Chapter 2: Inhabiting the road

The second chapter of my PhD thesis is kind of a mini-ethnography of people living alongside the Accra-Kumasi road. In Kyebi, the roadside community in which I spent the first part of my fieldwork, I resided in a household located just a few steps away from the main road. Soon I got fascinated by the various ways in which inhabitants make use of 'their' road, talk about it and occasionally mis-appropriate it:
(1) As part of their quotidian routines, people walk, stand, sit and, through that means, socialize on the road. What I enjoyed most was my friends' roadside gossip when observing familiar pedestrians and travelers from beyond the local.
(2) The tangible presence of the road in people's life gives rise to narratives, discourses and imageries. There's much talk about dangerous strangers and spiritual forces at accident-prone road sections. Incredible road rumors are highly revealing too.
(3) Finally, the road being used, even manipulated, as platform for entertainment, as public arena for claiming religious and political authority , and for staging protest, fears and emotions.
[Overview Chapter 2]
kwame - 2008-02-08 23:47












I waited for five hours with Edwin at the CMB bus station (central Accra) until it was his turn for loading. In addition to the 21 passengers his Benz bus had to swallow a huge amount of commercial goods. Incredible how they managed to stow it all away. For taking people’s baggage Edwin could collect 85.000 Cedis extra. But 5.000 had to be left behind at the police checkpoint behind Accra. Preventing the policeman from stopping our vehicle and from discovering that we are overloaded, he was given a bribe: When approaching, the mate quickly slipped a note into the policeman’s hand. “Fast!”, a woman sitting behind the driver commented with some appreciation. Avoiding an inspection means avoiding a penalty – but means above all getting home earlier. The latter suits all travellers, in particular when travelling in the evening, in the dark. 




This gentleman makes sure that all taxi and bus drivers properly pay the parking fee (yellow tickets) for the Kyebi bus station. If they have done so, he will kindly lower the rope for the drivers to be able to hit the road. You just can’t imagine how many times there have been fierce arguments at this station exit because a driver was either not willing to pay – or because his registration number has not yet been put written on the white slip of paper, though of course he has already paid. A huge fuss about little sums.






