Driving in Ghana

The first thing that must be addressed is the roads. It won't come as surprise to you that many of the roads are dirt but even knowing this gives absolutely no idea to how bad they really are. There are pot holes everywhere and parts of the road that from huge downpours are completely uneven and almost impossible for any of the cars here to make it through. Don't think for a second though that paved roads are any better. They have just as many potholes and bumps. Unfortunately, this leads to a lot of scary and dangerous driving. The drivers are so determined to avoid the potholes that they will swerve whichever way to avoid them. When they arne't swerving they are simply driving on the wrong side of the road, if that's teh side that has less of them. Becuase of this it often feels like a game of chicken. The driver will be on the wrong side of the road, either because of the quality of the road or just to pass someone, going up hill or around a blind turn and soon you will see another car heading straight towards you. Just in the nick of time we'll swerve out of the way and into safety. There have definitely been some close calls. Usually in a trotro full of people, us foreigners will be the only ones who are afraid. To everyone else this is pretty normal.
Then there is also the traffic to deal with. Traffic out of kumasi at rush hour is the worse i've ever seen. i don't know anything about l.a. or newyork traffic but i think it's worse than bay area. I say this not so much because of the sitting there, but by the way the drivers handle it. For instance, the other day, we had a driver that decided to create his own middle lane (which really was closer to being on the other side of oncoming traffic) in order to avoid traffic. we were driving down the wrong side of the street with his horn held down to pass everyone. This seemed to be working fine until someone form teh opposite direction also got into this middle lane in order to make a left turn. Then when no one would allow him enough space to turn for 20 minutes there was a huge cluster of cars just sitting in one place with horns blairing.
Another issue is pedestrians and crossing. Pedestrians do not have the right of way here and there are very few crosswalks. This makes it sooo hard to find a safe way to ever cross and because of this people are stupid. Last night on the way home from kumasi we had a very scary close call. On a main road where ppl drive fast a mother and her child decided to run accross right as our trotro was coming. We literally swerved to the other side of teh road to avoid hitting them. THis was one time when everyone, not just us foreigners, were freaking out because we were so close to hitting them.


so after my experiences here, i'm pretty sure i will be able to relax when i hit traffic at home (just in time for moving into bay area traffic -- i got into UC Santa Cruz) also i have to say to kailey, i will never ever give you crap about your driving again. i actually look forward to it.