Friday, July 5

Trash, especially plastic trash, befouls just about every square meter of Ghana. Here is the open sewer near the river. The smell of fecal matter comes up with every gust of wind.

This is Accra's main river. All this will end up in a kilometer or two, in the Gulf of Guinea and the Atlantic. How do fish survive what people send to them?

Tro-tro ettiquette.
If you want to travel in Accra (or just about any Third World city I've been in) you need to learn the rules.

Tro-tro's don't stop everywhere and it's not always clear where they are headed. You have to listen carefully and try to master the Accran accent. "Yaaavaaadeeee" the guy yells. He's hanging out the sliding door, hectoring passersby to hop on his van. After a few times I finally realized he was saying "Labadi", the name of the main north-south artery in northern Accra. Many times I could never figure what the guy was saying. {Capetown was even more interesting. The guys blew whistles before they shouted their destinations.}
Once you find a place where the tro-tro's stop (stops are never more than a few hundred meters apart) you should make eye contact with the tout. He'll repeat his destination ("LaaaPaaahhhz" = La Paz, an Accran neighborhood). You will be expected, from that, to decide whether you want on or not. For me it often required a short conference with the tout before I committed.
To join requires quick action. You pop your head inside the van and rapidly survey for the proper seat. Courtesy requires that you take the most distant open spot. If that means way in the back corner, well, then that's your place. Don't worry about getting trapped, people will always allow you the time to exit when it comes time.
Once seated you need to find the money for the fare. If you are intelligent you already asked the tout about the proper fee, which hereabout ranges from fifteen cents to 25 cents. Correct change is appreciated but few have it. Don't worry when no one asks for your money when you first set off. They are masters of timing. When things settle down the tout will start fetching the cash. If you are in the far back of the van you will need to hand your money to someone in front of you to be passed forward. If you sit forward expect to be part of the chain of custody of someone's money from the rear. Miraculously the money gets to the tout in plenty of time. I never saw it fail. (Once a guy complained he'd been shorted ten pesos (there are one hundred pesos in a cedi, the Ghanaian currency. Ten pesos is five cents). I never found out if he got his proper change.
Getting off is easy, just give a nod to the tout. The right side of the van has folding seats that are taken up to make room for anyone exiting.
In the city, unlike long distance travel, you don't have to wait to leave a spot until the van is full. Here they go and go and go, full or not full. But fee tro-tro's are less than 80% full from my experience.