ghana road experience

how do you travel across ghana?

there are planes, between accra and kumasi, accra and tamale, but not to many places elsewhere.

buses, also between the major population centres.

tro tros – aka mini-buses, some of them more trustworthy than others. the older the vehicle, the more ‘modifications’ the van will have undergone. some welding here, some tape there to hold all parts of the vehicle together while it is being taken across the bumps on the roads.

bumps that are intentional in the case of ‘sleeping policemen’, or unintentional – but equally unavoidable because there are so many of them – in the case of potholes.

and there are cars. which we opted for to drive to several locations that offer ‘touristy’ activities.

ghanaian driving rules are more like guidelines, hence there are no rules. or a few unwritten ones. so let me write them down for you:

the first rule: everyone has to get to where they need to be as quickly as possible. so everyone goes as fast as the car will go, and as fast as the acceleration and deceleration between one bump in the road and the next allows. which means a constant change between full speed and almost stopping. only to accelerate again immediately afterwards.

the second rule has to do with survival: of the car. and the passengers. in that order. the driver tries to avoid potholes, occasionally risking the lives of the passengers in the process. this involves swerving left and right, sometimes quite suddenly. taken together with the occasional drop into a pothole or jump over a bump in the road, the entire experience resembles a rollercoaster. avoiding the potholes is difficult, since there are more of them than there is smooth road surface. maybe roads should be called ‘pothole-strips’ instead.

third rule: there is space for everybody, but not much space between everybody. sometimes there will be four or five vehicles in parallel on the same stretch of road, but not necessarily going in the same direction. add individual and herd animals. somehow, everybody seems to find a way through.

fourth rule: honking. it can mean anything. hello friend. hello you, just letting you know i’m here. have you (not) heard my first honk? no? ok, i repeat. i’m here, get out of the way fast! double-fast! faster!! you idiot! everyone seems to understand which message was intended. at least on the third or fourth honk.

fifth rule: overtaking is always an option. whether there is enough space, whether you can see what is coming from the opposite direction, and how close that is already, or whether there is actually somewhere to go once you have overtaken – these are questions that can apparently be answered along the way during overtaking.

sixth rule: the size of the vehicle determines the right of way. the bigger the vehicle, the more convincing its argument. trucks and buses tend to have particularly convincing arguments. pedestrians, on the other hand, don't have much to contribute to the discussion.

seventh rule: road markings are decorative. where there are lines on the road, they seem to be considered suggestions rather than instructions. where there aren't any, everybody is free to invent their own.

eighth rule: there is always room for one more. one more passenger, one more bag, one more box, one more vehicle squeezing into a gap that didn't really look like a gap. a string of any kind will do to attacch even the heaviest cargo. sometimes the cargo needs to balance by itself on top of the car. car or van surfing, not train surfing as in berlin on s-bahn trains. in the end, the definition of ‘full’ seems to be rather flexible.

ninth rule: patience is essential. but preferably for everybody else. while everybody is trying to get somewhere as quickly as possible, there are plenty of reasons why nothing moves at all. a vehicle stopping in the middle of the road, somebody loading or unloading something, or simply too many people trying to occupy the same space at the same time.

which brings us back to rule four: honking.

ah, almost forgot: driving at night - all rules above still apply, but add one more… your vehicle should be decorated like a christmas tree and the honking can be supplemented by flood lights or preferably by an entire light show.