Tuesday, July 7, 2009

Just Another Monday

Left the office at 3:10 pm. Walked through the house door at 5:28 pm. 45 minutes of this time was spent waiting for a shared taxi (an experiment not to be repeated), the remaining 1 hour 33 minutes were spent in the luxury of a drop taxi which was, if I may say so, well worth the additional money.


Observations along the way:

Aptly named, Beach Road is the single road that connects Accra and Teshie by running along the coast of the Atlantic Ocean. While the view of the ocean is amazing – the ocean itself is not more than 100 yards from the road at several points – there are many other sights, smells and sounds to be experienced along this road. There is much time to witness your senses on Beach Road as this road is notorious for its traffic caused both by the poor condition of the asphalt and by the intention to widen the road which has turned the 4 lane road into 2 lanes, one going east and one going west with no evidence of any progress on the expansion.

Smells: First, you’ll notice the smell of petro. Unlike the clean, relatively odorless burning of gasoline in the states, cars here emit a heavy, bitter stench that fills your nose, lungs and dries out your eyes. While you begin to ignore the scent after some time, every so often you’ll get a whiff so strong it brings you back to awareness. Then there is the burning of trash. The closer the road draws to the ocean the scent of the sea you expect is replaced by the stench of burning trash on the beach. More pleasantly, depending on the time of day, if you’re lucky, as you go through the townships you’ll smell grilled corn, plantains and meats.

Sounds: There is the music from your tro-tro or cab advancing from one song to the next, taunting your vehicle which must oblige the much slower and mundane beat of traffic. On Beach Road I have heard everything from rap songs about cybersex to reggae welcoming Barack Obama. And if your vehicle has opted out of musical entertainment (perhaps it has no dashboard upon which to mount a radio…), you’ll be fortunate if your car stops near to but not directly in front of the pickup truck that has been re-fitted with a cage and speaker stacks and blares music. It parks every day in the same spot, and if you happen to enjoy the music, there are plenty of young men eager to sell you a copy of that CD or any other CD you might desire.

Shopping: Not only can you buy CDs on Beach Road, you could nearly do your grocery shopping! In the late morning, a giant truck pulls up loaded with men and women and their wares and during the day the spread out over a 1-2 mile stretch of the road waiting for the traffic to grow denser. Once the traffic is stop and go, they walk in between and on either side of the lanes of cars up and down the street carrying their goods on their heads, in their hands, or, in the case of the “fan products” (read: icecream) man, pulling them behind you on a bicycle. There is a consistent and interesting gender segregation in who sells what products, and the breakdown looks something like the following:

MEN
- Apples
- Fan products (icecream in little sachets)
- Windshield wipers
- Toilet Paper
- Steering wheel covers
- Yogurt drinks
- Magazines
- Belts
- Stuffed animals and miniature flags
- Cloth
- CDs and DVDs
- Rolls and Bread
- Toy trucks and other odd, plastic toys

WOMEN
- Donuts
- Cookies
- Crackers
- Chewing sticks (used by some in lieu of toothpaste and brush)
- Umbrellas
- Plantain Chips
- Nuts
- Fried dough balls (carried in a clear, glass box on their heads)
- Limes
- Bananas

MEN & WOMEN
- Grapes
- Phone credits
- Water sachets
- Chocolate
- Miscellaneous bath supplies and home products

The drive itself has the chaos of a bumper car driving rink only with drivers who have no desire to hit other drivers, just to cut them off. Cars will try zooming around off of the paved road through hazards to advance through the traffic, and motorbikes will ride in between two lanes of cars where the street sellers stand. They come rushing forward beeping their horns constantly as if to shout “I AM HERE… I AM HERE…” It’s a fairly chaotic ride with really 2 distinct speeds: stop and GoGoGoGoGO!! More often than I or any government official knows, cabs get into fender benders. It is required that you have insurance on your vehicle, but because the police are so unreliable in their response time and because the burden falls 100% on the driver to make sure the incident is properly handled by both the police and the offenders insurance company, most accidents are never reported. It simply takes too much time to handle which equates to loss of income, which most cab drivers can’t afford.

While there are a wide variety of cars on the road, quite ubiquitous are Toyotas, Suzukis, BMWs, Tatas, and Ford vans. The cabs themselves are all uniform in color and comprise about half of the traffic on the road. On their back windshields they often have stickers reading things like “Blessing,” “Believers,” “BigSo,” “Whatever,” “Think Big,” and “LeTs.” The tro-tros more often have big sticker-pictures on their back windows. Some common stickers are pictures of a basketball and hoop and an eagle swooping down to grab his prey.

After passing through the strip of truly stop and go traffic during which time to the right of the road is the ocean and to the left the Ghana military academy and training school, you enter the township of Teshie. Here the sights change quite a bit depending on the time of day. In the afternoon, children are all walking home from school. Those who attend state schools wear brown bottoms and orange tops. Those attending private schools have a variety of uniforms. It was recently mandated in Ghana that children must attend school until the age of 16. Overwhelmingly this appears to be the case, but there is no enforcement of this policy and so much truancy exists.

In the township, goats and chickens roam the streets. This time of year, both goats and chickens have babies following them around. Children are sweeping the ground outside of little shops with bundles of sticks made into a short broom. Women nurse their babies and begin to prepare dinner either for their families or for selling by candle light on the street. If it has recently rained, you will find young boys in the drainage system shoveling out silt and sludge carried into the drains by the recent storm. One look at either side of the concrete ditch tells you this is a futile exercise as all it takes is 10 minutes of rain to undo all of their work.

Another common sight as you drive is men peeing. There are a few public toilets, and some homes have their own toilets, but there appears to be a “pee-freely” policy in place such that on nearly any wall or in any corner you might just happen to see a man taking care of business. I think women are a bit more discreet about their process, but children have no shame what so ever and will drop their trousers on the street or over a drainage ditch to do what they need.

Shops here are typically a free-standing 10 x 10 corrugated steel box that, when closed, has no windows. These are often put up on rocks to let the water run beneath them. Companies provide paint and some payment to shop owners willing to paint their stores in the company color and put the company’s logo on the building. Because of this, the streets are dotted and at times lined with these box stores painted in red and white (Vodafone) or hot pink and turquoise (Zain, another cellular provider). The signs for stores often have pictures of the foods or services they are selling out front. These boxes contain hairdressers, convenience stores, pharmacies, seamstresses, and other trinket sellers.

Turning off the main road and into my neighborhood, a suburb of Accra that was laid out some years ago in the fashion of a grid, the density of shops and sellers declines, but shops do not disappear as they would in a residential community in the US. If there are zoning ordinances that dictate where food and other sundries can be sold, I haven’t yet discovered a rhyme or reason to its issuance. Every now and then you’ll find a box store or other venue with red spray paint “REMOVE BY XX/XX/XX BY AMA” meaning the Accra Metropolitan Authority dictates you cannot have your stall there. However, more often than not, the stores are still operating despite the paint, or they are simply closed up but still standing.

Finally, 2 hours and 18 minutes after leaving work, I step out of a shared taxi, walk a block home, and collapse exhausted from the journey!


(pictures to follow)

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