of this month. Hannah and I have been trying for a child for almost two years. It's not something we thought would be difficult, so many people around us have done it; our parents, friends and family members. We didn't give it much thought at first (well, I didn't), I always thought it would–just happen. When it didn't, we thought there was something we could change to fix it, maybe the issue is with us. We tried different medicines, timescales, diets. We saw doctors, took tests, but nothing seemed to change and we don't know why. We see ourselves as relatively healthy people. We both don't drink, smoke, or eat large amounts of unhealthy food. And although we're both very open to adoption, it would be nice to know for sure that we won't be able to have our own, and why. We're both in limbo, uncertain of what our next steps are. This all brings us back to the fact that we’re not in control. Life under the sun (beneath the heavens) doesn't make sense to us. Maybe God intends for us to adopt, or to wait a few months/years before giving us a child of our own or, to not have any children whatsoever. It's almost humbling not knowing what to do next. Taking the burden off ourselves and giving it to God. Taking the questions, the decisions, the crying late nights away and giving it to someone else. Saying, God, whatever you want for us we'll take it willingly. It's tough but much better than the alternative.

Ollie Photo ‘Pilots taking off’ Jon Flobrant from unsplash.