Tro-tro is an Africian word (I'm not sure if it's Ghanian since apparently they are all over this part of Africa) that means 'it stops'. Tro-tros are these vans that travel along predetermined routes picking up and dropping off people along the way. The vans are all fairly clean but they differ in their level of.. let's say 'put togetherness'. One of my favorite games to play is how many dashboard lights are on in the Tro-tro. The Tro-tro is owned by the driver but my favorite thing about Tro-tros is the mate. His job is to hang half way out the window and yell where the Tro is going. He is also responsible for filling it to max capacity even if that means having people sit on his lap. I once saw 2 guys hanging off the back of the Tro-tro standing on the bumper. I wonder if they got to pay less.
As I sit squished into a Tro-tro, shoulders and legs touching I like to look around and guess what everyone is doing there. On their way to or from work, on the way to the market, off to visit friends? But no matter where they are going I know they are thinking 'what is this obroni doing here?'
Obroni is the magical term of endearment the Ghanians have assigned to all white people. They don't use it in a derogatory way, it's just what they yell at you as you are walking down the road. My favorite way to hear obroni is yelled at me from the little kids we are constantly walking by around town. They will chase after you while screaming it then when you turn and respond they have very little to say, they just wanted you to know that you are, in fact, an obroni. My least favorite way to hear it is from the people I work with while they are speaking Twi which has only happened a few times. There is a term for a black person that we'll yell back at the kids sometimes. I wonder what it will be like to go home and walk around without hearing obroni. How will I know what my skin color is? I also wonder what would happen if I start yelling out the skin color of everyone that walked by..
Anyway back to Tro-tros, I have come up with a few ground rules for riding them:
1) Ask twice where they are going. If they hesitate, they aren't going there.
2) Never pay more than the locals.
3) Bag goes on your lap. This is to protect it both from other people and from falling through the floor.
4) Take up as much room as you can when you sit down. The entire trip will be a silent war over who can get the most leg room.
5) If the tro breaks down, start walking. It's going to be a while.
6) Pee before you get on. Its going to be a bumpy ride.
Week 2 has been all about my work site. I was assigned my project and got started on it (more on that later). I met the director of the American side of the NGO that I'm working for. And I participated in 2 very busy clinic days (again, more on those later). During the evenings we get so bored we've started spying on our neighbors and now we are convinced the orphanage is just a cover for a very lucrative international drug ring (it's actually more plausible than you would think). I got so sick one night I thought I was going to die. And over the weekend we went to another beach resort to meet up with some other American volunteers. After the beach we stopped on the way home for pizza and chocolate.
Getting comfortable here wasn't difficult. I can now walk through camp with very little supervision and I'm practicing my haggling skills (they are still a work in progress). I was struggling at first with the idea that it seemed like I was insulting people when I said I was here to volunteer but as I talk to more Ghanians I realize how they feel about their country and the help they receive. One guy that I met explained it to me this way 'if you have 2 pineapples and you give 1 to your neighbor, they will wonder why you didn't give them both'. And apparently it's worse with refugees. It seems wrong to say we should stop helping so much but it seems like we need to do less handing out and more helping out.
Ghanian food I tried this week: Fufu (a very sticky mashed mixture of plantain and cassava (potato-like plant) that is eaten with very spicy chicken and fish stew, usually with your hands (right hand only))
Best thing I saw carried on a head: a clear wooden box with a live chicken in it.
Number of times the lights went out: 9
Usually the only wildlife you will see here are the chickens, goats, and sheep of the local farmers but we got a glimpse of this guy on our way to the beach. We fed him a banana and he followed us to the gate of the resort where the security guards had to chase him away.
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