The Trotro Experience in Ghana
Each country has developed its ways of moving the masses from their individual Points A to their Points B, C, and D. Various similarities abound from one country to another. Inexplicably, many of them have names that use reduplication: Thailand has its tuk-tuk, whereas Sierra Leone has its poda poda. The Canary Islands and Cuba call their buses guaguas. Guinea Bissau has a toca-toca.
When I saw the trotro of Ghana, I recognized it as a sister to Bali’s bemo. Nigeria has vehicles that function much the same as Ghana’s trotros, but the Nigerians are less poetic, in that they call them “buses.”
In Ghana, a country where individual car ownership is limited to the wealthy, I observed four principal means available to the general public: (1) private taxi, called “dropping,” where you get exclusive use of the vehicle, (2) shared taxi, called “loading,” from which passengers are dropped off along pre-determined routes, (3) buses, and (4) the beloved trotro, a large van that has been converted to enable it to accommodate passengers.
Of these four, it appears that the trotro is the most common vehicle on the nation’s highways, and they also appear to carry more passengers than any of the other means of conveyance.
You can easily picture what a trotro originally looked like, as it is the kind of van — a box on wheels, really…
