A Trotro Ride From New Town to Accra Part 1

Accra! kra! kra! kra! kra! Screamed several youthful voices in discordant harmony. Repeating it over and over and over till you hear it in the sound of the radio, the crying of infants, the tread of footsteps, the whining of school children and the chime of your waking dreams! The whole street is engulfed in one rousing cry of Accra! Kra! Kra Kra! Kra! Like fireworks going off. Without a word, I climbed into the trotro in which four passengers were already seated and settled down to wait. The mate, standing in front of the car and leaning against it continued to announce the destination of his trotro – Accra!

The ‘loading’ of passengers is usually much faster in the morning but as the day wears on, the numbers get thinner and the trotro takes longer to fill up. It was a quarter past ten in the morning and so I did not expect to wait long. I took my seat at the very back of the car by the window. This is the least favourite seat of most passengers. Besides a few of us, most people take this seat with some reluctance because goods are typically loaded beneath those seats and this takes part of the legroom. 

The occupants are also invariably the last persons to disembark once the trotro reaches its final destination, and if anyone sitting there wishes to alight before the final destination, they would have to squeeze themselves, twist and turn and tread the feet of others to get out. 

However, there are also quite a few advantages – fresh air from the window and the least chance of being trodden upon by embarking and disembarking passengers. I am always motivated by the fresh air from the windows so that when the other seats are taken, I have no problem going to the back if the window seat is not taken.

After seating for about 10 minutes, I began to look around at the other passengers just to amuse myself. This has become quite a hobby for me – watching people. I do it to pass the time and it never fails to get interesting. In the front seat beside where the driver will sit, sat a young woman and a young man. By their posture and demeanours, either they were not travelling together or they were an unhappy couple forced to undertake the journey together for some reason. 

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The second option was more probable for a fight is difficult to mask. They both looked in opposite directions. The young man was looking intently through the window on his right side at something, whether far or near I could not tell whilst the lady laid back a little and focused on the driver’s side and the dashboard. She looked intently from the steering wheel to the gear lever both of which looked like the stumps of dead trees jotting out in a burnt field and surrounded by a mass of wires. They did everything to avoid each other’s gaze. I became quite interested in them and made a mental note to see whether they would pay their fare differently or the man would pay for both of them to confirm my supposition of a domestic fight. On that note, I turned to the main part of the trotro.

The first seat also had two passengers who appeared to be moving together for though they were both fixated on their mobile phones, they occasionally looked at each other and exchanged a word or looked at something on each other’s phones and nodded or smiled. They were in a world of their own and appeared not to notice or hear anything going on in the bus. They even succeeded in ignoring the voices and flying spittle of the two young men who entered and sat in the seat directly behind them, discussing their affairs for the world to hear. 

These two hardly sat down before they began or rather continued a lively discourse; complaining and lamenting about everything - their friends, family, the economy, their MP, Assemblyman and their constituency chairman. One of them gesticulated angrily but after the tantrums, they both laughed and then looked around amazed as if realising for the first time that they were not alone. They paused their talk for a couple of minutes but resumed just before the last passenger embarked and continued to talk for the rest of the journey.

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Two women were sitting on the seat right in front of me and were engaged in conversation albeit in muted tones about the prices of goods in the city. They appeared to be traders going shopping to replenish their stocks. They compared and contrasted prices of wax prints, ladies dresses, children’s wear, sandals, and foodstuffs at various markets - Makola, Mallam Atta, Kantamanto, Nima and others. They complained about costumers’ complaints, about the demands of their suppliers and about dwindling profits. They counted their moneys, sighed, recounted it, and carefully packed it into purses hidden deep in generous bosoms and resumed their complaints. I turned to my own seat.

Beside me sat an elderly man and a teenage girl. The Oldman embarked first and the girl joined a minute or two after. The Oldman went to sleep, resting his hands and head on the seat in front of us whilst the girl was engrossed in her phone. She was obviously on a call and did not mind the rest of us following her conversation. Though she had the headphones on, she talked at full volume and laughed heartily from time to time whilst flipping through a large collection of photoshopped images on Facebook. 

I laid back on our seat in order to observe her and what she was doing closely. She’s now telling the person at the other end of the line about an Islamic wedding she attended recently and the fashion on display at the ceremony. I guess the photos were taken at that wedding. 

Just as I took my eyes off her phone, the last passenger entered and the mate shouted, “Away massa”! He took his seat beside the sliding door and pulled it shut as a burly man rushed out from the adjacent building and half walked, half run to the car, jumped into driver’s seat and bent down to connect the ignition wires to start the car.

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My experience has shown time and again that many Ghanaian trotros do not have ignition switches. They are either started by the driver touching two wires together below the steering wheel or by connecting the wires and then pushing a button on the dashboard. 

That is the innovation and creativity of Ghanaian drivers and mechanics. When the ignition switch is old and broken, it is not replaced, instead, the wires are connected to one of the buttons on the dashboard or a new button is created for the purpose and thereafter that button is used to start the trotro. 

When this fails, then the age-old custom of pushing the car is used to start the engine. That is quite an experience in itself - to be sitting in a bus or trotro with several people pushing it from behind or from the front. When the 'pushers' have managed to set the car in motion, the driver then engages gear and this kickstarts the engine. Sometimes the engine stops before the journey is done and passengers have to get down and push to restart it. 

That morning, we were not destined to have the 'pushing' experience for the driver was down for a couple of seconds and the engine zoomed alive at once. He sat up, engaged gear and turned into the main road right in front of us. The journey to Accra had started. Sit tight!