Jasmine Levy writes:Obroni: The Ghanaian word for “white person” or any light-skinned visitor. A word I have been called every day since I landed.If you spend 30 seconds in Accra, you’ll notice that the roads are overly crowded. It could take you almost an hour to get six miles.But you’ll also notice that most of the cars on the road are public transportation. Not city buses, but vans called trotros. (Trotro: Ghana’s main and most affordable mode of public transportation.) Some of them have a capacity to hold 28 passengers.And crossing the street is a whole other thing. The roads in Ghana are ruthless. The lanes seem to be for show because no one uses them. And pedestrians here do not have the right-away.The cars will keep coming; the motorbikes will keep coming. Motorbikes here do not follow the rules of the road, and their riders don’t wear helmets. They weave in and out of cars and aren’t required to stop at traffic lights. Some of the bikes wear red-and-blue flashing lights and a siren to help them get through traffic more quickly. Riding on one bike, I saw a child, a man, and a woman with a baby strapped to her back— in that order. And of course, no helmets.My first time on a trotro was memorable to say the least. My coworker, Penty, was my guide. He walked me to the trotro station after my first day of my internship. He said that the station was 3minutes away, but we walked for what felt like 15 minutes.Penty asked if it’s okay to touch me. He tells me that Ghanaians are like that. He said that they hug and hold hands and that he wants to make sure I don’t fall behind. So, I said yes. He said, “I want you to cross” and then grabbed my hand. We ran across the street and got honked at the entire way. When we reached the center divider, there was a gutter about five feet deep.Penty said, “Now I want you to jump.” Jump? He went first and then held his arms out to catch me. Gutters in Ghana run along every street and are open, wide and deep. They are the kind that you will fall into if you don’t pay attention— a huge contrast to the ones that work under our roads in America. I also can’t count how many men I have seen urinate into said gutters.Once we found my trotro, I boarded and Penty told me to get off at “Shiashie.” I sat in the first row because he said that it’s better. Otherwise, I would have to get out to let other people off at each stop. Trotros stop frequently.The trotro system is different from anything I’ve ever seen. The people who work them are the driver and the driver’s “mate.” The mate is responsible for collecting money from passengers and shouting the route that the particular trotro is on.“Madina, Madina,” is what our mate shouts out of the window. Trotro People walking by either raise their hand or nod to let him know that they want to get on. To let the driver know that we need toStop, the mate sticks his arm out of the window and smacks the side of the van.The trotro I’m on is red and has a pink steering wheel cover with flames on it. The rear view mirror spans the width of the entire windshield. The ceiling is covered in Gucci-looking fabric, but instead of GG, it reads GD.At one stop, five people pile in, and the mate hops back in as the car is already moving. Then he stands with the door wide open, his body mostly outside and goes on shouting: “Madina, Madina!” An older man sitting next to me seemed to be nodding in and out of sleep. He eventually napped on my shoulder.The whole ride, I was nervous about when to get off. It isn’t like a bus in America where your stop will appear on the screen above you. Here, you either know it’s time to get off, or you don’t. And as if to make my anxiety worse, an ambulance appeared and tried to get in front of us but our driver refused to let it through.I heard another woman say she was getting off at Shiashi so I got off when she did and followed her. I asked her how to know which trotro to get on and I pulled out my phone. “Let’s stand away from the street because they will take your phone” she said, referring to some motorbike riders. Then she put me onto my next trotro and went on her way. Ghanaians are friendly and helpful.My second trotro was smaller and the seats were torn down to their yellow spongy guts. The driver was kind and young. He couldn’t have been older than 17. He had a speaker sitting freely on the dashboard that he grabbed every time we made a hard turn. On it he played afrobeats—a genre I am growing to love. I told him where I was trying to go and he dropped me off on the side of the road after about 10minutes of driving. He repeated the name of the next route I should be listening for multiple times, but I still forgot. Luckily one of the mates that rode by on another trotro yelled, “A&C Mall!” Perfect! (This is the mall that we live directly behind.)Once I was on my third trotro, I was completely over it. Of course, I eventually made it home,but I also made the decision that my trotro riding days were behind me. I do believe that it is a system I would take more advantage of if it were more familiar to me. Especially because all three rides cost a total of 20 cedis (equal to about $2 USD.)I am still the only one in my group to have ridden a trotro so far. But as I told them, I rode enough for three of us.Jasmine Levy is a student broadcaster from the University of Oregon in the USA, currently interning with Joy Sports.