Moving Along. . .

Transportation Blog

Food and transportation are the two things no visitor a country can avoid. I’ve already written about the food, so now I’ll write a little about transportation in Ghana, at least my experience getting around Ghana.

Each morning and afternoon, I take a tro tro to and from work. Tro tros are private buses, basically. My ride to work is about 20 minutes, with traffic, and it costs 25 cents. (Actually, due to escalating fuel costs, the price went up to 27 cents, but sometimes they don’t bother to collect the additional two cents). I find the tro tro reliable, although far from comfortable. For one, there seems to be some type of competition among tro tros for who can stuff the most people in. Whereas you might put 15 passengers in one of these vans in the States, in Ghana you put 24 passengers. For another, there is no air-conditioning, and if you are not by the window, its pretty stuffy. Although its hard to get a real feel for the comfort level, here is a picture of me and two friends, Matt (from New Jersey) and Nicola (from the U.K.) with me on a hot cramped tro tro:

And here is a pictures of a tro tros in action:

That little guy jumping off the tro tro is the conductor. He collects the fare and announces the next stop. Conductors tend to be very skinny young men, I suppose so that they don’t take too much room that could go to paying customers. When the tro tro is very crowded, they ride on the outside, even when its going 100 miles and hour. When you want to get off the tro tro, you say something that sounds like “mate, bus stop!” At that point, the tro tro will stop at the next possible place where you won’t be killed trying to step off the tro tro. Sometimes a full stop is too much to ask for and they will just open the door and expected you to sort of jump out while the tro tro is in motion. Tro tros are supposed to have routes, but in reality they tend to deviate for any reason: traffic, sun, etc. I’ve noticed that they are better at taking you to a general area than a precise location.

The intracity tro tros are, for the most part, unmarked, so you don’t know which tro tro goes where. The tro tro destinations is given by the conductor, by hand signal. So, for example, an index finger pointed up means that the tro tro is going to the main station in central Accra and the index finger making a circle pointed down, means the tro tro is going to Nkrumah Circle. Other than those two, I can’t, for the life of me, figure out most of the hand symbols. So I ask. Unfortunately, Ghanaians are notoriously bad when it comes to giving directions. Part of the problem is the informality and imprecision of everything: no one knows distances or directions. So when you ask “where is the tro tro station” someone will say “after next,” or “beyond the distance.” I find those directions extraordinarily unhelpful. There are also no street addresses in Accra: everything is done by reference to landmarks. So, for example, I live in “Theodora’s House, Ring Road, near Laboni Junction in Osu.” I can’t give anymore precise an address than that. Mail? Forget about it. Everything goes to a post office box.

I take tro tros on basic routes, but if I have to go anywhere complicated, I take a cab. Taking a cab, by the way, is also sort of a crap shoot since the cab drivers rarely know where they are going. Once you agree on price, the general rule is that they will drive you around all night until they find the destination that they promised they knew. It usually involves stopping a few times and asking other cab drivers. There are also shared taxies, which just means that you see a taxi going in your general direction and jump in. I’ve done that a few times, but its not the best since I’m often unsure of where, exactly, the cab is heading. Outside Accra shared taxies are the common mode of transport and tro tros are hard to come by on some routes.

The intracity tro tros seem to be pretty well driven- the traffic slows them down and they don’t often drive on the wrong side of the road, blow stop signs, back up into on coming traffic (although all those things happen). In contrast, the intercity tro tros are driven by suicidal maniacs. Before most intercity trips, someone leads the tro tro in a prayer to ask Jesus for a safe journey. (Sometimes, a preacher actually gets on the tro tro and preaches). However, after the prayer, the driver proceeds to drive like a mad man. My suggestion is that rather than saying a prayer, someone should do a recitation of the basics of safe driving. Maybe a combination of the two. Something like “dear Jesus, please inspire the driver to drive on the correct side of the road, NOT to overtake traffic on a blind curve and to stay under 120 miles per hour.” That would be something I can say “amen” to. Friends of mine have reported that tro tros are used to transport live animals, so there is likely to be a live goat or chicken at your feet. I, personally, have never scene that, but I have another two weeks here, so who knows.

The consensus seems to be, and I agree, that three hours is about as long as anyone can spend on a tro tro. After that point, the heat, the uncomfortable seats and the lack of ventilation (and possible presence of live animals) is too nauseating. For longer journeys, people take State Transportation Company (“STC”) intercity buses, which are pretty much like any bus you would find in the west. Unfortunately, they are usually very crowded and they often play some Nigerian or Ghanaian movie at top volume, which is extremely annoying to anyone who wants to read, sleep or listen to music. I tend to be the only one interested in doing those things, so no one else is bothered. Also, I’ve taken the intercity STC buses four times, and twice the bus broke down. I have never been on a tro tro that has broken down. Go figure.

Update

Friday I did some shopping in the main market with Elsie. As I think I mentioned in a previous post, the markets around here are really exciting places. If you can bear the oppressive heat and frantic crowds, you can get pretty much anything at the market, from live chickens to silverware to clothing to pirated software and movies. Of particular interest to me are the rows of rows of stalling selling counterfeit designer goods (most produced in China). Everything you can possible imagine is there, and you can dress yourself in designer clothing from head to toe at a fraction of the price that the real thing would cost. I want to believe that these products are identical to the real thing, if not actually real—after all, the real thing is made in a factory in China also, perhaps the same one—but that can’t be right. There is no way the factories have such poor control or that Puma, Diesel, Polo, Lacoste and D&G are letting their finished products out on the black market, although its easy to be convinced otherwise. Luckily, I have a system: I set a $10 limit on any counterfeit product. If someone will sell me a counterfeit Lacoste dress shirt for $10, I’ll take it. But anything more, and I might as well buy the real thing for $65 at home (the guys won’t go below $20 for the Lacoste shirts, FYI). I bought a knock off Diesel watch for $3 (the only thing I lost so far has been my watch), and a knock off soccer jersey for $4. Apparently, I overpaid for the watch. An Indian business man I met at a bar told me that he can import, from China, a crate of three hundred knock off Diesel watches for $100 (that’s 30 cents a watch, for the lawyers reading). He also explained that the vendor probably made 50 cents on the sale, which is a small fortune for the vendor because he probably only makes $1 a day. That seems to be the general attitude of all the foreigners who do business here: pay the Ghanaians as little as possible because they are so poor that a little bit of money goes a long way. That is what happens in a globalized economy where the Indian business man’s money moves around freely, but the poor watch vendor is trapped making his $1 a day in Ghana. I won’t make any normative judgments about that- its an economic transaction between rational actors— but something strikes me as a bit unfair.

There are, by the way, real designer clothing available at the market, its just used (or “second hand” as we politely say in the U.S.). That makes the market here the world’s largest thrift shop. With a little time and a lot of stamina, anyone who wants to look like a Williamsburg hipster could have a field day shopping for tee shirts, hats, sneakers and faded jeans. Some of the stuff, especially the used jeans and the used shoes, are pretty nice. I can’t help but think that some of the items magnanimously given to charity in North America and Europe ends up in hanging from a stall in Accra’s Markola’s market.

On Saturday, I went with some new friends to Anomabu, a town about two hours from Accra. I had plans to cook lunch in Accra with Elsie and a friend of hers, but I’ve learned that plans with Ghanaians are often canceled or modified, so I thought heading to beach with some other westerns was a better bet. It was the right choice: the beach was a great time. Hopefully, I’ll get another chance to cook with Elsie.

The “Anomabu Beach Resort,” where we went, is very nice and very relaxing. No shoes are needed for the entire weekend, and no reason to leave the beach, since the waiters will bring everything out to you. If I have one issue with the resort its that the place is little bit of a colonial throwback. There were absolutely no Ghanaians on the beach (or at the resort). In Ghana, that’s a pretty major accomplishment: every other beach I have been is full of vendors selling stuff, and fishermen working. In fact, right next to the resort, although not visible from it, is a working beach full of fishermen (and trash). So while the locals were using the beach a few meters down as a toilet, garbage dump and fishing factory, the whites were sun bathing and frolicking in a very warm ocean. What a world! Here is a picture of me on the tourist beach, one of the waiters cutting fresh coconut (which they give away for free) and below it a picture of the locals working a half kilometer away:

The resort was a bit more upscale than the backpacker haunts I’ve been frequenting. However, to keep it in perspective, where as I’ll usually spend $30 a day for meals, drinks and a room at one of the backpacker beach resorts, this one cost me $50 a day. Basically, at a place like this, you get professionals, not professional travelers. A lot of the cars in the parking lot had diplomatic plates, and my friends were German and Dutch graduate students and interns (Europeans companies seem to be a lot more into paid interns than American companies) and American and British aid workers. Not to say the professional travelers I met at the backpacker places were not a blast (after all, my status is somewhere between aid worker and tourist), but if I was here for a longer time, these are the people I would spend my time with (the minimum stay among these people is like six months). And like any good beach holiday, there was a lot of drinking:

It was not all brainics and diplomats at the beach, and there were some professional travelers around. Namely, a huge overland bus full of Swedes and Norwegians that had driven from Sweden, across Europe, the Mediterranean Sea and across the Sahara Desert and ended up at the Anomabu Beach Resort on the same weekend I did. What luck! Some of the Swedes enjoyed bathing topless. Again, what luck! (Sorry guys, no pics of that). Put all that together, and you have the receipt for a really good weekend.

Back to business: its my last week at work (Thursday (tomorrow) is my last day because Friday is “Farmers and Fisherman’s Day,” a national holiday). So this last week at work I’m finishing up my Alternative Dispute Resolution manual, revising the GHANSA constitution, doing some research on aid effectiveness issues (why, I don’t know) and, finally, doing some legal research regarding forming a charity in the UK (which I’m totally unqualified to do, but I’ll give it my best shot). From next week, the office pretty much shuts down until after New Year. (Its good to see that slacking off in the Holiday Season is a universal thing). Related to nothing, here was the scene outside the Development Institute office yesterday morning:

Speaking of the Holiday Season, there are few decorations around here and none of the overblown commercialism that is a hallmark of the American holiday. As you might expect, there is absolutely no indication that Hanukkah is this week. (Hey, before I forget, Happy Hanukkah!) I noticed that some of the street music that is ubiquitous in Accra has switched from bad R&B to Christmas songs. For example, today I was walking to the tro tro in 90 degree heat (at 8am) to the tune of “Jingle Bell Rock.” Its strange. Also, exchanging gifts is not big around here. Rather, people buy themselves clothes and have a big party with friends (not family). Hence, the only evidence of Christmas I’ve seen is at hotels and restaurants, imploring people to make a reservation early, sort of the way that restaurants want those early New Year’s reservations back home.

On Thursday night I want to go to a concert by a well known Senegalese singer named Ismael Lo, billed as “Africa’s Bob Dylan.” This weekend (and next weekend) I hope be at another beach resort. During the week, I will be up to the north at a national park with a German friend of mine. I’ve been toying with the idea of changing my ticket (if that’s possible) and staying in Africa another week and seeing some more places. But then again, having three whole weeks off in NYC before I start work is also pretty darn tempting (and I miss all of you, of course). It appears that most of my new found friends are either not interested in making the trip or are clearing out of Ghana for the Holidays, so I’d be traveling alone at least until I met some more people. So I’ll probably come home, resolving to return to Africa soon (with some of you, I hope).

Be well!