Yesterday was just one of those days. You know, when you’re tired and it takes 2 and half hours to get to work and you get ripped off/semi-extorted by a cab driver who drives you through dirt fields to take a short cut. You don’t know? Let me backtrack.
Yesterday was Monday morning, which in Accra, apparently means apocalyptic traffic. Tro-tro after tro-tro drove by our stop for almost an hour, each packed with people. Finally, some of us realized that it was hopeless and decided to cough up the extra cedis and split a cab downtown. After a 10 minute negotiation on the price, we hopped in. Most cab drivers in Accra are borderline psychotic, and this guy was no exception. Every back-ally shortcut he knew turned out to have packed, at which point he’d slam on the breaks and exclaim something like, “Why, why today?!” or “The traffic! So bad! Why?” Traffic practically seems like Accra’s biggest export, why was this guy so surprised? Finally after getting about half a mile from our house, he gave up. “I’ll see if there’s another cab or take you to the main road.” He basically told us it wasn’t worth the price we were paying to go downtown in this traffic. We could get out and find another cab. “How much will it cost for you to get us downtown?” we implored. After some more haggling, he revealed he’d do one stop downtown for 30 cedis. This was literally highway robbery but we were all too stressed to notice it.
Back on the road, our driver apparently had a better solution to fight the traffic: just drive in the opposite lane of traffic. “This is so not worth dying over,” I mumbled. “You don’t like it you can get out,” he mumbled back. Pretty sassy for a guy who’s literally driving against traffic with a car full of kids. Suddenly he pulled over into a restaurant parking lot, apparently to make sure there were no cops to witness his questionable driving decisions. “Anyone asks, you say we’re pulling into the bank,” he says. Uh, what part of this makes you think we’re going to back you up, buddy?
After making it through part of the choked streets of our neighborhood, he still wasn’t done with the surprises. He then pulled off the freeway and into a neighborhood, which lead to some dirt roads. At this point we were literally 4-wheeling it through fields in his mini taxi. All 4 of us passengers just started laughing. It was beyond ridiculous. Daryl pulled out her camera to document the ride, and we all placed bets on when we were actually going to get to work. 2 and half hours later I finally arrived. I’d made it all in one piece, but my nerves were shot and I was irritated on so many levels. It was really all downhill for the rest of the day after that ride.
Julianne perfectly summed up the stages of studying abroad: there’s the honeymoon stage at the beginning, when everything is so new and exciting. Then after a week or two, you hit and wall and between the humidity, bug bites, power outages and threat of traveler’s sickness, the novelty begins to wear off. After a few days of irritation and complaining, you eventually get over it and settle back in. You never quite reach that honeymoon stage again but you relax into a comfortable routine. The end of my honeymoon stage happened on Saturday, when we were perusing the Accra mall. I was tired and my stomach hurt. The fact that nothing I ordered actually matched the price on the menu, the fluorescent lights, the taxis trying to rip us off on the rides to and from there, missing the 4th of July earlier that week back home…it all just put me over the edge.
I was still feeling the “post-honeymoon” and post-traffic blues later that night when we all sat down to dinner at a neighborhood Turkish restaurant. The waiter came with the complimentary starter salads and a few people began to wave him off. There are two main rules in avoiding food poisoning in Ghana: do not drink the tap water and do not eat any fruits and vegetables that can’t be peeled. But then we all looked at each other. Salad had quickly become a point of fantasy for those of us reminiscing about food we missed from home. The salad looked so fresh. We were tired, irritated, traffic and travel weary. The waiter placed the salads in front of us and we all looked at each other. Those salad plates were cleaned faster than any dessert all trip.
YOLO, we at the salad.