I think I am bad luck for tro-tro drivers. I don't know if it's because it's true or because I'm just taking them more often, but I can now count on 2 hands the amount of times I've had a tro-tro break down to the point that everyone has to get off and find a new one. And each time this happens is an adventure in itself. Are you going to get the right amount of money back? Are you going to get your money back at all? Based on where you get picked up and where you are going the ride cost a different amount and once you've broken down the mate will usually just give back whatever you are happy with. My common tro-tro route costs me 1 cedi 20 peswas (about 35 cents) and each time we've broken down I've gotten back the 1 cedi note but the 20 peswas have mysteriously been missing. I usually just consider it the fee for the distance they've brought me, count it as a wash and start walking. The difference comes in where you break down. I've been at a spot where the rest of my ride cost 80 peswas. Hey! I just made 20 off the day. I'll take that. But Friday. Oh Fridayyy. First of all I was at the tro-tro station and usually there are 1 or 2 waiting to go to where I need to be. I hop on and hope that the mate I have isn't a jerk. But Friday, I had to wait for almost half and hour while some guy tried to sell me sandals and got very upset when I didn't want any. He even enlisted the help of the lady next to me to try and guilt me into a purchase. Finally a tro-tro rolls around. Remember that thing I said about the 'no lines' thing here. Yeah, every one that is waiting just shoves right on. Luckily, or unluckily as chance may have had it, I got a seat. We're bumping along for no more than 5 minutes (of a half an hour ride) and the tro hits a pot hole and smoke starts coming out of the engine. Great. I jump off and go to the mate to collect my money back. A 1 cedi note he gives me! Well I'll be damned if I'm going to lose money off this tro-tro and the mate has run off already with his bag of coins so I start walking down the road to where I know the rest of my ride will only cost a cedi. Which brings me to my other point about tro-tros breaking down. Usually, and legally tro-tros are boarded at tro-tro stations- nothing fancy about them, they don't even rival the bus stops we are used to, just a place for the tro driver to pay a fine. Once you are out of the station it's heads or tails whether or not you will get a seat on a passing tro-tro. If they have let off a passenger and are looking to fill the seat you might be able to flag them down if you know the proper hand signals. If not, you just have to stand on a corner and hope that someone is getting off of a tro going the way you need to go. It's not as bad as it seems. I've never really stood waiting for more than 20 minutes. After a tro breaks down though the mate is usually helping the driver get the tro-tro is working order enough to fill up and break down somewhere else so he doesn't have the time or motivation to try and find you a new ride. It becomes up to you and your legs to get you to somewhere that is conducive for tro-tro pick ups. And when it's as hot as it is here and you've run out of water, walking half a mile down the dusty road isn't alway all that fun.
That's every time a tro-tro breaks down. And like I've said, I can count on 2 hands how many times that has happened to me now, in the 2 months I've been here. Big deal, you get off one tro and get onto another, that doesn't mean you are bad luck, right? Well that brings me to Thursday. I have a theory that the events of Thursday morning were in response to the practical joke I played on my mother Wednesday night. I had to get a passport photo taken for my visa renewal and someone made the comment that it looked like a mug shot. Soon after the comment was made, my mom received said passport photo with a story of my alleged arrest. Everything turned out ok. She didn't even respond until a guilt filled 24 hours later when I finally gave in and told her it was a joke. Either way that might have been enough of a disturbance in the force to cause Thursday morning, or Tropocaplyse, as it should hence forth be referred, to happen. We did have lights off all Wednesday night though so I'm still skeptical. So I wake up Thursday morning at 6am after a night of tossing and turning. I had woken up with a migraine and took my medication at like 4. The meds make me a little hazy and generally dazed by life a little more than usual so I'm dragging my heels to get ready. My favorite breakfast of an omelette and fried plantains is sitting on the table. 'Oh boy!' I think, 'today's going to be a good day'. We've run out of the UHT milk that we get from the store about an hour away so there is nothing to cut the bitter taste of my instant coffee. I'm rummaging through the cabinet and I find a cinnamon/sugar mixture. Well Starbucks has cinnamon flavored stuff, how bad can it be? Yeah, don't put cinnamon into your instant coffee. It will just sink to the bottom. A spicy cinnamon bomb patiently waiting to explode on your last sip. So I'm sitting there enjoying my plantains and only partially enjoying my coffee when the marching band starts up its tune across the street. 7am already? Time to head off the weigh the babies. I walk up to the area where we catch tros in our town and there are none to be found. In an attempt for the police to collect more money they have been fining tros that pull over on the side of the road that I'm on and send them into the new station they have built. So I have to head across the street to the station. There is a larger tro-tro waiting in the station filling up to go further than I need to. I don't like usually getting on these ones since getting off of them requires an obnoxious mixture of making people get off and climbing over those who won't. Something tells me this tro-tro just doesn't feel right, but I just chalk it up to the haze from the migraine pills. Plus, there aren't any other around so I jump on and let the mate know where I'm going. We're bopping along down the road and I'm doing what I usually do in tro-tros. Staring out the window while subtly trying to get more room so that my sweaty legs won't be tickled by your hairy ones. So I'm in a daze and I can still taste the weird coffee cinnamon experiment I had made when all of a sudden we hit a pot hole that I wasn't ready for. I grab for the seat in front of me and check to make sure my backpack is still secure on my lap. All of a sudden I hear our driver screaming, I look up and we're headed for the side of the road! I remember one of the first days I was here I was in a tro and I asked if any cars ever ended up in the gutters that are meant for drainage but end up just being open sewage and rubbish. Well. I got my answer. We smash into the gutter and the front wheel stops us on a cement bridge meant for cars to cross over the gutter on. I do a mental check. Ok, not seriously injured, my knees hit something, but I'll walk away from this. By the time I snap to it, someone has smashed out one of the windows and I crawl out. There were 2 girls behind me sharing a seat, something the school children do to save money. I found them once we got out, checked with them that they were ok (they were), and started looking around for the mate. Everyone else seemed to be standing and in good health, in fact many of them were yelling and screaming at the driver. I figured they were getting angry enough for themselves and me so I got some of my money back and started trekking down the road to flag down another tro-tro, I mean death trap. I never quite figured out what happened. There weren't any people or animals crossing the road at the time so it wasn't a swerve. We weren't passing anyone on the wrong side, and the nearest pot hole was the one a ways back that made me jump. The best that I can come up with is that the pot hole broke something- steering, braking, or something- and the driver was trying to turn off the road. Everything seemed to turn around shortly after Tropocaplyse, however. The man on the next street corner was going to the same place I was and after showing him what had happened, he paid my fare on the next tro. He also asked me to marry him and if I wanted to attend the church he was preaching at.. BUT he paid my tro-tro fare. I was late to work at the clinic but the nurses still insisted on giving me first aid for the skinned knee I received. It wasn't even bleeding but I was still wiped down with some rubbing alcohol and blessed by the Holy Spirit. I then went on the have a good day of weighing babies, very few pee-ers.
So that was my Thursday. And after telling my mom all about it she said something along the lines of between the accident and the all the illnesses I sounded like I needed some chicken noodle soup. Now I'm sure she is just being my mom, nicest lady alive, and wants to make her daughter some soup, but it got me thinking.. I hope the things I report on here are more positive than negative. Africa has done its share of biting back and I know I have a tendency to report and write with a more negative connotation, but that's only because I need more help processing those feelings. Plus since no one was seriously injured, the tro-tro story is pretty funny.. So in the spirit of positivity I would like to also mention, that Wednesday was the most productive day we've had on the farm as of yet! We had 4 moms show up for food pick up! Our largest number so far. We had our first mom show up 2 weeks in a row without prior harassment (you would think that it would be easier to give away food here), and we even had one mom show up with her little girl. I tried to teach the girl how to pull up the spring onions but she was too shy. 2 year-olds. It's so nice to see things finally coming full circle for these moms and families.
I also got to help count up the coupons for the mosquito nets that the clinic will be distributing over the next 2 weeks. The nurses and some local clinic volunteers had previously gone out into camp, door-to-door, and registered people for the nets. And with about 10,000 people on camp that's a lot of counting. We spent half the day on Thursday and all day Friday trying to get a proper number to send to the area representatives. Then over the next 2 week we will be delivering them. It was explained to me that most people on camp know that they help prevent malaria but almost no one has them because they can't afford them.
Each book has 50 coupons in it. And that's not even half of them.
Also, this weekend I got to go to a wedding. We were invited because Belinda, our chef/housekeeper, is a member of the church it was at and was working as an usher. Weddings here are all very different based on your tribe, which region you are from, and how traditional you are. The bride and groom were apparently not very traditional so the wedding had a typical format. There was lots of music and dancing, even before the bride was presented there was a dance party in the aisle ways, the decorations were so bright and colorful, and the biggest difference- it was treated like a rock and roll concert. The lady next to us kept whooping and hollering every few minutes. And she wasn't the only one. 'Kiss the bride!' she would yell out. 'Kiss the bride! Wooo!'. My favorite part, though, was that it was the maid of honor and best man's job to continually wipe away the sweat and fan the bride and groom the whole time. After the ceremony we went to a short reception across the street and ate food that I recognized, which I was grateful for. We toasted champagne to the bride and groom, which was really just sparking fruit juice. And we watched the couples first dance, during which people hung money on them, kind of like strippers. All in all, it was a great Saturday. I was very glad Isaac and Grace let us witness their marriage; I just wish I would have been able to meet them.
Here's the maid of honor doing her fanning.
First kiss. Which everyone got to vote on. The audience decided they weren't happy, so the couple had to kiss again.
Bridal party with the ushers. Belinda is in the top row all the way to the left, a little hidden.
Here the bride and groom are entering the reception area. They kind of half danced half walked in. I just took the picture to show that you could never really get close to them.
Friends of the bride and groom are in charge of the champagne toast. They all must shake them as hard as the can before opening.
Parents of the bride and groom in their more traditional ware. I kind of had to sneak most of these pictures. I was already sticking out after all.
First dance. Like I said, family members were coming up and hanging money off of them like strippers.
That turned out longer than I expected.. Closing thoughts: One more month here, and I suspect it will fly by. And don't worry, not even Tropocaplyse can kill my love of tro-tro rides.. it just adds to the adventure.
Ghanian food this week: Pineapple :) So much if it.
Best thing carried on a head this week: Car tire. Rubber meets hair.
Number of times the lights went out: 4, I think. Long ones again, all day Sunday. Wednesday evening. Most of Thursday, and Friday when I came home with an uncharged phone :(
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