Transport in Ghana 2: Taxis and tro-tros
by typecat
Right. The timer has gone ‘ping’ so here we are. If you have no idea what that means I beg you to go to yesterday’s post and read up. Actually you don’t have to but it would be nice wouldn’t, what with me slaving away over hot copy and you not reading it being the alternative. And how will you know about toilets and STC buses, eh? A mine of information it is.
OK, ready?
Taxis. OK, there are two types of taxi in Ghana. One’s in Accra and one’s not in Accra. Let’s quickly touch on the ones in Accra and then move on to something more cheerful. When in Accra never ever get in the taxi without first agreeing a price and never ever expect the taxi driver to be able to find anything other than a massive landmark. Else you will end up paying 10 cedi to have no idea where you are. I don’t know why this happens, it just does. Maybe they did work experience in Marrakech.
I have a plan in my head when I go away about what I will do if I receive unwanted sexual attention so that when it happens I am prepared. Now, I also have a plan in my head of how to deal with taxi drivers.
This will not be necessary outside Accra though where the taxi drivers seem very nice if easily confused between Rainforest Lodges. But that is confusing. You can also take the number of a taxi driver and then call them and they will come and get you. I don’t know why or how this works but we had two taxi drivers on speed dial. Alex from the STC station in Cape Coast and Star Boy from Anomabo. Yes. Star Boy. Alex was tall and muscular and had a laugh like Frank Bruno and Star Boy was kind of scrawny. He didn’t laugh like any famous person I have heard laugh. Admittedly this is not all of them. Alex drives a very boring burgundy salon but Star Boy has followed the lead of many a Ghanaian taxi driver and customised his vehicle with some slogans. Many things in Ghana, for example taxis and shops, have religious slogans. Our Redeemer Electricals. Faith and Hope Hairdressers. I saw a tro-tro with Little By Little on the back and a taxi with ‘But for the grace of God’ on it which I thought slightly inappropriate. Star Boy however had ‘Star Boy’ written on the back of his taxi. We had noticed it the day before and prayed that he would be our designated taxi driver. When you get your own driver you do get some interesting insights because you can ask them questions you otherwise do not get a chance to ask. We asked Star Boy about the volume of traffic and he was very forthcoming with information about it being the weekend and how everyone had dressed up and was on the way to a wedding or a funeral or some celebration of something.
All drivers in Ghana seem to honk their horns almost constantly. It can mean ‘hello, my friend’, or ‘look out I am behind you’, or ‘hey stupid’, or ‘learn to drive you are a danger to your fellow road users’. I paraphrase of course. It is an educative way to get about and not very expensive. It is sometimes the only way to get to around.
Once you are used to getting about in Ghana you will inevitably happen upon a tro-tro. This is basically a bit of a shonky minibus. You can fit about 18 people in including the driver and his sidekick. The sidekick opens the door and lets people on and off, takes the money and remembers where people want to go. Tro-tro’s are excellent. All you do is wander along the side of the road and then loads of them will appear out of nowhere and wave at you. There is of course a great deal of honking. There are also hand signals which apparently indicated where said tro-tro is going but I couldn’t work them out. Pointing upwards over and over means I am going far. And I think drawing a circle means town centre. But there are others. I bet some of them mean ‘Please stop I need to toilet, definitely not urinate’ and ‘please get your chicken off of my knee’. Sadly we did not travel with livestock. So, I jest.
Contrary to reports about how bad they were, we did not dice with death once in a tro-tro. We did have a terrible journey in the dark from the posh Rainforest Lodge to the deserted, gecko in your bedroom Rainforest Lodge (where I got woken up in the middle of the night by monkeys whooping – cool!) The road was full of potholes and our taxi driver, who was about 12, was swerving all over the road to avoid them. It is only by some miracle that we are not upturned in a ditch in Ghana being eaten alive by mosquitoes as we speak. Although I would hope I would have been rescued by now. I would have thought an obruni lying in the bushes would be fairly noticeable. Also, no lap top in the bushes. It opted to stay in London. Hidden in my underpants drawer. Sure, it’s a kind of a short straw but it chose of its own free will.
We did, however and to return to the point, have a near death experience in an express minibus. We got Star Boy to take us from Anomabo, where we were staying to the right place if we wanted to be getting the fabled express minibus to Accra. We didn’t wish to wait four hours for the bus you see. It was very handy that Star Boy took us to the station because I suspect we would never have been able to find it otherwise. Anyway, similar to a tro-tro but much more spacious and bloody freezing. Air conditioning you see. I had the misfortune to sit next to a great fat woman who kept fall asleep on me, but at least I was not freezing. Man, she was fat. And warming. Anyway, it was in this minibus that we nearly had two fatal accidents, both through reckless overtaking. This driving would explain all the signs along the road warning of the dangers of just such overtaking shenanigans. They have had to resort to saying exactly how many people at died at certain points on the road. 32 in one place. A bus, we thought. And then in a much louder, comforting thought; a bigger bus than this one. Or two of these ones, I whisper-thought to myself.
That about rounds it up. Final thought: don’t hire a car and drive yourself about. You will go nuts within about 20 minutes. If you can get out of the airport, of course.
Join us next time. gentle reader, where I might not talk about Ghana, I might instead share my pictures of Ai Weiwei’s exhibition at Somerset House. I simply haven’t decided.
