As I exited the air-conditioned courthouse, I thought the opportunity for a good story that day had slipped through my fingers. Supreme court had been quiet and boring. In the appeals court, which was housed in the same building, the only action was a man asked for his sentence to be shortened. However, the court told him that he had received the lightest sentence possible for his crime of armed robbery. One judge warned the prisoner, “we can’t shorten your sentence, but if you keep complaining we do have the power to extend it.”
This two-minute interaction was nothing that The Chronicle newspaper would be interested in me writing about. My coworker Bernice suggested that we should go to photograph a community that had suffered from flooding every rainy season. I was devastated to remember that today was the first day that I had left my camera at home because it was always confiscated at court.
Bernice and I, therefore, decided to return to the office to get some work done. We walked down the courthouse stairs and headed towards the tro tro station. As we got close, we stepped off the curb and entered a hectic market that lined the streets. It was so busy that we could not use the sidewalk and instead wove between mopeds, trucks, and taxis. The smell of dried fish made me crinkle my nose as I tried not to pull a disgusted face. Live chickens clucked at me from their tiny wooden crates on the ground. A small child sat on the curb, eating a ripe tomato like it was a juicy peach. Intermingled with all of the produce and meat vendors was, strangely, dozens of vendors selling knock-off Nike slides.
I tried to take this all in as I ducked and wove around the women who carried large boxes of food, clothes, and drinks on their heads effortlessly. I was already sweating profusely as the sun beat down on my shoulders. Finally, the tro tro station came into view. To the untrained eye, it appeared the exact same as the rest of the sidewalk, crowded with hawkers and vendors, however, Bernice spotted it immediately.
We waited for the tro tro going to “La Paz” to come by, the mate hanging out the window yelling at the top of his lungs. The actual tro tro stop was too filled up with people for it to pull in, so it just stopped in the middle of the street as Bernice and I slid into the last row of seats. As we did so, a burly man in a military hat jumped into the front seat.
From that second, everything moved very quickly. The military man began yelling at the top of his lungs, gesturing aggressively at the driver. We were already on the move, so the driver ignored him and focused on driving. The tro tro erupted around me, as the passengers began to argue with the military man in Twi.
I leaned over to Bernice and asked her what was going on. She told me that the man was trying to arrest the driver, the mate, and us for picking us up illegally on the street. I became very nervous. I really did not want to be arrested in Ghana.
However, that fear was soon replaced with a different one as the military man climbed over another passenger and began to shake the driver furiously, attempting to grab the steering wheel away from him. Our tro tro veered dangerously into other lanes, creating a cacophony of honks and shouts from other drivers. Then the military man grabbed the gear stick and shoved it into neutral, causing us to come to a halt in the middle of the three-lane highway. I was sure that there was a massive pile-up behind us, but thankfully everybody managed to avoid rear-ending us.
Bernice had had more than enough at this point. This is a woman who once told me that she strangled a taxi driver with her purse strap when he tried to rob her, so I felt fairly safe with her. She burst out of her seat, pretty much climbing over other passengers to get closer to the front. She confronted the psychotic military man, shouting over and over “where is your ID?” The man appeared to be flustered, especially after Bernice told him she was a journalist and began taking his picture.
Bernice got in his face, getting the entire tro tro to ask for his ID. He appeared at a loss for words at this woman who was standing up against him so boldly. After around five minutes of verbal berating, he got out of the tro tro slowly, claiming that he was calling for backups. Bernice ordered the tro tro to leave without him, leaving him on the side of the road calling for reinforcements.
As Bernice sat down with me again, she explained that his man was a con artist. He was trying to extort the driver and mate for all the money they had on them. He was not affiliated with the military and therefore could not produce an ID. When he left, he was undoubtedly calling a friend who would come back him up, but thankfully we left before his friend arrived.
I sat back, heart still beating. There really was never a dull moment in Ghana.