Lorry Stations are organized by destination and you can pretty much guarantee that you’ll get where you’re going….eventually. There are, of course, no schedules, and the tro’s only leave when they are absolutely full and for the less well-travelled routes that could take a while. I’ve routinely waited for well over an hour but others tell of 4-5 hour waits. Waiting is fun, of course, assailed on all sides by vendors and noise, and heat, and pollution.

There isn’t much redeeming about Tro riding except that it gets you where you want to go eventually ..and it is CHEAP!!!! Ride for 3-4 hours for $3-4! And it is a great way to get up close and personal with Ghanaian life and street cultures.

Impressions get pushed out and replaced by new ones.

Some constants…travelling is the same…a grind..and of course we’ve done a lot though my distances haven’t been bad compared to others headed up to the Northern Region or the Upper East/Upper West which often require an overnight stop in Kumasi or Tamale. Weighed down by bits and pieces of luggage..both the too-much we brought plus the stuff we get ‘handed’ ..a mosquito net (clunk), a water filter and container (CLUNK), a medical kit in a nice little (oops, not so little) box ..and various handouts, manuals, etc..and the bad news is that we actually need most of them over the next two years and anyway, we can’t just dump them as they must be returned to PC at COS…used medical supplies anyone??
Tro riding is awful..the worst travelling experience of my life certainly ..oh yes, the trip from Tblisi to Yerivan in a similar vehicle was pretty rough but nothing like this!
To describe…when you have clapped out Ford Transit like vehicles driven by crazy guys over awful roads…like the stretch around Keta where the road has been washed away by the sea…packed beyond the gunnels …if they’re supposed to take up to 15 people, including the driver, they routinely hold 20+. We drive for hours on these trips, scrunched up with this damn laptop and these damn cameras, etc in a backback on my knees which are in any case up towards my chin because I’ve got either mine or someone else’s bag..or simply just stuff…on the floor in front of me!
Your muscles cramp and go to sleep, you bounce around and find yourself praying out loud that this misery will end soon or that mercifully the tro will drive off the road and you’ll be instantly killed! Then the journey ends and you’re tumbling out in some whacky Tro station (quaintly called Lorry Stations) where your arrival is greeted with a flock of vendors carrying things on their heads, scuttling and nodding towards you, but beaten to you by the unencumbered tro touts who demand to know where you’re going next and start pulling at you, your bags to get you to their tro! See, each tro has two guys, the driver and the tout/pusher/door-opener/last in the tro..and sometimes

My five days/four nights there were action-packed…from the first moment of my tumbling out of the Tro-tro from Accra with bits of dusty baggage falling out after me to be greeted at my new front gate by an array of chiefs, elders, assembly-person. all in full ceremonial garb!

And then almost non-stop until my departure four days later after another three-hour meeting with my American ‘sponsor’/backer? ..and my counterpart, supervisor
and the same chiefs and elders!


Whuti is a farming and fishing community on the isthmus at the extreme Eastern end of the Ghanaian coastline. The isthmus, which is composed almost completely of sand, is about 25 miles long and from about 1km to 2.5 kms wide. On one side, to the north is the Keta Lagoon which is freshwater and is part of the Volta Estuary and on the other side is the lusty Gulf of Guinea . It ‘s a cross between Fire Island and maybe something in the Carolinas

well..maybe we've figured this stuff out now..that would be nice

As we know, I’m deeply interested in the possibilities for MicroFinance, preferably the classic “Grameen’ model, in West Africa.
Hmmmm..well, everybody and I mean everybody is very high on microfinance in Ghana. I’ve even had 10 and 12-year-olds sliding up to me in schools asking if I can introduce them to a good microfinance operation! OK, perhaps that is an exaggeration but you get the point – everybody has heard of it, has heard that it can work magic…Money For Nothing, etc.
The reality of course is that there is nothing remotely resembling a Grameen operation in the country and that with microfinance completely unregulated it is completely uncoordinated, mostly very small-scale, and pops up in one place but not in a neighboring village or small town.

First Post

here we are trying to create a blog and failing miserably so far