Tro- Tro

I wrote this poem in 1997 when I was a fresh-faced, very innocent youth. It forms part of a manuscript of my writings I plan to publish. My Dad Yaw Adjei(one of the truest Ghanaian patriots I have ever known)insisted while his gleaming official cars (first a Pajero and then a Suzuki) sat in the garage that his children took the public transport system. The vehicles he reminded us time and time again were meant for national duties; service to the Ghanaian Republic not trifling junkets bordering on abuse across the city. And so it was that I was exposed most intimately to Ghana’s public transport system in Accra: its wretchedness; its indignity; its butchery and maiming capacity and curiously its humanity. My very good friend Kimathi Kuenyehia and I still reminisce on the occasions when literally marooned and trapped in snarling queues in Accra-Central our mastery of the art of shoving and maneuvering and pushing made all the difference in boarding a tro-tro. It’s been fourteen years down the road and not much has changed. How many decades more? After all it is to my mind an intellectual insult to our Republic ( and especially to Ghana’s elites)  that all we could offer our people is this grotesqueness in the 21^st century! Enjoy!  

         

                                        Verse I

“Accra, Accra, Accra”

At the “Bus stop,” a surge forward

Unveils a mad scramble to Enter

A veritable scrap-heap on Four-wheels

“Four” “Four”, a command bellows

The Driver’s mate knows the score

Four is Four, you may be pencil thin

Or tubby and flabby as the Makola mummy.

                                         Verse II

It’s a weird world in here

A hotbed of forced labour

To sit “seats” must be skirted

Now and then seats are pushed,

Shifted, lifted, hugged, even caressed

As if in tandem, man and woman

Oscillate their bodies into Positions

The Prague contortionist surely envies

Between man and woman intimacy physical Predominates

The Brother’s hands rub the sister’s breast

The sister’s buttocks rub the brother’s face

Thigh and Thigh, foot and foot

Communicate in an atmosphere sweaty

So much for Personal Freedom

The Ever present cliché

Of  Modern Ghana’s Political lexicon.

                                        Verse III

Time remains inconsequential

You are an Enemy

If watch looking is a habit

For movement is at a snail’s pace

What with fellow citizens jumping

Off now and then, here and there

And the Lord at the wheels

Chatting with a Buddy

Here and there, Now and then

Some Advice:

“Buy your own car,

If respect for Time is your credo:

Here Time has no meaning”

                                   

                                        Verse IV

In the Timelessness

A battle Rages

Fare payment inspired

Hear Prince Driver’s mate:

“  I have no change!

Your currency is torn”

Abuse, invectives, curses

Rule the Roost

Sometimes blood has flowed

Verse V

Along the Way

Men in black Extort

Men in black are bribed

The Law is mauled

And disabled

And too limbs if not lives lost

From Ashale- Botwe to Accra

Trapped in this rattle-trap

Forever or for a season

We wish we knew!