Last weekend a group of us girls decided we'd go on a much needed beach day. We wanted to visit a place called Big Milly's which had been recommended to us by many people. We knew it was in the general area of the beach we visited a couple weeks ago called Bojo Beach, which is about an hour from campus. We figured we would grab a
trotro to the general
area then attempt to find a way to Big Milly's. Most of us didn't want to plan this trip down to the minute because the majority of the time things
don't go according to plan.
I'll explain what a
trotro is and how they work. Imagine a passenger van with a sliding door, then add 17 people, a driver, and a caller. These callers are normally guys my age who hang out the door of the
trotro yelling where they are headed to. It's their job to get people in the
trotro.
Since we left so early in the morning on a Saturday we were able to negotiate with an empty
trotro to take us right to the place we were going. Normally
trotros take you to a stop/juncture, then drop you there and you walk, take another
trotro or grab a taxi. Since they were willing to take us straight to Big Milly's for a fair price we hopped in their
trotro and we were on our way. These guys were super friendly and funny. Big Milly's ended up being farther from Bojo Beach than we thought it would be and the caller of the
trotro was worried that we wouldn't be able to get back to the main road to hail a cab or get a
trotro so he offered to pick us up when we were done. We said we'd stay until 3 and they could pick us around
then.
That never happens. They have their designated routes and they don't stray from that, so the fact that these guys took us way out of the way to Big Milly's then offered to pick us up and take us all the way back to the university was insane. Of course we agreed to have them pick us up and that's exactly what they did. 3:30 rolled around and we see our
trotro coming down the street.
If there's a story that describes Ghanaians perfectly, it's this one. They were worried for us. These strangers who picked us up were worried that we wouldn't be able to get back to where we needed to go. That wouldn't happen in the States. Ghanaians care about everyone they come in contact
with, no matter how short or impersonal the encounter is. That's something I'm very grateful for and something I am learning from.
