A Sweet Tale of Trekking to Tema with a Unsung "Mate"

Last night, I made the not-so-obvious mistake of boarding a "Nungua/Bush Road" tro-tro which I assumed would take me through the famed Spintex Road and on my way home. Given the traffic build-up, I found it no news at all to see that the trotsky (as some commuters so affectionately call this form of transport) had turned to take the motorway.

Now, these drivers like shortcuts--a lot, so it was very surprising to see that the usual shortcut that the trotskys pass to get to the Spintex Road had been by-passed by this driver in question.

There we were: some eighteen Ghanaian citizens rocking and rolling (our eyes in disbelief on account of the traffic!) through the night and streetlamps that line up the 46-year old Tema motorway when suddenely I realised that we just would not stop. I kept on harrassing the dosy "mate" (that's the guy who collects the fares) as to when we could hit the Spintex Road, but I noticed after a while that his elusiveness did not just precede him, but it was him: he just was so taciturn it was not funny. As I tried to speak to him in twi, he was practising his relatively good English on me. After speaking that language the whole day at work, I just wanted to fall into vernacular. I guess that's what irritated me all the more. I thought of all the things I could say to him, but held my tongue.

Good thing I did too, because it is this same "mate" who would eventually open up and give me directions how to get back to the Spintex road after we alighted at a TOTAL filling station on the Baatsonaa road, near ECOBANK. All this--not without passing through what I came to find out was Community 18 of the Tema metropolis!

It certainly was a long night.

Did I say it's good to be back some three weeks later (mostly spent planning the year!!)?;-) Well it is! And I sure do hope more regularly, too.

Given that this month is exactly 5 years since I started blogging, it behooves me to come up with some surprises, which I'll keep tightly under my sleeves--for now!