On Transportation

Transportation

I used to be intimidated when I traveled to New York City, mostly due to the traffic. Well, I can safely tell you that NYC has nothing on Accra. Come with me for a ride....

This one particular evening we went to see the US Ambassador of Ghana. He was very gracious to invite us PCT (Peace Corps Trainees) to a evening at his house. It was very nice, an open bar and finger food. He and his wife were very nice and his welcome speech was very heartfelt. He told us that the majority of the Ghana administration can remember the name of the PCV (Peace  Corps Volunteer) that went to their village when they were young. I thought that was pretty cool. 

Now, for the ride home. Picture a two lane highway; sometimes paved, sometimes not. Either way, on these “roads”, there are holes. I would say pot holes but that would be an understatement. These holes will swallow a small car. On the road are people, bikes, motorbikes, small cars, vans, and large buses and trucks. From what I can gather, there is a hierarchy. People yield to bikes, bikes yield to motorbikes, motorbikes yield to small cars, etc. Oh, and these roads do not have pull over lanes, and they get very, very congested. So, back to my story. We are on the way home from the Ambassador’s house. It’s after 8 (it gets dark around 7ish) and they tell us that we should not be out at night. Many vans get robbed at night, so they want to rush us home. As I look ahead of us there is a major traffic jam. We are going north, and it is completely stopped. The traffic headed south is stopped as well. There are vendors and people all in the road; it is completely impassable I think. Well I was wrong. Instead of stopping, our driver decides that we should drive in the opposite lane whenever there is a break, heading directly into traffic. As we were flying down the road I know a head on collision is imminent. At the last minute, our driver swerves onto the opposite sidewalk. Horn blasting, we continue on our way while people are scrambling out of our way. We go through yards, driveways and every other inch of space we can find to continue forward. I is unlike any other thing I  have ever done. I do not know how or why we made this hour long trek without getting killed or shot at. When we safely arrived back to our compound, I think we all kissed the ground. I found out later that because we are Peace Corps, we have special license plates and we can drive however we please.... go figure. 

Bus rides

I went up North to a small village to visit Larry, a PCV who is doing what I will be doing. I spent 3 days with him and I learned a lot about what I will be doing. Larry is a great guy and I was fortunate to have him as my mentor. Actually to get to his site, I spent over 15 hours on a bus, then ended the trip with a canoe ride to cross a river. The first leg of the journey home included a very interesting bus ride. There was a group of folks waiting to get on the bus when we arrived. Most of them were women with babies. To me there seemed like there was going to be plenty of room, there was probably 30 of us. But, the women did not think there would be enough room. When the bus arrived, complete chaos erupted. Instead of waiting for the people to get off the bus, they were bound and determined to get on the bus ( which was full). People were crawling over each other, yelling and screaming, pushing and pulling. I couldn’t believe it, because these were the nicest, sweetest people in the world.... until they want to get on the bus. When I finally got on the bus, there were no seats left, but plenty of standing room, so I thought I would make the best of it and just stand. I was wondering why we were not leaving then I noticed huge bags (like 100 lb. each) of grain, corn, charcoal, and God knows what else being loaded on. Any extra space got swallowed up and now everyone was cramped.  Of course there is nothing to hold on to, and as we took off it was hard to stay on my feet. After about twenty minutes we came to a station and I was thinking “cool people will start to get off and I will have room again.” How naive of me. At least 20 more people got on board, with all their boxes, bags and baskets. I now am sitting/squatting with my back against a very hard metal pan. At my feet, or more accurately on my feet are three Ghanian women, all with babies. You can not imagine how packed this  bus was. Oh, did I mention that the bus doors were broken? They were half closed, and to open them you had to kick/pull/push your way through them. I became very self conscious of myself as everyone was looking at me. Not only was I the only white person on the bus, but I was wearing shorts. Wearing shorts in public is very taboo. I don’t know what I was thinking. Feeling uncomfortable in many ways, I look around and find that most of the women are breast feeding their babies. So here I am feeling very embarrassed about my naked knees, when there are all these boobs bouncing around all over the place. Breasts and not considered sexual here while legs are... Oh well, more cultural things to learn for me... At the end, I made it safe and sound back to training village where I will spend the next 10 weeks, learning all sorts of fun stuff.

Cheers,

Wayne