Roundtrip to Tamale - A Study of Ghanaian Driving

Some necessary pre-reading for the story:
1) There does not appear to be a “correct” side of the road to drive on in Ghana. Whichever side works for you is fine – if there are potholes on the right, move left. If there’s a biker on the left, move right. And somewhere right up the middle is quite all right too. One rule to keep in mind: if someone is approaching you in the other direction, both of you should move to your right in order pass each other.
2) Using your horn is not a gesture of annoyance or frustration (necessarily). The horn is a method of speaking to other road users – a signal of sorts. You can say hello to your friend in another car with your horn. You can let vehicles around the corner or over the hill know that you are coming with your horn. Take a look at those cows - they're not very smart, and they won't move as you get closer. . . even in a greyhound sized bus. As a result, you can also encourage the cows (goats/pigs/chickens) to get out of the way with your horn. (feel free to improvise)
3) Pack the vehicle beyond capacity. You would think that when seats are filled, you would call it a day – shut the doors and head off. Absolutely not - it’s totally reasonable to seat more people on top of each other, on top of bags, on top of the car. No problem. Also – when packing a truck, the sky is literally the limit. Just keep piling the (whatever you happen to be shipping) as high as gravity will let you, throw a tarp over it all, tie it down with some rope and you’re set. This gives you a ten foot wide truck that is thirty feet tall and takes corners . . . badly.

To bring these points together in a small case study:

Yesterday morning, as I was about to leave the house for work, my director (of the district office of MoFA) pulled up in his pickup.

“We’re all going into Tamale (the regional capital) today to present a report, so no one will be in the office,” he said.
“Oh,” I said (a little thrown off – it didn’t fit my plan for the day, but I wasn’t about to waste time alone in an empty office), “maybe I should just come along then – is there room in the truck?”
“Yes, yes of course,” he said.

Hah. Room in the truck. In the front were the director, the driver, the secretary, and the director’s three-year-old son. In the back were the director’s wife, myself, and two other staff members (both of whom took up a sizeable amount of the bench seat of the truck). That’s eight – tons of space.

I spent five or so minutes trying to rummage a seatbelt out of the crack of the seat – after a number of “oh – sorry I didn’t mean to touch,” and “if you just could lift up one – tiny – bit?” I finally got my pinky finger wrapped around what felt like a strap. I wiggled and pulled and wiggled and pulled and finally, triumphantly, pulled out . . . nothing. Big canvas strap with nothing whatsoever at the end. I took a deep breath and realized that with the close quarters I was confined to, chances were that in an accident I wouldn’t move an inch anyways. The man sitting on half of my left thigh heard my sigh and said, “Don’t worry, this man, he drives like an American.” I couldn’t decide what that meant or whether it made me feel any better at all. In spite of all my fretting, we made it safely to Tamale – pretty squished and sweaty and bounced around, but safe.

But the way home – hah – that was exciting.

We left town at about 6 pm – I’m not sure if there’s such thing as rush hour in Ghana, but we had the road to ourselves. Still no seatbelt. Still totally packed in, with the added bonus of everything people had bought in Tamale over the course of the day now being under my feet and on my lap and over my head. Going 140 k down the highway out of town (straight down the middle, of course). Oh – some goats are crossing (honk). Oh, that bicycle is awfully far onto the road (honk). Oh, watch out for the three generations of women carrying water across the road (honk). It felt for a while like the truck was going to take off, as air whipped through the windows and I was pushed deep into the seat by the acceleration - but we kept all four tires on the ground, so I started to relax.

Then I saw one of the miraculously stacked 30-foot high trucks coming over the crest of the hill.

Like us, the truck was driving in the communal middle lane. It wasn’t slowing down – neither were we. The driver moved us an almost imperceptible amount towards the right of the road, and I suppose the oncoming truck must have compensated some too. As we came within about twenty feet of each other, I bit my lip, squeezed my eyes shut tight, held my breath, and wedged myself as firmly as I could between my seat-mates in the hope that they could act as a restraining device. The pick-up shuddered as the truck barreled past, and dust rushed through the windows and into the cab in its wake. I coughed – realized I was still breathing, and hazarded to open my eyes. “Still alive”, I thought, and thanked God that there had still been some daylight while we performed that maneuver.

The sun had set by the time we reached the turnoff for Damongo and began the sixty-five kilometre drive along the badly paved and well pot-holed gravel access road. In daylight, the bumpiness is not so bad – I had just sat back and resigned myself to a decent amount of jostling. But at night, the headlights put every bump into sharp relief – the really big ones loomed up in the distance, and my whole body was braced for each impact. Just after 7 p.m. the driver turned the radio on, and everyone else in the car got really excited, asking him to put it on one particular station – 92.7, for “Countryside” from 7 to 8. A hush fell over the car, and everyone began to hum along to the music.

What a surreal moment – travelling in that sardine-packed, dust-coated pick-up truck in pitch blackness down a rural road in Ghana . . . listening to Tim McGraw and Dolly Parton. As we hit another bump straight-on, the director sighed, “This music is so calming”.