FLASHBACK - A Lesson in Honking

Each Flashback post is a post from my journal while living in Ghana!

I live in a city called Hohoe.  By standards here it is a city and at home it might be considered a very small city or large town.  It is a very busy place.  It comes alive each day with many people and important municipal offices. It is a bit smaller than the capital of the Volta Region, Ho, but is still quite a busy place.  Each week on Mondays and Fridays a market comes to town with vendors selling anything that you can imagine from fabric to smoked fish to vegetables and shoes!  These are by far the busiest days and the days when you hear the most honking.  Honking has its own language in Hohoe and Ghana in general.  Each honk has a different meaning and can tell you a lot about the interaction between two tros (vans), taxis or bystanders.  Here is my quick translation from honks that our friends use to help get us safely from one destination to another.  

1. A Medium Length Honk = I'm coming through look out
2. A Short Honk = I'm behind you and you are driving way too slow so I'm coming around
3. A Few Short Honks = HI!!!!  and is usually followed by the taxi driver stopping for a chat with a friend
4. A Long Honk = I told you to get out of my way and you didn't and now I'm going to zoom past you
5. Lots of Short Honks = Get out of the way goat (you can also substitute chicken, duck, or sheep here and it would be about the same)

Amazingly enough the system seems to work fairly well.  While I am told that there is a considerable issue with traffic accidents it seems like the honking system grabs people's attention and tends to get you through town pretty speedily.  One of my favorite taxis was a Ford Escort that had recycling stickers from Red Hook, NY and a New York State inspection tag.  What a weird feeling to see something that reminds you so much of home, so far away.  

What were the road conditions you ask?  They were challenging.  Only the main roads in town and on the highways were paved.  The roads leading to villages were often clay.  Both the clay and the paved roads suffered from some disrepair from the heavy rains that would often erode them and leave potholes and rivets much larger than anything we even see in the Northeast US.  On the highways there are a series of speed bumps as you enter each town/city which can be quite jarring when riding in the back seat of a Tro.  None-the-less we made it to every destination that we needed to often with a laugh and a smile about the adventures of traveling on the open road in Ghana.

What is Next for My Blog

Well, as you can see technology in Ghana got the best of me.  The Internet was fairly unreliable and very slow and the computer that we were working on as interns was often needed for more important work than my blogging.  With all that in mind, I am a bit behind on my blogging.  Here's what I am thinking...every other day I'll post a blog from my journal about what life was like, through my eyes, in Ghana.  On the opposite days I'll post a blog entry or video about my re-acclimation to life here in the United States.  So many travel blogs seem to end when the person arrives back in the comfort of their own home, but it is my estimation that much of the culture shock and readjustment of traveling will be now...during my first few weeks back in New York.  Today is a great day to reflect on this readjustment period.  I am one week into being home and we have experienced an earthquake, a hurricane, the grocery store, driving again for the first time with US driving rules, and the thrill of a local county fair (the most terrifying of which by far was the grocery store oddly enough).  More to come about my trip and about the work that I hope to be doing over the next year!