816,497…

It’s midday in Accra. I’m stuck in traffic on Liberation Road, one of Accra’s main arteries in and out of the city. Wedged between two Ghanaians on the first of four overly-occupied rows of seating behind the driver, I can feel sweat dripping down my shins beneath the denim I regretfully opted for this morning.

All of the windows are open, but the humidity makes our vehicle of more than a dozen passengers feel like a sauna on wheels. My feet are burning up, resting on the who-knows-how-thin metal floorboard directly above the van’s transmission. Shifting out of neutral to first, stopping, then starting again in what starts to become a familiar pattern, the driver is manually turning on and off the motor’s heater below my shoes. Claustrophobia is setting in, but I’ve nowhere to go. I take a deep breath, adjust my feet, and remember that this is part of what’s to be expected when riding in a tro.

need a lift?

Tro tros are Ghana’s answer to resourceful, independent, inexpensive public transportation. Without any money being invested in these dated, pieced-together passenger vans by the government, tro tros move Ghanaians around Accra far cheaper than taxis. And because these dilapidated “buses” follow set routes throughout the city, they are the chosen means of transportation for most of us to get to and from our internships.

The standard tro tro looks like a blocky, delivery van, complete with one sliding back door so passengers can enter or alight (tro tro talk for exit) with ease and three to four rows of custom seats that swivel on hinges for these alighters to navigate around. They operate using a pair of Ghanaians: one driver and one mate. The driver’s role is self explanatory, but the mate has a different set of responsibilities. He (my coworkers say they’ve yet to see a woman mate) hollers out directions, operates the door, aids alighters, hoists children, yells at other cars whose drivers get too close, puts up cones around the tro when it breaks down, manages the passengers’ coins and leans out the window to inform soon-to-be tro passengers where the vehicle is headed. Tros often have no AC, seatbelts, airbags or properly functioning instrument gauges. It also seems that nine out of 10 tros have some sort of rope affixed to the exterior, used either to lash doors suffering from broken latches, or as a means of fastening other exterior parts back onto the vehicle’s body.

This tro in particular has a hole in the center of the steering wheel where the standard horn or airbag would reside. I look at the dash and notice the number 816,497 on the odometer. It continues ticking over, signaling that it still works! Now, chances are this is in kilometers rather than miles, but even with the conversion, it means this tro has covered more than 500,000 miles of Ghanaian roads during its lifetime. I guess nothing should surprise me about these mighty tros by now, but somehow this little observation, I feel, is worth mentioning.

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