Travelling Around Accra
The traffic out here is a bit of a free for all. Luckily, our Dialogue crew has a pretty nice orange Kia bus that takes us everywhere. The bus is a bit of a spectacle in itself. It’s definitely one of the biggest vehicles we see on the road, and it can be pretty wild to park. Somehow, our drivers can wiggle into whatever spot they can find. Because of this wonderful bus, I haven’t really been able to experience the transportation methods that most Ghanaians use. However, peering out of our windows has given me a bit of insight.
The streets are much more festive in Ghana than they are in the United States. There are people selling stuff — water bottles, soda, bread, toiletries, sunglasses — at every intersection who will happily walk to every window and knock until they see a response. Interestingly, many of the salespeople try to sell to us students on the bus, even though we can’t open the windows. The streets also have quite a bit of wildlife. Chickens are everywhere, often accompanied by goats. I find this pretty odd; I would think that any livestock owners would want their producers to stay near, but it looks like they have a system that allows their animals to roam the streets. During the day, the transportation can be pretty long. I’ve found that it’s pretty rare to get from point A to point B without a few long stops without moving. However, the night rides back home are very quick, probably because there’s very little traffic, but my hypothesis is that the driver just wants to get home as soon as possible. I’m looking forward to some of the other modes of transport we will be using these next weeks.
We haven’t needed to call a taxi anywhere, but I’m sure this will happen at some point. My understanding is that public transportation is not very popular or efficient in Accra, so we won’t be on that too much. We are also going to a city a couple hours away called Cape Coast. In Cape Coast, we will likely be taking a boat to a nearby island, which will probably be both beautiful and really exciting. Because of our wonderful bus, it’s been hard to have a first person account of how Ghanaians actually travel, but being able to experience the roads and city craziness has been a great experience regardless.
