Driving in Ghana =)

Left: Picture of me carrying my purchases back from the market...I've gotten pretty tan since arriving to Ghana...


My driving in Ghana came about by way of necessity when my partner Deb got sick one fateful Monday and we were scheduled to go teach at a church across town. Driving in Ghana doesn’t require any special license, not even an international license. Mercy Ships, however, does require every ship driver to undergo a little driving test in order to ensure all drivers are comfortable with the vehicles and somewhat comfortable on the roads. So after a 20 minute driving test out of the port and around the block with the transport manager Andy, I was deemed qualified to drive in Ghana.

You have to try to imagine driving in a third world country…the traffic pattern is chaos, the road signs seem to be merely suggestions, and the traffic laws unclear. There are some traffic lights; they work most of the time except when the electricity is out…which is often. Mostly there are traffic circles which I hear exist in parts of the US but if any existed in good old South Cackalaki people would probably get confused and think they were racing NASCAR at Darlington…all those cars going around in a circle like that. If you’ve never had the pleasure of driving around a traffic circle or “roundabout” as they are properly called in Ghana it’s where traffic from 4 different directions converges into a single circle and all the cars continue to drive in a circle until they figure out which direction they want to exit the circle. There are no lines on the roads and I still haven’t figured out if there are supposed to be two lanes of traffic or three. It really depends on the day, when it is raining people go kinda crazy and somehow 2 lanes of traffic can turn into six.

And if figuring out the traffic pattern isn’t challenge enough the person driving also has to dodge goats, chickens, children, vendors wandering among the traffic, mopeds weaving between the cars, aggressive taxi drivers, bicycles, carts, and the worst of the potholes (…it’s impossible to dodge them all). But…on a positive note at least they drive on the right side of the road…