My commute to and from work provides plenty of
drama, entertainment and the occasional "Ohmygodwearegoingtodie" moment. The dilemma is always
whether to go by taxi (faster, but driven by friendly lunatics) or by trotro
(cheaper, but a case of too many people in a small space).
In Accra, there are hundreds of taxis, since pretty
much anyone with a driving licence who finds has time on their hands
can just find a car, pay a 15 cedi (5 euro) fee, and take to the roads as a
dubiously qualified taxi driver. In fact, should one wish to avoid the bureaucracy and nuisance
that sitting an actual driving test entails, they can just buy the driving
licence too.
The vehicles employed by these Formula One wannabes would have the NCT inspector cheerfully inking his “fail” stamp
before ever glancing past the car door/bonnet. Rolled down windows constitutes the
air conditioning; not exactly effective in standstill traffic. The seat-belts are sometimes still attached, but they are always broken, so I've given up attempting to wear one. Where a radio should be, there is often merely
a radio-shaped hole. The radio has either been stolen/removed to prevent being
stolen/sold by the taxi driver. In unabashed PDRDs (Public
Displays of Religious Devotion), taxi drivers display stickers with large
yellow letters on their rear windows, with such inspiring slogans as “The Lord
is my Portion”- I don’t know either. However, they do have rusty pint-sized fire
extinguishers attached to the windscreen on the passenger side. So that’s
reassuring.
As soon as you step outside, passing taxi drivers begin to beep/hiss/make
a kissing noise/wave their arm at you/pull in. This is a normal way to attract
someone’s attention here, and is not intended to be offensive. Instead of you
hailing a taxi, the taxis are hailing you. They assume that white people
will not walk anywhere and can afford to always take a taxi. Which is kind of
true, since last Sunday four of the interns rented a taxi driver for
half a day for 10 cedis each (equivalent to 3.50 euro). Here, we are rich.
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| No need to worry, the fire extinguisher is here! |
So you ask them for a price to get to your
destination before you get in- no fixed fares or meters here. With understandable opportunism,
they start off by trying to charge us obrunis (foreigners) a price over double the average rate. For my six mile trip from East Legon where I live, to Cantonments where I work, they start out with 15-20 cedis (about 6-10 euro) and I try to haggle it down to half that (I give them the full fare in the end but I like practising my haggling skills-not much call for that in Galway!) They will argue the fare for a while, citing the traffic/the distance etc. but they usually capitulate to the
passenger’s price in the end, though occasionally they drive off in a huff and you
have to start again with the next one.
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| Tempted to just take a camel to work like these guys |
The traffic here has to be seen to be believed. It can
take anything from forty to ninety minutes to get from my accommodation to my workplace, depending on what day it is (Mondays are by far the
worst). The highway has approximately four lanes (there are no markings for
this, that’s just how many cars can fit alongside each other on the road). But when the
taxi drivers feel like it, they edge in and 'create' another lane, which leads
to a manic beeping outburst from the other irate drivers. No matter how beat up the cars are, the horn is always in working order and used to full effect! Drivers seem to ignore
the traffic lights most of the time, and instead take direction from policemen
who stand around most junctions or at intervals along the road. But sometimes they
do stop at a red light. I haven’t figured out what the system is for knowing
when to ignore and when to obey the lights. At roundabouts, the aim
seems to be to all jam into the middle of it until nobody can move anywhere
without slow and careful navigation to emerge unscathed on the other side.
Most taxi drivers are from rural areas surrounding the city
and don’t have the first notion about where the place you want to go actually
is, even if you mention a supposedly well-known landmark nearby. However, they tend not to mention
this detail until well into the journey. This ends up in me attempting to
give directions, or them shouting out the window at other drivers along the
way. They drive erratically, either never indicating or always leaving one
indicator on for the whole journey. The entertain themselves by swerving back and forth across the lanes as they go, tailgating big Pajero
jeeps, trying to overtake trotros on either the inside or outside.
But the most uncomfortable aspect of traveling by taxi is that because I am
a white girl, the drivers often quiz me about my religion/ marital status/ do I
drink alcohol/ have I studied the bible/ will I marry them/ why not/ do I not like black men/ can they have
my number anyway. Em...NO?!
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| Some of the more roadworthy trotros |
So mainly because of the hassle of explaining to a
different random driver every day why I can’t marry them (the first day, the
driver politely asked me to "please wait, I have to urinate" which he proceeded to do at the side of the road, then got back in and blithely continued with his marriage
proposal), I decided it was time to figure out a
trotro route that could drop me off anywhere remotely close to work. A 'trotro' is an ancient Hiace van, from Germany, Holland or some other country where it is has been deemed no longer roadworthy and has most likely been sold for scrap, in which rows of seats have been installed.
They fit about 20 people inside with a seat each, but they will squeeze in as many passengers as want to to get in. It costs
from 50 pesewas to 1 cedi for a trip (about 10-25 cents).To get to work, I have to take two trotros and then walk for about 30 minutes.
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| With a mysterious caption on the back... |
The trotros follow various fixed routes but do not
have a timetable or any sign to indicate when/where they are going, or anything
that looks like an official stop. Instead the driver’s assistant sticks his
head out the window and uses hand gestures to show where they are going-
pointing straight up means Accra, making a circle means they are going to the Circle stop, fingers all pointing down means Labadi Beach. These are three of the main stops. Then when they
are close to any group of people standing by the side of the road he will shout
what sounds like “Accra-cra-cra” or “Labadi-manLabadiLabadi” to let the passengers know the end
stop, and if you want to get in you make the same hand gesture as them and they
will pull in abruptly. Passengers have to hop on quickly and squeeze in somewhere because they are already moving on again before the
door is even shut. Sometimes it seems like the driver is taking off without the assistant, but he always jumps back into the moving trotro at the last minute and slides the door shut. After sitting for a while, the assistant will turn
around and whoever has got on will give him their fare. They don't talk, just tap you on the shoulder and then you hand them 1 cedi. Eventually he might turn around again and pass
back some change in coins. They don’t give change to white people (I wouldn't either if I were them).
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| Colourful trotros from above |
In the evening, it is too dangerous to walk back alone
to the main highway where the trotro passes and try to figure out the right route
in the dark. It gets completely dark around 6 p.m. and as a white person, especially female, you are asking for trouble to walk alone in the dark. Here pedestrians never have
the right of way. In fact, they don’t seem to have any rights except for the right to
run like hell out of the way, while cars fly past beeping. There are no
footpaths anywhere, and where a footpath should theoretically be (to my Westernised mind) is an open
gutter a.k.a mosquito breeding ground about a foot deep and filled with…well, you can imagine. So while trying
to keep out of the path of cars zooming along at random, you also can’t keep in
too far, for fear of landing head
over heels in excrement. It's fairly certain that being hit by a car would
be less detrimental to one’s health than falling in. When
Oscar Wilde said "we are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking
at the stars", this was not the kind of gutter he meant. If you were in a
gutter in Accra, the only thing you would be looking at is the quickest
way to end your life. So for now
the safest way is to hedge my bets and take the trotros into work in the morning
and then a taxi home...and try to keep looking at the stars*!
*Metaphorically-speaking...it's not possible to see any stars due to pollution/ smog/ cloud cover.
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