I have just enrolled in a driving school to have my first license to drive but I am already missing my trotro days. I am now occupied with this thought that I would wake up one day to see myself losing the right to be part of the ‘family’ in a trotro journey. It is not easy to live without a family one is used to. In trotro, in spite of the usual discomfort one experiences in these commercial buses, one feels belonged; one feels that one is not alone in the matters that bother a person in each day.
The other day, a husband has to incur the discomfort of having his wife followed her into the trotro to demand an extra of the house- keeping money. The woman with her unkempt her and self had joined the man into the trotro to wherever he was going. To top up the man’s woes, he had to pay the fare of his angry wife because the woman was not in no way prepared to pay the fare. It was an eye opener for the usual observer in the trotro. I am sure another man who observed this scene would bless his soul for his wife in spite of the peculiar worries he had about her.
In trotro, there is comradeship. People feel people’s pain. In the case when there is an increase in fares, passengers are united in their show of anger towards the powers whose singular action has resulted into the hardship of the ordinary man. The usual divide of the populace between NPP and NDC is momentarily blurred. In trotro , people gain the right to shout, sing , pray and annoy each other. It is a fair society.
In trotro, everybody is an expert in driving: even the one who cannot identity a clutch from a brake. Anybody can order the driver with thirty years experience to drive properly. The driver can only hear of passengers but cannot speak. If he dared cross this vehicle code, he would live to remember the wrath of passengers.
Ironically, it is the driver’s mate who is able to exercise some level of control over passengers. He is normally one who is out of tune of cultural ethics. He does not hesitate to give in equal or higher measure whatever insult is thrown at him by passengers. He might even take extreme measures by ordering a passenger to get- off his car at any spot of the route. Shrewd passengers know this and would deal with driver’s mate in a manner not to push him to the wall. But I like the driver’s mate. They know too much in spite of the fact that they are usually persons who have escaped formal education. They know about everything about us. The other day a mate was explaining to passengers why politicians would never drive away hawkers on our streets. He said it would be suicidal to their political interest. I was bewildered. I begin to question why some of us would pay so much to institutions just to read’ Political Science ‘ when a school drop out can make sense of the science of politics?
These are the little dramas that would make me miss my trotro experience when I finally get my license to drive. I will be alone in my ‘second hand car’. If I have to be angry at the situation where I have to use my last few cedis to buy fuel into my car, I wouldn’t have anyone to share this emotion with. I will be alone in my car bearing my own sorrows alone. Even though, I would be angry with the powers when prices are increased, my friends in the passenger car out there in his own frustrations would think I am part of those who draw fuel at some depot at the expense of the masses. They wouldn’t believe me if I told them that although I am now riding in my own car, I also suffer the daily hardships that every comrade faces in this country. Some would pip through the openings of their trotro buses to spit on my car bonnet to show their contempt for me for betraying comradeship by buying my own car. I would suffer the pain of alienation.
In the part of our world, people feel highly blessed when they lay their hands on even second hand cars. The cars might have changed hands even after it was brought down here. New owners of these second, third and fourth hand cars would take it to their worship places for some special anointing before they use it. I guess people believe that the legal tenders we use here are tainted with evil. That anything that one buys with it get corrupted with this evil. That is why one needs special anointing to cure this curse on acquired properties before one uses them; especially if it is a second or fourth hand car. You wouldn’t know all the heathen places these cars had passed. People are genuinely happy if they own a second hand car with all the faults that the old owner would want to escape.
I just bought ‘ a straight home used car’. I am waiting for January 2017 to register it so I would be a proud owner of a new year car. I should be the happiest person in town. But I am worried. I am worried about the fact that I will lose all my friends in a trotro journey each day. I think I have a problem. I need help.
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