Trou Trou

This was our main mode of transportation on medium-long trips in Ghana. Long trips (over 6 hours) required STC buses and taxis or our own two feet were sufficient for the shorter trips. Trou Trous though... we rented Trou Trous for our group outings to villages, national parks, and other cities.

Some of these Trou Trous were nicer than others - for example, their seats were occasionally even fixed to the floor. We were often bouncing around hitting our heads on either the roof or the window beside. That was partly due to the vehicle itself, but was also due to the awful roads in Ghana.

There were always holes in the bottom of the Trou Trou so dust would come up around your feet. Dust and hot air - burning hot air. Also, if you sat at the very front your feet were up against the motor... I thought my sandals were going to melt. It was HOT! And there was a wooden barrier between you and the drivers so your knees were crammed in and risked getting splinters. It was almost unbearable!

I had to sit up straight the entire time and squeeze my legs into the seats. I couldn't really put my knees up against the top of the seat because I would either push my seat or the seat in front of me over. It was quite the predicament. You could sleep, however, by resting just your forehead on the seat in front of you. Then you could pretend you were on a roller coaster ride rather than being jostled around in a hot, stinky, painfully uncomfortable Trou Trou.

These fine modes of transportation were notorious for breaking down (as was everything in Ghana). We regularly had issues with them and developed an incredible amount of patience over the course of our trip. Let's be honest honest though -- it's easy to be patient when you really have nowhere to be. We were running on Africa time so it didn't really matter when we got to our destination... except that time our reserved rooms were given away because we were eight hours late (on two separate occasions). The first time we crammed sixteen of us into two little hotel rooms in Accra and the second time we were going around Tamale at 4:00am trying to find a place to sleep. Again we managed to squeeze ourselves onto floors and into beds. It was always an adventure.

Back to our beloved Trou Trous. This particular time the Trou Trou broke down we sat on the side of the road for four hours (this was when I had the scoots!) waiting for another Trou Trou to come to our rescue. We waited and waited and waited. It was actually pretty cool to be in the middle of Ghana in the pitch black. We had no idea where we were and all we could do was sit and wait. It was cloudy so there were sadly no stars, but it was pleasant none-the-less to just hang out (and find enough places to go to the bathroom without a. venturing too far from the group and b. going where someone else had already gone).

When another Trou Trou eventually came to our rescue we had to unload all of our bags and pile them onto the new one. We then tied the broken Trou Trou to the new one with a little tiny rope and pulled it to the nearest village. I don't know how the rope managed to hold up, but it did.

The Trou Trou's really weren't that bad -- especially when it was just our group riding in them. They got a little bit dicey when you were squished in with a bunch of people you didn't know and it was above 45 degrees out. That made for a squishy, sweaty, stinky ride. Especially when there were pukers and/or dry-heavers. Yech! The drivers don't stop for anything!!! Unless something strikes their fancy on the side of the road and they want to bring something home for dinner. When that happened everyone would pile out of the bus and pee/eat/breathe.

And that, my friends, is first class transportation in Ghana.