Life in Ghana: Driving in the dark

Website design By BotEap.comIn the early 1980s, a British High Commissioner to Ghana was traveling back to Accra from the Volta region at night when his car crashed into an unmarked pile of gravel used to repair roads. The High Commissioner received serious injuries to his legs and his wife’s injuries were fatal. A few years earlier, a British engineer employed at a brewery in Kumasi had suffered a similar fate, rear-ending a logging truck parked on an unlit road. Driving in Ghana during the day was dangerous, driving at night was dangerous enough to deter many private drivers from venturing beyond the limited confines of city lights.

Website design By BotEap.comA driver familiar with road conditions in Europe or North America may have a hard time imagining African road conditions at night, because many of the aids he takes for granted are missing. In the 1970s and 1980s in Ghana, most roads had no edge markings and only a few major roads had a dashed white line to mark their center. All country roads and many urban roads had no overhead lighting, traffic signals were few and far between, often obscured by foliage and easy to miss. Potholes lurked in the shadows, and pedestrians and cyclists without lights or reflective clothing were nearly invisible in the glare of oncoming headlights. Cars with only one headlight were common, and were sometimes mistaken for a motorcycle with disastrous results.

Website design By BotEap.comPotholes may hide at night, but they don’t go away. The most dangerous were the ones that broke the edge of the road in a great jagged sawtooth. Instead of a broad white line gleaming in the headlight beam to clearly define the edge of the road, there was a black void in which V-shaped craters lurked, waiting to knock the unsuspecting driver off the road. Instinctively steering away from these edge terrors, the driver inched closer and closer to the dazzling stream of advancing headlights that could at any moment cross his path in a desperate circumnavigation of his own potholes.

Website design By BotEap.comWhile in the 1980s many vehicles were driving at night with dim and faulty lights, other motorists seemed determined to show off the power of their headlights. It wasn’t just the headlights that were dazzling. Cabs and trotros often created a similar impact with additional high-powered brake lights. These seemed intended to produce a visual simulation of a honk and could be considered redundant in competition with the constant cacophony of the audible kind. Life on the road at night can often be short of light, but it’s never short of sound.

Website design By BotEap.comIn Ghana, the popular style of music was ‘highlife’. By night, as by day, the taxis carried streams of highlife music, which spilled through the open windows of their cassettes and sent children dancing in waves through the city streets. At night, the contributions of the taxis blended into an all-pervading scene of high life, of which their yellow wings and illuminated roof signs became a potent symbol. For the driver who planned to travel far, it was better to give in to the temptation to linger with taxis in the bright lights of the city and postpone departure until the first light of dawn. Driving at night could easily lead to the permanent achievement of a great life of a different kind.