TRO-TRO DIARIES PART 4(a)....GETTING TO WORK IN THE MORNING

How we roll XD

Angels exist in each of the people that ‘saved’ me from a tro-tro ride back home when I had but a few pesewas to my name. Demons abound in any number of the fools that stoked my ire in the past couple of months. We live in a world of Angels and Demons and we can be mere tools to their ends, or we can take charge of our destiny and direct our own paths. You can exist for others or you can play the game on your own terms; I choose to play on my own terms no matter how uncomfortable it may be. What if the Tro-Tro is the mainstay of my transportation for a few more years? I found my niche; they are certainly uncomfortable, crowded and looked down upon, but they are a cheap and fairly efficient system of travel once you get the hang of it. I can even manage sleeping in the ricketiest of the rickety Tro-Tro buses for hours amidst the sights and sounds of Accra’s insane traffic jams. I travel proper Ghana style! I know how to get to work and back on a mere 3 cedis and still have change for Hausa Koko, Bofrot, PK and ‘Pure Water’ (PS: Inflation has caught up to even these items oh, imagine that at 37 you cannot purchase hausa koko for less than 30p anymore......HOW??).

Loading Tro-tro at the Station, the bus-stops are the "express service centres"

I used to complain bitterly about having to go through these things until I realized that it is not a punishment for crimes committed, but rather the best opportunity I have to learn how to be disciplined, focused and to appreciate the true plight of the average Ghanaian. A lot of people talk a lot of nonsense about how they want to help the people of Ghana and whatnot, but do they even know the naked suffering of the average Ghanaian; the ridiculously long wait in bus stations; the dangerous state of the rundown machines that transport them up and down and the unhygienic conditions that surround what they eat and drink. Tro-tros are the mainstay of Ghana’s public transportation system, moving people and goods across the length and breadth of the country and yet it is largely unregulated and attracts little investment - I see several huge businesses brewing in the need to improve the public transport system. Generally speaking though it is a very orderly affair, but when the pressure is on and demand is high, it all disintegrates into a very interesting scenario.

Early Morning Tro-Tro Olympics

A typical scene I encounter nearly every morning on my way to work goes like this......

            Spanner Junction [6:07am]...... A docile gathering of plenty black faces are waiting patiently at the bus-stop. Friends are talking, families are smiling, mobile phones are ringing and the sun is fairly bright in the sky but the temperature is still cool. The few tro-tros that pass by are full and speed into and out of the bus stop merely to cut a few cars in the serious morning rush hour. And there is always the one desperate guy running behind it, waving his hands in the hopes that the tro-tro will stop for him, unfortunately it stops somewhere ahead, and he slinks back to the far end of the station, awaiting impatiently for the Tro-Tro that will park right in front of him. Most of the cars on the road are private and the docile crowd glances expectantly towards the snakey traffic in the hopes of obtaining a ‘lift’. The crowd keeps increasing as the morning progresses and as yet no empty tro-tro has come by.

            Spanner Junction [6:31am]......The crowd is now a great mass of many more black faces and they are all sweating profusely. The heat is becoming unbearable so in tandem with the mobile phones, handkerchiefs are constantly at work. Unsurprisingly you may see a white face or two, but they are always dropping of from the tro-tro and not trying to get on it. The reason is simple, the dynamics of the bus stop are very different from before. Whenever a tro-tro breaks away from the snaky traffic and enters the other end of the bus stop (which is rather long by the way), immediately the phones and handkerchiefs vanish and so do the smiles and sighs. Eyes become fixated at the shrilling mass of rusted metal, gauging its contents and velocity. If it begins to slow down and appears to be offloading passengers, people immediately move into action. Inevitably some people had already begun running behind the tro-tro even before it slowed down (including our dear desperate friend), but the driver, through some mechanism known only to him determines where on this 20 meter stretch to screech to a stop. The driver’s mate slides open the door and calmly steps out of the way......he does not want to be in the fray of what is about to happen.

            Spanner Junction [6:32am]......A heaving mass of men and women, young and old are all struggling and shoving each other out of the way to enter into the tro-tro. They have now blocked the passenger who wants to step down, and he has to wait as the crowd reluctantly makes way for him. As he is getting off, people are still trying to get in. Now there 23 people in a Kung Fu Tussle in front of a 1-yard sliding door that can only allow one person to enter at a time. People are pushing, shoving, pulling, head-butting, eye-gouging, hair-pulling, stepping all over each other, hurling insults into the air and generally using any and all means to get into that last remaining precious seat. The moment somebody succeeds in putting three-fifths of their body into the tro-tro, the driver’s mate screams that the bus is full, shoves his way towards his own seat, and kicks out the dude sitting there and pleading to be taken along - who knew this was going to happen anyway. As he closes the door the seething crowd becomes docile again, but only for a moment. As the tro-tro speeds off to rudely join the snaky traffic, another breaks off and enters the bus stop, loudly and followed by a thick trail of black smoke, the desperate gentleman is running behind it and waving his hands but its too late and the cycle begins again......

NB: The Tro-Tro ride from Spanner Junction (Tetteh Quarshie) to the 37 Bus Station costs 25p – A taxi ride costs 5 cedis.

In the belly of the Beast :)

At first I used to laugh so hard at this scene. There is so much mirth to be obtained from watching grown men and women act like a bunch of sophomoric monkeys. And you know another thing, it is absolutely worse when the bus is completely empty, imagine that! The way the African mind works is just baffling, but sadly even I am part of this comedy scene since I realized that I either had to play the game or get to work very late. So as the mass heaves and shoves, I tighten the straps on my backpack, loosen my tie, take of my spectacles and jump into the mix. An effective strategy I observed is to grab onto the door with one hand, and use the other to shove, block and push. Stepping on toes is particularly effective, especially if you are wearing Santiagos with hard soles; very very effective indeed. I have seen a woman with her kid wrapped behind her trip, fall and get trampled slightly. Another time just as somebody was about to put more than half his body through the door, a hand slithered by and pulled him back into the fray and I slipped by him into the bus. Honestly it wasn’t me, but that helped me a lot man. People even improvise tools and weapons to improve their odds of getting through the throng. Backpacks and head loads are held in front and used as rams to shove people away from the gate. I have seen a heavy-set woman with a huge head load balanced on her head, running, no, sprinting after a tro-tro - and you know what, she made it inside somehow, load intact.

There are even team strategies, if there are several seats on the bus, the strongest of a group of friends will secure the gate with both hands blocking everybody else and let his fellows wiggle into the bus ahead of him before entering himself. Most times passengers tend to take this as a matter of course, but sometimes people get into serious fights that everybody tries to break up - until the next tro-tro appears. I generally avoid these pitfalls by ensuring that I take a tro-tro that bypasses Spanner Junction completely, but if I do end up there, I observe, I laugh a bit, and then I jump into the fray like a Bruce Lee wannabe, Jeet Kun Do-ing my way into the bus; backpack facing forwards and hard soles clogging along and ready to strike – hia hia hiaaaaaaaa. I have to get to work people......Sek Sek Sek Sek, Teri Sev Teri Sev Teri Sev.....hehehehe

Generally boarding a Tro-Tro is a civil affair, but when the pressure is on, PUSH COMES TO SHOVE!

A Big round of CHEERS to everybody that reads this blog. Merry Christmas and have a happy new year.

From TheBizmic & Co.