How to get to work

I’ve learned to take the trotro (the local transit bus) to work. Here’s what you do.

First, walk up to Oxford Street, past the chickens and goats running in the street and the tiny streetside shacks selling everything you might need. (Bag of water? A nickel. Hand towel? $3. Plate of rice and chicken in spicy red sauce? $1.)

Cross bustling Oxford Street (we’re lucky traffic travels on the same side of the street here as in North America, or we’d surely have been mashed by now!) and watch oncoming traffic for an appropriate tro-tro passenger van -- one headed for Kwame Nkrumah Circle, a huge traffic circle that serves as the city’s main transportation hub.

How do you know if a tro-tro is headed the right way?

Each trotro has a driver and a mate. The mate sits next to the door (either at the side or the back), and opens and closes the door, directs the driver, takes the fares and generally tells the passengers (especially hapless abruni) what to do. He also leans out the window, indicating the trotro’s destination with a call and a hand signal.

To get to Nkrumah Circle, you look for a van with a mate hanging out the window calling, “Circle! Circle!” (which sounds a bit like “seck! seck!”) and waving his hand in a downward circular motion.

When you see such a van, you signal at the mate by nodding your head or pointing at the ground or mimicking his circular gesture. The van squeezes through traffic to the side of the road, the mate opens the door and you hop in and squeeze yourself in with the other passengers.


Jason on the trotro to "37", a big traffic circle near 37 Military Hospital. (Why 37? No one seems to know)

The mate thumps the roof or side of the van, or else gives a whistle, and the driver takes off into traffic, usually before the door is even closed.

Now you’re on your way down Oxford Street, around Danquah Circle and onto Ring Road, a major three-lane traffic artery, usually at speeds that seem like they might rattle the trotro apart.

Trotros, of course, don’t have air conditioning, so you try to lean toward a window to catch the breeze. You might try to hang on to something to keep from knocking into your fellow passengers during the frequent stops, starts and veers around other cars as you weave in and out of the heavy morning traffic.


View from the back trotro seat

At some point between stops (or when the trotro is too full to take on any other passengers), the mate taps you on the shoulder or gives you the “hsssst hsssst” noise that is used to get people’s attention here), which is when you pay your fare. It’s 2,000 cedis for the 15- to 20-minute ride from Oxford Street to Circle – about 25 cents in Canadian funds.

When you get to Circle (which can’t be missed due to the traffic jams that invariably slow your trotro to a halt), you try to hop out nearest you can to your destination.

Figuring out which is your “stop” can be a bit confusing.

From what I can tell, “official” stops – such as places marked with a sign – are few and far between, probably because trotros often veer off course to avoid traffic jams. Generally, it seems, if you just follow everyone else who’s transferring at Circle, you’ll get to the right place, which is just to the side of an overpass.

(This “stop” is, fittingly, called “Overpass.” So sometimes people tell you to “meet them at Overpass” and what they mean is to linger around the overpass stop area until you find one another, which usually involves text messaging to find one another in the crowd.)

Now, you have to transfer to your second trotro for the northern leg of the journey. To do this, you weave your way through a crush of thousands of people wheeling and dealing in a maze of hundreds of shanty shack-type shops selling a much greater variety of goods and services than you could find on Oxford Street (though much less than Makola market – but that’s a story for Jason to tell).

The business and busyness are mind-boggling. It’s actually quite intimidating, with everyone seeming to vie for my attention in the hopes of convincing me to spend what must seem like my limitless abruni cash on their wares. (I suppose if I can afford to travel to another continent, it’s quite logical for the merchants to assume I have heaps of money compared to most local customers -- which must be why everyone seems to want to get me into their shop).

In any case, you wend your way through the crowds for about 10 minutes until you come out on a half-constructed freeway that comes out from under the other side of the overpass. Under the bridge, the road is just a crushed rock foundation. Where you catch the second trotro, red earth has been poured onto the foundation, but the asphalt hasn’t yet been added. Dozens of trotros wait here for passengers headed to points north.

Look for another trotro mate yelling “Lapaz, Lapaz,” the name of a northern neighbourhood past the area where my work is. Hop into the trotro as before. In this trotro parking area, you wait until the trotro is full (or mostly full), which sometimes takes 15 or 20 minutes. Then your driver has to squeeze his way through the other trotros waiting for passengers, a process that can take another 15 minutes and usually involves a lot of yelling, honking and some Tetris-like manoeuvring of vans and people.

A few hundred yards down the road, your trotro pops up onto the asphalt and you really start making good time on another major artery – I haven’t yet determined what this one is called (have I mentioned that it seems most Ghanaians don’t use maps, and no one at the office has been able to locate the office itself on my map for me?)

This artery becomes a major freeway, but it’s still under construction in places – including one overpass where your tro-tro suddenly seems to veer into oncoming traffic, but it’s just that the other side of the road hasn’t yet been paved, so traffic in both directions travels on one side.

On this road, you can tell when you pass one of the unofficial, unmarked trotro stops because a group of women with wares balanced in bowls and boxes on their heads waits at each point, ready to sell water or candy or tissues or coconuts or meat pies or other necessities to passengers alighting and those continuing.


Passing a trotro "stop"

A few of the other abruni we’ve been hanging out with have a contest going on to see what’s the oddest thing they’ve been offered for sale through a trotro window. So far the winner is tied-up live chickens, which you would presumably buy through the window and then carry on your lap to your destination. Pleasant for everyone involved. We once saw guppies or goldfish in plastic bags being sold to passing traffic on the street.

Anyway, my commute is about another half-hour ride in this trotro, past half-constructed buildings, furniture shops, huge churches, car-, bicycle- and motorcycle-sale and rental agencies (although you’d have to be suicidal, in my opinion, to ride any of those in the city), hotels, etc.

The mate asks you for 2,500 cedis, but you shake your head and say, “To total only,” indicating your intention to disembark at the unmarked "stop" near the Total gas station on the route. The mate knows exactly where you mean, nods, and so the ride is only 2,000 cedis.

The Total filling station is a few blocks away from the main road on a twisty route into a residential neighbourhood. Sometimes you have to remind the mate as you drive by the Total, so he can whistle at the driver to get him to stop to let you out.

Once out, you make your way down a paved side street and an unpaved smaller street. Children along the way point at you and shout, “Abruni! Abruni!” in the hopes you’ll wave and perhaps engage them in the short, “How are you? I am fine,” conversation they seem to have all learned. Sometimes they run out and touch your arm, then run away giggling.

Then … voila! The newspaper office – set in a large house with no sign indicating what it is – suddenly appears before you.


The office

Get out your hankie and wipe the perspiration from your brow. Now your workday begins.