Early on the second day we set out on a four day trip journeying three hours inland. The first hour was all Accra. We moved through intersections without lights or lane markers where drivers stop, turn, and drive when they please in a universally understood system. One beep of the horn tells someone you’re going and they need to make room. It also says you’re passing or changing lanes. That same tone carries translations that all local drivers know the nuances of. To me in the passenger seat, it is a thrilling song and dance where cars get impossibly close to other drivers, motorbikes, and pedestrians crossing the free way. Along the road vendors pile food, water, and Temu products atop their heads and move between the cars. Here, a beep is also a sign that they have a customer waiting.
As we moved out of the city the definition of a lane blurred, physically and societally. Once we climbed the mountain separating Accra from the rest of the country, where mansions sat with a smoggy vista of the city’s sprawl, the already rare road markings vanished completely. Here, a two lane road became three, a three lane road became five. Drivers put their car anywhere there was room, and a few places there wasn’t.
In a snap the car moves from the far right to the far left with a truck coming right at you. One moment later you’re even further right riding the dirt shoulder with a motorbike so close it is almost inside the car and there’s a 50% chance it is driving the wrong direction. All of this is to avoid frequent potholes that somehow do not come close to the size of those in Philly. Cherelle Parker strikes again. At points along the ride, our 4x4 pickup truck became critical as the pavement gave way to rocky dirt, only to come right back a few minutes down the road.
Lining the street, which is heavily trafficked since it connects Accra to Africa’s largest manmade lake, Lake Volta, are local markets bustling with people selling clothes, phone cases, food, and just about anything else; independently operated buses, which are vans filled to the brim with people and so much cargo that trunks are bungied closed and sacks are strapped to the roof; billboards advertising funerals; frequent construction crews widening the road, and police checkpoints where they collect money from occasional victims. Several times the bumpiness pulled me towards sleep, only for a sudden movement to jerk me awake. Our driver, Daniel, knew the road intimately. His mind was a map of every pothole and speed bump. As a result, with closed eyes you had no way of knowing if your next movement would be left, right, forward, backward, up, or down. This was often the case with open eyes as well. From behind it looks like a cartoon portrayal of a drunk driver as the car makes sweeping swerves across the entire width of the road and beyond. Only Daniel knew what was next and he kept that a closely guarded secret, since we did not speak much. The silence was cut by a local radio station playing American R&B. Frequent interjections that would cut the music mid verse for the radio host to call us baby, darling, and honey in a voice much too sexy for the morning show. She said she wanted to get to know us, and I really believe her. After three hours of willing away motion sickness we pulled up a small side road predominantly made of loose rock and Daniel eased the car to a stop in front of our destination. At times the odds seemed slim, but we made it. The good news was we had four days until we had to make the drive back.
