Part of my job is to visit the different projects to see our volunteers and NGO partners in action. Yesterday I went with two of our volunteers to a talent show and drama competition in Gynkabo, the community in which one of our volunteers had been performing health outreach for the past three months.
I will describe the experience in a later entry, but I want to first address what happened after the Gynkabo community events.
Lauren, our 3-month volunteer from Utah and one of my most favorite people I've met in Ghana, is leaving next weekend. She wanted to go to Kakum National Park to spend the night at the canopy walk as her last-weekend-festivity. I opted out because I wasn't in the camping outside mood and had already enjoyed spending the day with Lauren. After the talent show, drama competition and presentation of prizes to the communities of Gynkabo and Frami, which put us at about 6:30 p.m., Lauren, McKell and I waved down a tro-tro and headed back to Cape Coast.
Lauren and McKell told the mate they wanted out at Kakum National Park. We joked about how embarrassing it was that they were getting off at Kakum, considering most Ghanaians assume that because we're white (and therefore we are tourists, not volunteers or expats working in Ghana) we want to go to Kakum. Lauren and McKell were telling me that every time they walk to a taxi/tro-tro station to go to Gynkabo for their outreach, which is past Kakum, people shout at them, "Kakum?" They think to themselves, Um, no we're doing outreach in a rural village and they all call us by our names instead of "obroni" and say we're their Ghanaian sisters. It's difficult to describe the pride you begin to feel as a long-term volunteer - most of the volunteers and expats I've worked with and met have considered it borderline offensive to be called a tourist.
When the mate told the driver to stop at Kakum's entrance, I had to get out of the tro-tro first to let Lauren and McKell out. As I was hugging Lauren goodbye and wishing them a fun night, the tro-tro began to leave. I ran after it and yelled, "Hey! WAIT!" and banged on the side of the tro-tro. I stayed with the tro for a few seconds but then it accelerated. It was almost dark out and the mate didn't seem to see or hear me but I think the other passengers noticed I was chasing the van and told the driver to stop. I don't know why the mate told the driver to leave. I know it wasn't because I was taking too much time saying goodbye to Lauren and McKell because the tro took off literally as soon as we all got out. I hadn't paid the mate for the ride yet either so I don't know why he thought I was going with Lauren and McKell, besides the fact that we were sitting and talking together.
The tro-tro finally stopped about 25 meters ahead and reversed back to me. I hopped in, with Lauren and McKell still at the Kakum entrance probably laughing at our collective misfortunes as foreigners, and heard the driver talking rapidly in Fante or Twi to the mate and a couple other passengers muttering to each other and I figured it was because of what had just happened, seeing that the ride was silent before, besides Lauren, McKell and me. I couldn't tell if everyone was angry at me or the mate or the driver, but then the woman next to me told me, "Sorry." I like that about the Ghanaian culture; when a local tries to blatantly rip you off, sometimes another Ghanaian comes to the rescue, as if to salvage our perception of Ghana and its people. Each time this has happened to me I've noticed it is a woman who apologizes or corrects on her people's behalf.
The ride from Cape Coast to Gynkabo only took 45 minutes, but our ride back to Cape Coast took an hour and a half because of all the people we picked up along the way. Shortly after I got back into the tro, a woman with a baby and man got inside. The woman sat next to me and kept her baby on her lap, which I thought was strange considering most mothers use beautiful fabric to wrap their babies and toddlers onto the small of their backs. They don't take the babies out of the back wrap even when they're sitting in taxis or tros; they simply sit on the edge of their seats.
I assumed the reason the baby was on its mother's lap was because the mother was nursing. It was dark and the baby was wrapped generously with fabric so I couldn't get a sideways glance to confirm my assumption. Several times throughout the ride I heard the woman's baby making noises resembling a snorting sound and assumed his or her nasal passage was clogged up or that the baby had sucked the mother's milk too quickly. After each snorting session the mother would say something in Fante or Twi to her child. I noticed that the woman sitting on my left, the one who apologized for the driver almost leaving me at Kakum, would always cock a sideways glance at the woman and child when the mother would say something. I wondered what the mother was saying that drew such blatant attention from other passengers.
About half an hour later we got to Abura, a suburb of Cape Coast. The mother and child and the man they entered with got out. As soon as the mate gave the sliding door a good slam, the woman on my left told me, "Her baby is about to die. She is on her way to the hospital." Everything I said ("Really? Dying? I just thought her baby was having a hard time sleeping. That's awful." followed by a dumbfounded stare and ajar mouth) and everything I could have said would have made me sound like an idiot. We had been bumper-to-bumper in traffic for the past 20 minutes before the mother and child and I'm assuming the father got out - I couldn't imagine having to bring my deathly sick child to the hospital via public transportation. I thought of the time I got a phone call at home six years ago from a man who was with my father when he had had a sudden cardiac death at a local soccer complex and how I drove like a maniac to the hospital 45 minutes away and I was lucky I didn't cause an accident or get pulled over.
I hope the baby is alright. I hope no one with a sick child has to use public transportation to get to a hospital.
I'm sad that my hopes may be too much.
Sunday, September 26, 2010
Monday, September 13, 2010
Taxi Drivers Remind Me I Am a Minority
I figured it’s about time to talk about my love-hate relationship with the transportation system in Ghana. It took a couple weeks to get acclimated to the Ghanaian way of driving, which is offensive rather than defensive, but it's a comforting sort of recklessness. When I was in Peru, the driving was more suicidal than reckless. Ghanaian driving is like coloring outside the lines of a picture, and the picture turning out better because you dismissed the limitations of suggested guidelines; whereas Peruvian driving is coloring outside the lines, off the page and onto the desk, with horrific colors. At least the majestic Peruvian mountains and lush trees were satisfying distractions.
But I digress. The source of my sporadic frustration is not Ghanaian driving, but the transportation system as a whole; specifically, the unfair prices I sometimes face as a foreigner.
I get around Cape Coast by shared and drop taxis. Shared taxis are cheaper than drop taxis. Shared taxis pick up everyone on the side of the road who is pointing toward the direction the driver is going. Occasionally it can take as long as 15-20 minutes to find a shared taxi going your way. The function of a shared taxi is comparable to the purpose of a metro bus. The best part about taking shared taxis is hearing and telling the passengers “good morning” and “good afternoon,” and the drivers know they can't try to rip you off because a shared taxi is always a set price. Sometimes our volunteers are uncomfortable taking shared taxis and tro-tros the first couple weeks because they’re packed with Ghanaians. I don’t understand why, but I’m trying to. It's smart to avoid dodgy crowded areas in foreign countries, but it's pretty unavoidable in developed countries if you want cheap transportation.
Drop taxis take you from wherever you are to wherever you need to be. I use drop taxis when I don’t know where I’m going, when I’m really late and when it’s dark. Drop taxis are also used when you want to go from one town to another, as shared taxis only operate within town, but it’s a lot more expensive than using a tro-tro or a Ford van.
When I go from Cape Coast to another town, I use a tro-tro, which are boxy vans with three sitting benches in the middle. Tro-tros are the same price as shared taxis and are much cheaper than using drop taxis to get from one town to another. They’re similar to the combis I rode in while volunteering in Peru but much less crowded. Ford vans are more spacious than tro-tros and have air-conditioning. They’re most suitable when you have a long journey ahead. If you have a lot of bags, it’s best to use a drop taxi.
I’ve only come across taxis with air-conditioning in Accra. AC is a luxury in Cape Coast. Driving with the windows down is more fun anyway. I rely on my morning taxi rides to dry my wet hair from my shower and the afternoon rides to dry my sweat and cool me down. Seat belts are available, but they’re either stuffed into the seats or have a clip in them that you have to remove before fastening. I’ve been meaning to ask one of my taxi drivers the purpose of the clip. Kirsty told me it’s smart to build an army of taxi drivers by taking phone numbers from the ones I like. I call my drivers when I need someone to “pick me” (they don’t say “pick me up”). I only take phone numbers from taxi drivers who are calm, respectful, friendly but don’t talk the whole time, don’t ask me for my number and give me a good price the first time I ask. Ha, man, I’m a toughie. But really, I savor the quiet time the drop taxis provide me. They are my refuge after a chaotic bout in the market. Kirsty judges drivers based on conversation and how good of shape their car is in. Cape Coast taxis are all manual cars, which you don’t notice until you want to roll down the window and the lever is broken. But taxi drivers share cars, so I never recruit them into my army based on their car.
From my apartment to the main road at the bottom of the hill, it’s about a 10-minute walk. If I want to go toward Elmina, which is a 15-minute drive west of Cape Coast, I cross the road and try to get a taxi from that side. But most days I stay on the side of the road by the bottom of the hill to head to town or to Abura (a busy suburb where most of our volunteers’ homestay families live and where many of our NGO partners’ offices reside). When I see a taxi coming from the left, I use my right hand to point forward in the direction of Abura, or point behind me if I’m going to town. It’s disrespectful to use your left hand for anything in Ghana because historically the left hand was thought of as the dirty hand.
If I want a drop taxi I look for the taxis with no passengers. It’s 3 or 4 cedis to take to town. When a taxi pulls over for me, I bend down until I’m level with the driver (no need to lean in on the door – your money gets you a lot farther than your cleavage, unfortunately.. or fortunately?) and ask through their unrolled window, “Kingsway?” They nod. “How much?” I learned the hard way that no matter how long you’ve waited for a taxi, how hot it is, or how late you are, you must never forget to ask how much the fare is before getting in.
Whenever I forget to ask, I realize I’ve forgotten as soon as I get inside his car and we start driving. My stomach plummets because, out of sheer absentmindedness, I’ve subjected myself to a possible asshole. I’ve come up with the embarrassingly pessimistic discovery that every time an obroni approaches a taxi driver here, there’s a 50 percent chance he’s an asshole. I hate arguing with taxi drivers. It’s exhausting to constantly have to prove that I’m more than my white skin; I’m more than a money sign, and it’s even more exhausting to listen to their relentless bantering, all the while knowing that I wouldn’t even being having the conversation if my skin was black.
I only argue with taxi drivers when I have to. The majority of the arguments took place in July and August when Cape Coast was busting at the seams with obronis on their summer break from school, and the taxi drivers thought every obroni was only here for a few weeks. So of course, when they asked how long I’ve been in Cape Coast, the first question on rotation of all taxi drivers’ small-talk talking points, they were all delighted to hear that I’d been in town for a while and I’m staying for two years. The thing that really gets under my skin is when the driver and I agree on a price of a drop taxi and then when he gets to my apartment he tells me he didn’t realize how far away I live (bull shit) and tries to charge me more. Or when the driver picks up me and one or two of my obroni volunteers as an agreed shared ride – 30-60 pesewas each, depending on the route we give him – and then a few minutes later the driver says, “Where am I dropping you?” But at least if this happens you can get out, not pay anything and look for another ride.
During my first week in Ghana while trying out the taxi system without help, I forgot to ask the fare amount until I got to my front doorstep and the driver charged me double the expected price. I didn’t have any one cedis either, so I couldn’t give him the amount he should’ve charged me and then made an exit. It’s not very advisable to do that when you’re with a particularly hostile driver, but you can get away with it if you disagree over the price early and make pleasant small talk with them during the drive. It feels like a passive-aggressive cop-out but whatever.
I forget I am a minority in Ghana until I do anything that involves spending money. It's frustrating to be discriminated against, but I got used to it quickly. You have to. And I realize I have nothing to complain about if this is the most blatant form of discrimination I've faced in my life. To Africans, simply not being from Africa automatically means we have more money than they do. In Ghana you are considered wealthy if you can provide yourself your needs and most of your wants. If we used this principle as a measuring stick of wealth in America, I would be considered rich. Most people would be considered rich.
But we must not compare apples to oranges.
But I digress. The source of my sporadic frustration is not Ghanaian driving, but the transportation system as a whole; specifically, the unfair prices I sometimes face as a foreigner.
I get around Cape Coast by shared and drop taxis. Shared taxis are cheaper than drop taxis. Shared taxis pick up everyone on the side of the road who is pointing toward the direction the driver is going. Occasionally it can take as long as 15-20 minutes to find a shared taxi going your way. The function of a shared taxi is comparable to the purpose of a metro bus. The best part about taking shared taxis is hearing and telling the passengers “good morning” and “good afternoon,” and the drivers know they can't try to rip you off because a shared taxi is always a set price. Sometimes our volunteers are uncomfortable taking shared taxis and tro-tros the first couple weeks because they’re packed with Ghanaians. I don’t understand why, but I’m trying to. It's smart to avoid dodgy crowded areas in foreign countries, but it's pretty unavoidable in developed countries if you want cheap transportation.
Drop taxis take you from wherever you are to wherever you need to be. I use drop taxis when I don’t know where I’m going, when I’m really late and when it’s dark. Drop taxis are also used when you want to go from one town to another, as shared taxis only operate within town, but it’s a lot more expensive than using a tro-tro or a Ford van.
When I go from Cape Coast to another town, I use a tro-tro, which are boxy vans with three sitting benches in the middle. Tro-tros are the same price as shared taxis and are much cheaper than using drop taxis to get from one town to another. They’re similar to the combis I rode in while volunteering in Peru but much less crowded. Ford vans are more spacious than tro-tros and have air-conditioning. They’re most suitable when you have a long journey ahead. If you have a lot of bags, it’s best to use a drop taxi.
I’ve only come across taxis with air-conditioning in Accra. AC is a luxury in Cape Coast. Driving with the windows down is more fun anyway. I rely on my morning taxi rides to dry my wet hair from my shower and the afternoon rides to dry my sweat and cool me down. Seat belts are available, but they’re either stuffed into the seats or have a clip in them that you have to remove before fastening. I’ve been meaning to ask one of my taxi drivers the purpose of the clip. Kirsty told me it’s smart to build an army of taxi drivers by taking phone numbers from the ones I like. I call my drivers when I need someone to “pick me” (they don’t say “pick me up”). I only take phone numbers from taxi drivers who are calm, respectful, friendly but don’t talk the whole time, don’t ask me for my number and give me a good price the first time I ask. Ha, man, I’m a toughie. But really, I savor the quiet time the drop taxis provide me. They are my refuge after a chaotic bout in the market. Kirsty judges drivers based on conversation and how good of shape their car is in. Cape Coast taxis are all manual cars, which you don’t notice until you want to roll down the window and the lever is broken. But taxi drivers share cars, so I never recruit them into my army based on their car.
From my apartment to the main road at the bottom of the hill, it’s about a 10-minute walk. If I want to go toward Elmina, which is a 15-minute drive west of Cape Coast, I cross the road and try to get a taxi from that side. But most days I stay on the side of the road by the bottom of the hill to head to town or to Abura (a busy suburb where most of our volunteers’ homestay families live and where many of our NGO partners’ offices reside). When I see a taxi coming from the left, I use my right hand to point forward in the direction of Abura, or point behind me if I’m going to town. It’s disrespectful to use your left hand for anything in Ghana because historically the left hand was thought of as the dirty hand.
If I want a drop taxi I look for the taxis with no passengers. It’s 3 or 4 cedis to take to town. When a taxi pulls over for me, I bend down until I’m level with the driver (no need to lean in on the door – your money gets you a lot farther than your cleavage, unfortunately.. or fortunately?) and ask through their unrolled window, “Kingsway?” They nod. “How much?” I learned the hard way that no matter how long you’ve waited for a taxi, how hot it is, or how late you are, you must never forget to ask how much the fare is before getting in.
Whenever I forget to ask, I realize I’ve forgotten as soon as I get inside his car and we start driving. My stomach plummets because, out of sheer absentmindedness, I’ve subjected myself to a possible asshole. I’ve come up with the embarrassingly pessimistic discovery that every time an obroni approaches a taxi driver here, there’s a 50 percent chance he’s an asshole. I hate arguing with taxi drivers. It’s exhausting to constantly have to prove that I’m more than my white skin; I’m more than a money sign, and it’s even more exhausting to listen to their relentless bantering, all the while knowing that I wouldn’t even being having the conversation if my skin was black.
I only argue with taxi drivers when I have to. The majority of the arguments took place in July and August when Cape Coast was busting at the seams with obronis on their summer break from school, and the taxi drivers thought every obroni was only here for a few weeks. So of course, when they asked how long I’ve been in Cape Coast, the first question on rotation of all taxi drivers’ small-talk talking points, they were all delighted to hear that I’d been in town for a while and I’m staying for two years. The thing that really gets under my skin is when the driver and I agree on a price of a drop taxi and then when he gets to my apartment he tells me he didn’t realize how far away I live (bull shit) and tries to charge me more. Or when the driver picks up me and one or two of my obroni volunteers as an agreed shared ride – 30-60 pesewas each, depending on the route we give him – and then a few minutes later the driver says, “Where am I dropping you?” But at least if this happens you can get out, not pay anything and look for another ride.
During my first week in Ghana while trying out the taxi system without help, I forgot to ask the fare amount until I got to my front doorstep and the driver charged me double the expected price. I didn’t have any one cedis either, so I couldn’t give him the amount he should’ve charged me and then made an exit. It’s not very advisable to do that when you’re with a particularly hostile driver, but you can get away with it if you disagree over the price early and make pleasant small talk with them during the drive. It feels like a passive-aggressive cop-out but whatever.
I forget I am a minority in Ghana until I do anything that involves spending money. It's frustrating to be discriminated against, but I got used to it quickly. You have to. And I realize I have nothing to complain about if this is the most blatant form of discrimination I've faced in my life. To Africans, simply not being from Africa automatically means we have more money than they do. In Ghana you are considered wealthy if you can provide yourself your needs and most of your wants. If we used this principle as a measuring stick of wealth in America, I would be considered rich. Most people would be considered rich.
But we must not compare apples to oranges.
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