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During school terms and on weekend trips, I observed a lot about the tranportation system in Ghana, which is key to understanding some of its cultural and socioeconomic facets.
The first topic that comes to mind is the general situation of traffic. Tema does not have many paved roads, so those it has tend to be hopelessly congested during rush hour. This is especially true anywhere near a roundabout, of which there are several. These eliminate the need for stoplights, but fighting one’s way into and out of the tornado of cars, taxis, vans, pick-ups, oversized supply trucks, motorcycles, and bicycles circling the intersection is difficult—to say the least. This situation is most advantageous for vendors, who walk through traffic with laundry basket-sized displays on their heads and/or shaking products in the faces and windows of their captive audience. I have seen everything from flyswatters to shoes to plantain chips, and the list goes on. In order to avoid this mess, we try to make use of side roads on the morning and evening commutes. In addition, this is necessary for getting from the highway to the house. These unpaved roads are compacted dirt with patches of concrete here and there, all covered with a layer of red dust. Since they are not maintained, the dirt parts continue to sink lower, so much of the time driving is spent stepping one side of the car on and off the concrete ledges, while the other side of the car stays on the dirt level.
Our Friday early dismissals are followed with the odd combination of heavier traffic and a quieter neighborhood. More vehicles clog up the roads than usual, but the area surrounding the house is all but deserted, compared to regular afternoons. Today, I took advantage of these circumstances to climb up to the unfinished house atop my host mother's store and take pictures. As few nearby structures feature a second story, that height lets me capture the sea of red dirt, corrugated tin roofs, and people with laden heads. In addition, I convinced the fish seller to let me photograph her in the act of cleaning my host mother's purchases, and I got a shot of Grace hacking at a piece of raw cassava with a machete and no cutting board.
Our Friday early dismissals are followed with the odd combination of heavier traffic and a quieter neighborhood. More vehicles clog up the roads than usual, but the area surrounding the house is all but deserted, compared to regular afternoons.
Last night, AFS hosted a gathering of participants and their host families in their Accra office. To get there, my host father and I took tro-tro, or the Ghanaian equivalent of public busses. We drove to, and left the car at, a gas station across from the "station," which was a dusty lot next to a roundabout. People, taxis, and a variety of vans inhabited the space, and my host father shouted to the driver of each 12-, 16-, and 20-seater, asking whether they were bound for Accra. Upon finding one that was, the two of us joined a ten other apathetic passengers in an orange van. The man closest to the one sliding door was an attendant of sorts. Whenever anyone got in or out, he would hop onto the road and, if they were boarding, deposit their one-dollar fare into his bag. He was also responsible for closing the door as the driver pulled back into traffic. The interior of the van was not new, but the black seats were mostly clean, and the open windows provided ample wind to mess up the hair of the only other female rider. This comfortable situation ended, though, when the driver, who deemed the car too empty to be profitable, pulled over in the outskirts of Accra. Following much shouting in Twi, the driver paid for our fares in flagged-down tro-tros that were also headed for the capital. The second tro-tro had 18 people, a slightly larger car, and some bathroom tiles mysteriously covering part of the ceiling. It was not as comfortable or airy; the tro-tro we took home, following the event, was much the same.
On an unrelated note, a Wednesday happening reminded me of a Ghanaian custom I wanted to discuss. As we were driving home from school, my host father pulled over and allowed a woman on the street to climb into the backseat. As with previous times he has done this, he informed me that the passenger was a member of his church. His church has several thousand members, so it was easy to believe that this was one. But these impromptu carpools are not restricted to fellows in a congregation. On one of our walks to school, a sedan driver offered my classmate and I a ride because he recognized our uniforms and was driving his daughter to school anyhow. Similarly, two Chemu girls flagged down my host father’s car one morning after spotting me (no surprises there) in the front seat. My host dad was happy to cart them the rest of the way to campus.
Next in alphabetical order are car horns. In my experience, American drivers primarily use these in traffic or when a nearby vehicle is performing an unadvisable maneuver. Ghanaians, on the other hand, have developed more creative applications. Honking is most commonly employed as a greeting to pedestrians. In the car, my host father frequently notices a friend walking on the street, cranes his neck to get a better look, sends them a few loving beeps, and finishes the ritual by throwing his arm out of his window for a vigorous wave. Secondly, the horn replaces turn signals. A healthy honk announces any intentions to stray from a car’s present path. Maybe this is because cars changing directions are just as often clearing the road of animals as people. A final appellation for the African car horn is “garage door opener.” Upon arriving at home, my host father shoots Grace a long blast to ask her to open the driveway gate to admit the car.
From car horns we turn to church creation. Next door, a church opened last week, and I know that because I heard it. One night during the week (Tuesday, maybe?), my shower was serenaded by a chorus of human screams and a microphone blaring over them. I inquired about the ruckus, and my host dad told me that he had considered buying that plot of land when it was for sale, simply to avoid the bother of a new church so near the house. He spoke of a growing phenomenon whereby recent middle or high school graduates, rather than pursuing a trade or higher education, seek their fortunes by founding evangelical churches. (He assured me that his church dated to a time before this practice gained popularity.) Good-looking young men, he explained, attract the women to their services. They advertise all manner of signs and wonders, and their services are characterized by the din we endured from next door.
Cops are also of note. I send the following sentences trusting that none of you will report me to the police. Ghanaian law enforcement is, in a word, shady. They don solid black uniforms and hide their cars under roadside trees. Stepping up to front-seat windows, they search for excuses to seize licenses from any drivers lacking the tact to offer bribes. Standard practice is to enclose five or ten cedis with the license when it is collected for inspection. Officers will then disregard out-of-date inspection stickers and things of the like—things on which they would certainly capitalize were there not a crinkled bill hidden under the license. My host father complained about the cumulative total in bribes he paid as his inspection renewal was being processed. He explained that they usually did not approach him because they saw that he was a big man, but this year they seemed especially money-hungry. Also, he cautioned me against letting the authorities see my camera last Friday since cops usually seize any device that could be used to report their behavior. It is important to note that the practice of taking bribes does not seem to render them completely ineffective. Drivers are much less disposed to break traffic laws when police are present; in that sense, bribes and tickets are similar. However, bribes do not discourage misbehavior in the long term. This is particularly true for truckers. Freight trucks—such as the one in the last update’s picture collection—are commonly flatbed and use large canvasses to tie down goods. From what my host father told me, this is sometimes, if not always, illegal. Despite this, the price of contained trucks is evidently too high, so bribes are considered transportation costs, like gasoline. In conclusion, police corruption is ingrained and will not be easy to uproot.
Since Monday morning, the bridge over the main sewer (a small stream composed of sewage) became a single-lane road. A car had evidently coughed its last at that spot, and it was only relocated as far as the shoulder. When I first saw it, I pictured an unfortunate encounter with a fallen tree branch because foliage emerged from warped parts of the vehicle’s body. There almost seemed to have been a monstrous plant growing inside the automobile that eventually stretched its limbs far enough to murder its host. My host father, on the other hand, attributed the tragic demise to a lack of maintenance and explained that inserted greenery was a cheaper form of traffic cones. Since Monday, a front wheel has sagged and the leaves have browned, yet the monument remains. Maybe I should sell a picture to a car insurance company; wouldn’t that make a good advertisement?
The evening commute was an adventure. My host father needed to drive to a different part of southern Ghana for a contract, and the rain prevented his timely return, so he instructed one of his workers (with whom I am acquainted) to get a taxi and pick me up. The roads after such a heavy downpour were in terrible condition. In an effort to avoid a backup, the driver took a different route that turned out to have traffic of its own. This street was possibly the worst I have seen in Ghana; enormous, successive, water-filled craters were close and large enough that the surface of the road was more water than mud. Impatient drivers had tried to triple the number of lanes on the road, so there was an element of competition as cars dove into each puddle, hoping the water would not get into the engine. A broken-down tro-tro near the end of the block made a funnel, too. After that experience, our cabbie headed for the congested highway. In the dry season, vehicles had patted a bypass lane off the edge of the asphalt. The driver had some event beginning soon, so he opted for that lane, but his plan backfired when the police called him over into their driveway. Once he bribed his way out of that situation, he was unquestionably late, so he drove around to various taxi stands to find us a different car for the rest of our trip. He found what he described as a “fancy” car, and we zoomed off in the Nissan that our new driver was clearly very proud of. In fact, he was so proud of it that he made a tricky maneuver around one of the puddles so as not to pass through the muddy water like all the other taxis, tro-tros, and bicycles. Unfortunately, the mud he swerved onto was too soft to hold the car, and we moved no further. He disappeared for a while, during which time my escort called my host father and I contemplated the likely bacteria growth in a swampy patch next to my door. At length, the driver reappeared with a truck to drag his not-so-shiny cab out of its bog. I got back to the house at dusk.
Leonie frequently travels and has visited most parts of the country; thus, she is quite well-versed in the Ghanaian transportation system, which remains confusing and slightly mysterious to me. Tro-tros are used for both short- and long-distance travel, so they are populated by commuters and vacationers alike. The names of stations sometimes refer to their location yet are sometimes derived from the destination of tro-tros that stop there. For instance, there are “Tema” stations in both Accra and Tema. Main stations are usually paved parking lots clogged with vendors, some strolling and others stationary (pun intended). Smaller stations, such as the one a 10-minute walk from the house, are merely bends in the road where commuters wait at rush hour to cram onto tro-tros headed for town. Large roads in Tema have bus shelters every couple hundred feet. At a station, one simply asks random loiterers to ascertain which of the indistinct, rattling vans in the area is headed for one’s destination. Tro-tro attendants collect the fare once on the road. Costs are not posted, but I believe the government sets them, and there is always another passenger who knows how much the fare is. Inbound, there are only a couple stops to drop off before arriving at the nearest large station. Anyone standing on the side of the road holds up the number of people in their party, and all tro-tros with that many empty seats pull over. Outbound, people get off whenever they want. The closest stop to the house is on the Ashaiaman Lebanon route at an intersection, at which is located a bar called “Checkpoint”; the stop is dubbed accordingly. There, one finds a collection of taxis to hire for the final leg of the journey, though I usually walk back to the house. No tickets are bought in advance, and departure from a station occurs whenever the tro-tro is full. There are no prominent signs or parking garages. And as odd as it feels to me, I can only imagine how weird the online ticket reservations, etc. of American transportation would seem to a Ghanaian.
Yesterday provided me material for another chapter in my unpublished work “Commuting in the Rainy Season.” The daytime storm had been strong enough to discourage all but one teacher from coming, and that exceptional one happens to teach a class I do not take, so I had a school-less school day. Far more exciting than the day itself was the evening’s drive back to the house. My host father’s old car rattled over terrain I might not have approached in an ATV. One area on our route was particularly bad because water from other places drained there. Streams gushed along compound walls and flooded houses that were not sufficiently elevated. The craters in the street brimmed with muddy runoff. Trucks and busses trundled through triumphantly. But cars hesitated before sinking into the lakes, churned the fluid with their wheels similarly to how a clumsy dog enters a pool, and accelerated as much as they dared to avoid getting stuck. If his or her car gave out in the basin, the driver shook his or her fist at the honking followers and gunned the engine. Once, so much water got seeped into the engine that it refused to restart. Other vehicles edged around ours as my foot well became a real well. My host father told me he would carry me to the side of the road, so he and another passenger (one of his employees) could push the car. I scrambled over the console to the driver’s side and onto his back. Inconveniently, my school uniform is a calf-length skirt with no spandex in it, so I don’t think I can accurately describe the ride as piggyback. My knees pressed against his broad back, my lower legs suspended comically. I dismounted at the side of the road and stood with some of the audience members of this latest performance. As the car was pushed out of the pond, red water spewed from cracks at the base of the doors. I got back in the car and we continued on the journey.