Holy Mole!

Hey there folks. Today I'll cover my recent weekend and the safe and enjoyable method of public transportation I use to get to and from work each day!

The Trotro is easy enough to describe. Take an old caravan style van, place 4 rows of benches in it, add fold down chairs on the ends for maximum accomadation, take it out of the junk yard and place it on the streets of Ghana with somewhere between 15 and 17 people! Sometimes they are loaded on top as well with all manner of things. It is not an uncommon thing to see trotros that have tipped over on the side of the road. Never in town however, only between towns. The other day on my way to work the door on my tro actually fell over. That should give you a good idea of how beat up these vehicles are, and I use the word vehicle only because it has four wheels and an engine, but then again, a lot of things fit that description. Trotros go on predetermined routes, similar to buses, but unlike buses stop anywhere to load or unload and have no time schedule. Basically, the rule in ghana for all public transportation is "it will go when it's full". This can be a little inconvenient when taking a bus to another town and it stays at the station for 3 hours waiting to fill up. Besides trotros, there are also taxis. There is a drop taxi, which works like any standard taxi and a line taxi which also goes on specific routes like the tros, but is a little more spendy. When I first arrived in Kumasi, it took me ages to get to work because getting on a trotro or taxi is no easy task. The first step is recognition. Sometimes the "mate" (one who collects money) opens the door and yells the destination. Otherwise, the mate does a serious of hand motions and pointing. The direction the finger points determines the tro destination. Of course, for an out of towner, these hand signals make no sense to me and the tro would often pass on by unbeknownst to me that it was the one I needed to jump on. However, sometimes there isn't even a word or a hand signal, people just pile in. I believe this is because many people have learned the mates and drivers and what destination they go to. This becomes a huge problem when needing to board the tro. Often there is a mass of people waiting at various location to board a tro. The minute one stops, there is a mad rush to get in. Pushing, bashing, fighting, nashing of teeth... well maybe not the last one. Once you have finally crammed yourself into a tro with 15 other people it takes off and at some undetermined time, the mate decides to collect money and when you want to get off, you yell "Mate", and say the drop area or just point if you're nearby. Welcome to my primary method of transportation.

As for this past weekend, I went with the UW med student and another 4th year medical student from Chicago to Mole (pronounced mo-lay). We snagged a bus from Kumasi to Tamale at 5pm and it only too a little over 7hrs! Much like the tros, this bus had fold down seats in between each row. So, suffice it to say, the bus was brimming. On top of that, much of the road between kumasi and tamale is dirt. It was relatively smooth, so bumpiness wasn't too much of an issue, but dust was. Since no car, bus or tro has AC in ghana, the windows are always down. While this is a relatively effective cooling method, it also lets more dust in than I would prefer. The dust likes to stick nicely to sweaty skin turning slightly muddy. We arrived in Tamale tired, hungry and covering in a very very thick layer of dirt (I felt gritty). We then tried to figure out when the bus left for Mole, which was no easy task at 12:30 in the morning. After getting lots of people to point us in the direction of the bus terminal where the bus for Mole departed we then asked the people around (mostly sleeping) when the bus left. The answer we got was "3 to 4". Not "between 3Am and 4AM" but "3 minutes to 4AM"... Considering that the ghanaian sense of times doesn't really work in minutes, we decided it would be best to show up at 3AM. The others were pretty desperate to wash up. Using our travel guide we took a taxi to the closest hotel (which wasn't too far, within walking distance) and woke the staff to get a room for a couple of hours. After the he showed us the room he said, "ok, so two rooms". It was a tiny room and certainly 3 people usually wouldn't want to stay there, but we were only there for 3 hours. So it took us about 15 minutes to convey to him that we only wanted one room. At which point he went and talked to the manager and returned to tell us we had to get two rooms. We then took matters into our own hands and had words with the manager. He was completely drunk and irrational. He said it was impossible for three people to stay in one room. We then left saying it's one room or none, we're leaving. He then caved of course and then probably went back to his drunken sleep and remembered nothing when he woke up. We also noticed that there were quite a few girls standing around outside the hotel. We had decided at that point it was probably a "multi-service" hotel. After washing and resting briefly in our tiny, run down, and filthy room, we left again for the bus station where we eventually learned that all the tickets had been sold for the bus to mole. After much running around, we eventually negatotiated a private trotro to take us to Mole with about 8 other abrunis. I had had very little sleep by this point and kept drifting off on the ride there. The rode to mole is mostly a dirt road and severely washboarded. The repetative bumps weren't terribly uncomfortable, except when I fell asleep against the window and got a series of lumps on my head in different locations from each time my head hit the window. On occasion the driver would also hit the breaks at which point I would slam into the seat in front of me. I was basically a human pinball.

We finally arrived in Mole around 8:30AM, rested and washed up. Mole is the largest reservation in ghana and is unfenced. The main attraction: elephants, of course. there is only one hotel in the park, which has a watering hole right behind the building. Each morning, the elephants come to cool of and bathe at the watering hole. It was quite a sight. We took several guided trips into to and around the watering hole to observe the elephants and any other animals in the area. There were baboons, several variety of deer and antelope and a few warthogs. There was one family of warthogs that grazed around the hotel and paid little attention to the humans there. While getting close to wild elephants was an amazing experience, my favorite part of Mole was the many large beetles that would come out at night. We fondly called them the retarded beetles and pondered at how they were extinct by now. When they decided to fly, they wouldn't be able to control their momentum and smack into walls then plummet to the ground. More often than not, they would land upside down and not be able to turn themselves over. The best part was when you would nudge them with your shoe they would hiss at you and it would sound like a wind up town. When they were overturned and their legs were going, they perfectly resembled a wind up toy.

We left Mole at 4AM (because that's the only time the bus left) and made it to Tamale around 9. Of course we then discovered that the only bus back to kumasi that day was full. So instead of renting a hotel and staying in Tamale (which was none too impressive), we bit the bullet and got a taxi to take us to Kumasi. It was more comfortable and much faster than the bus (which we passed because it had broken down. A common occurrence). but it was closer to the ground which made it all the more dusty. When I went home and showered (bucketed water over myself) I shampooed my hair and it was a beautiful brownish red. I don't know if I've ever been that dirty... not even in India. Anyways, this has been a long enough post and this internet cafe has had the same song on loop for the past hour. It times like this when I really really miss fast internet. Time to go. Take care everyone.