Ghana Day 41

The rest of my Sunday was boring, as predicted. I decided not to try my luck with Tony, since I didn’t finish showering and eating until 8pm and that’s pretty much my bedtime. I’m going to have to one of these days though, because he texts me twice a day. I swear that’s not creepy here, so don’t be worried.

I got in to work all excited about going to the presidency, but it turns out Tim decided to go without me, and when I saw him at 10am he was like, hello. And I said, did you already go? And he said, yes I did. So I said, you said you would take me wit you, and he said, yes I did say that. But I am going to Tema now… I’m really not sure how those were related, but he said he would take me Tuesday. I won’t hold my breath.

The reporter I’ll be doing the Ogbogbloshie story with is finding out where exactly the “recycling” dump is, and said we would go before Obama gets here (Friday). On that note, I’m going in to the embassy tomorrow morning with my passport and my Graphic intern badge to see if anything can be wrangled. Again, not holding my breath, but it would be pretty cool.

So since my plans for the day mostly fell through, I spent all late morning and afternoon reading back-papers. I’ve taken notes now on May and June, although I wanted Jan-Apr as well. Apparently they haven’t been sent back from the binders yet, six months later (from the earliest one). I don’t think I saw December on the shelf either, now that I think about it. The Daily Guide has their papers and the Graphic’s bound within 2 months. They’ve also got much better internet, enough computers to go around, and better-working AC. While I’m definitely more impressed with the Graphic’s house style, the Guide definitely strikes me as better run. I think it probably has to do with being a state-run enterprise, but it’s still pretty bad.

I left work at close to 5 so I could see if there was actually a free bus to Nungua as I’d been told. It turns out they have 2 buses, and they alternate routes (although I think one might always go to Kaneshie, which is sort of nearby). This week the route was not in my favor. Unfortunately, my timing was therefore awful for getting home. I got to Circle (my midway point) ok, but the traffic there was atrocious. Circle is obviously a roundabout (it’s actually Nkrumah Circle), and for whatever reason no traffic in the roundabout was moving – at all. So the cars in every direction were backed up, and in the half hour I stood there only 2 or 3 cars decided to turn and go to Nungua (there’s always a problem getting a car there in rush hour, so it was particularly bad when no cars were going anywhere). These few were all far away from me when they stopped and got mobbed immediately. By the time I decided to just start walking and hope I could get to a junction where cars were at least moving, there were a couple hundred people waiting at the stop, and I’m sure a decent number of them wanted to go to the same place I did.

Well, there’s really nowhere to walk to from Circle that’s terribly productive, so I didn’t have a real plan for finding economic fare home. I decided to try my luck hailing a cab. Some fare context: normally I should pay .50c for a tro-tro seat, and if I take a taxi that picks other people up it’ 1.20. If I get a “dropping,” which is door to door service, a fair price (before the fuel hike) was 8c, so around ten is probably normal. When I finally got a taxi to stop, he told me 15c, and I said no. I told him I’d give him 10 and he could pick up other fares. He said no, but then after I got out and walked on I think he reconsidered the offer and decided to take it (he really was being pretty reasonable – the traffic was awful). So he tried to pick up more people at 2c a person, but the first two ladies he picked up refused to pay. He pulled over and told them to get out, but they wouldn’t because they still wanted to go to Nungua, they just wanted to pay the normal fare (1.50 because of rush hour). So we sat at the side of the road for 4 or 5 minutes before they finally got out. We picked up a couple other people who were willing and able to pay, and then sat in traffic for about an hour and 15 minutes. If we hadn’t driven on the burm the entire way and been really obnoxious, I’m sure it would have taken 3 or 4 hours. Most of the people we passed were at a standstill. Normally I don’t approve of such behavior, but honestly, I’m glad he did it. I got dinner while it was still hot.

I’m sorry half my post is about commuting; it just reflects the distribution of my time. I need to time my trips better from now on though; I can’t afford to pay 10c to come home many more times.