Welcome to The Daily Commute!
Let’s call me Asomasi. “Asomasi” is a general name we use in Ghana for a person. I got intrigued with all the names that journalists outside had for the common man: Joe Public, John Doe, John Q. Citizen, Joe Bloggs… However, the one I loved the most was, ‘the man on the Clapham omnibus’. That fit my description so well. I was wondering if I could adapt it to say “the man on the Accra trotro”, and that got thinking in this direction; me, the one who unwillingly struggles into the trotro every morning, from my bus stop at Bridge, all the way to my stop at Ridge. But this person could be you, or your brother, or your cousin, or the guy you’ve got a crush on. We all have these interesting experiences in trotros and indeed, as we go on our daily commute to work each morning (or wherever). There really isn’t ever a dull moment on our daily commute.
We’re going to have a lot of fun with not only the happenings in the trotro, but at bus stops, the passengers, their unique habits and topics of discussion, the drivers, their mates, the stations, the kinds of things that we see out of our trotro windows, nothing is out of bounds.
Am I ashamed to admit to the whole world that I’m a regular fixture in these infamous monstrosities that parade our city roads? No way. I can’t stand them. I’ve been riding in all sorts ever since my brother taught me (by some very unorthodox means) how to do it on my own years ago. One day, I’ll kiss these sour days goodbye, and I won’t look back with a moment’s regret. But the day is coming, hopefully in my lifetime, when these scars on the face of our city will be gone, replaced by fancy yellow buses, and we’ll remember the good old trotros of years gone by, and all the adventures we had in them, and we’ll miss them. Sorely.
The Daily Commute: From Bridge to Ridge 