Akwaaba, Welcome to Trafi-ccra!

Akwaaba, Welcome to Trafi-ccra!

Dear Friends,

This is a first of some summer updates to come( hopefully).

It's been just a full day since I've been home and I’m observing so many things. I’ll try and keep a blog as well as email updates.

First of all, people be afraid, ACCRA IS congested! Everyone and his brother NEED to have a car as a symbol of social status. So especially in new-development areas, the Legons and after, where the young upwardly mobile upper and upper middle class families live, the traffic situation is horrible. Daddy drives his own car to work, as does Mommy, while the driver takes posh looking kids to expensive school. That makes 3 cars per family, an average of two, when Mom OR Dad drives children to work. On the roads to these areas therefore, there is always traffic. Same as on the roads to these schools for the privileged in Accra, especially those situated along major roads: GIS, Morning Star, North Ridge, Ridge Church. You do not need a 'traffic-watch' guy on the radio to tell you to avoid those roads in the morning and later on in the day. And these make up residential and domestically generated traffic of Accra.

Then there is the ever prevalent commercial traffic, caused by workers during rush hour and afterwards caused by a whole collection of other factors. This morning around 10.30, am on my way to Burma Camp, there was so much traffic on the Shangri-la road getting to Airport residential and afterwards at 37. WHY? People were not getting to work as it was past reporting time; they were not leaving on lunch breaks and there was no big event in town! So why the traffic? Is this evidence of the booming and ever-expanding informal sector in Accra? People are hassling. There are limited white collar office jobs so you make it happen in other ways.

Hmm, at least the traffic this morning was caused by cars. For places like Circle, Kaneshie and Makola (transportation and commercial centers in Accra), the traffic is caused by an intricate system that exists between cars, people and stationed hawked goods. It’s crazy. People rush across the streets, zigzagging through the inch spaces between cars, avoiding accidents by such close calls that the faint-hearted cringe. Then there are also hawked goods stationed right along the road, so potential buyers may see them better. These make the roads smaller and cause human and vehicular traffic. But what does this matter? You think it is a priority for the market woman at Makola, who sits in 85F heat all day, and barely makes enough to feed her 4 children and bum hubby? Should it be? Oh and then my favorite factor, the agile-footed, stiff-necked, math-savvy and well-postured head hawkers. They carry their wares on a flat silver pan on their heads, run after cars in traffic, calculate cost and change in seconds and sometimes even offer child care simultaneously, to the kid on their backs! These people are a huge obstruction to traffic, not because they get in the way of cars, they're too skilled for that, but because cars slow down in green lights so as to get pure water, plantain chips, calendars, or a gift for the children at home. In these places where this balanced and intricate system is operated, the traffic is eternal. So you brace yourself for it, ready your handkerchief to tackle traffic heat, tune in to a radio station of choice, buy a fanyogo and crawl on to your destination.

So like I said, let's be afraid. With the economy of Ghana stabilizing and the recent discovery of oil, the middle class in Ghana will soon be expanding and O praise God more people will 'receive' cars. This can only mean more traffic and plenty troubles. And from whence will come our help? Not the government, for it is they who own the multiple cars. And like us all, they enjoy being able to get their plantain chips, news papers and bagged apples off the street! Why should they want to bring change?