Traffic Lights
on Anthony Lovat in Bolgatanga (Ghana), Unknown, 34 days ago
I was stood with my friend, Donatus, outside his carpentry shop discussing how he could make a weather vane. The day was typically hot and windless. Not being a market day, the atmosphere was unhurried. Young men from Burkina and Côte d'Ivoire sweated past with huge canvas bags full of jeans, shirts, copied DVDs and kitchen implements, unenthusiastically and quite passively trying to sell their wares - like perspiring mobile supermarket shelves. Donatus’ shop is next to the 31st December Womens’ Movement bakery. Women ofall ages milled around, cleaning stacks of shiny bread-tins, stirring cauldrons of dough and lifting wood to keep the huge ovens dug into the ground burning. In a place where human labour is so much cheaper than machinery, the bakery had no hum or clatter of motors. A short distance from the main road, life is incredibly peaceful. Fat matriarchs sat like toads outside their shops built around converted containers and painted in gaudy mobile phone company colours. No one moved quickly apart from the ubiquitous dirty children, scurrying around in their own parallel universe. Upon everyone and everything the sun beat down - slowing the pace of life to a happy saunter.Donatus’ shop is next to “The Traffic Lights” - a crossroads that were fitted with traffic lights four or five years ago but were not working until the President’s visit to Bolga for the Upper East Region at 50 years celebration last year. To celebrate this landmark, the local government chose to construct traffic lights on almost every junction in Bolgatanga. The number of traffic lights leapt from one broken set next to Donatus’ shop to six overnight.“We are moving forward,” the regional minister smugly announced. “We are building traffic lights in town to reduce the number of deaths on our roads.”A well-planned set of traffic lights can help to alleviate congestion and decrease the risk of accidents. Six badly planned sets of lights have had the opposite effect.The traffic lights are infuriating. Where the traffic used to flow, the lights have now created jams that back up along the already congested roads. Stopping at a red light, the motorbikes all huddle and cluster together, jostling for position like horses behind the rope before the Grand National. When the lights turn green, the motorbikes roar away with as much aggression as formula one drivers from the grid. To a chorus of horn beeping from behind, young mothers with sleeping babies tied to their backs, boy racers on their souped up scooters and VSO volunteers on their trusty Yamahas swerve amongst each other.With the frequent power cuts, the traffic lights are not on for half of the time. These are the blessed times when traffic moves smoothly, slowly and safely.The first accident I witnessed was on the morning of the very first day the traffic lights were in existence. A taxi had stopped at a red light and a 4x4 smashed into the back of it. No one was hurt but the taxi driver was quite upset and proceeded to tell the 4x4 owner exactly what he thought of him.On British roads, the‘little green man’ at a pelican crossing makes perfect sense. In Bolga, there are no pavements. Shops, stalls and animal enclosures spill into the road. People walk and cross whenever they like. No one pays any attention to the green man.Many people pay little attention to the lights themselves. Jackie, a volunteer who enjoys riding her bicycle, was told by an old man on a motorbike when she stopped at a red light that the lights don’t apply to cyclists. He encouraged her to go like all the others on bicycles.I admit to having jumped the odd light myself. There’s one particularly infuriating set of lights put randomly on my way home from work by the junction to the police offices that see roughly one vehicle every two hours. I always need to turn right towards my house. I’m not crossing any line of traffic, I can see in every direction that nothing iscoming and I’m waiting for a little green man that no one pays any attention to anyway. What would you do if you were in a rush?This must have been what the motorcyclist thought when he jumped the lights outside Donatus’ shop. He must not have seen the full tomato lorry that was hurtling down the dual carriage-way, desperately trying to beat the lights before they turned red. When he did see the lorry coming towards him, he barely had time to jump off the bike and roll out of the way. The sound of the motorbikesliding along the tarmac made me look up so I saw what followed in its entirety.At this time of year, massive tomato lorries are almost constantly making their way south to Kumasi and Accra from the tomato growing areas around Navrongo, Paga and Burkina Faso. Antique trucks looking worthy of a museum, they spew black smoke out of the side and frequently break down. Most have passengers riding on the top– sometimes twenty people, whole families, clinging to the wooden sides and perching on tomato crates. They are traveling to see family in the southern regions – at least sixteen or seventeen hours with the sun, wind and rain beating down. Thankfully, this lorry had just two passengers, both ofwhom were riding in the cockpit with the driver.The lorry was moving on a slight downhill plane and was traveling far too fast to stop. It hit the decked motorbike and lost control. It careered into the traffic light on the corner, knocking it flat, kept going and turned upside down into the huge open sewer at the side of the road. I can recall every movement of the lorry– the way its back end swerved, hit the kerb and jumped upwards and sideways. I can replay in slow motion the way the tiny tomatoes jumped out of their wooden boxes as if they were too terrified to sit still. I can clearly see the young woman standing by the side of the road, waiting to cross. Shedidn’t have time to react. When the lorry flew up and overturned into the ditch, it hit her squarely at full pace and spilled its crates to bury the woman, who was probably already dead, under hundreds of thousands of tomatoes.I am guessing that the driver will be replaying the incident in his mind for a long time to come. He crawled out of his cockpit onto the top of the wreck and starting yelling.“I hit someone! She’s underneath the lorry. Help!”Petrol was spilling from the cockpit into the sewer, drenching the tomatoes in its fumes. Donatus and six other men dived straight into the ditch and started digging with their bare hands. Hundreds of people ran over. Confusion reigned. Was there a person underneath? Was it a man or a woman? Was she carrying a child? Where should the rescuers dig exactly?All I was thinking was: thank goodness that Laura wasn’t waiting to cross the road. Then I felt guilty for being relieved that someone else was dead.Under the gaze of an enormous crowd, many filming on their fancy phones, the men eventually dragged a limp corpse from the ditch. The young woman was definitely dead.They covered her body with a cloth and eventually sent it off in the back of a pickup. After some time, the crowd dispersed. By that time, everyone had heard the story and there was nothing more to see. I hung around for longer than most. I found it difficult to just leave– as if by staying I was somehow helping or, at the very least, available to help.But the woman was definitely beyond help.Two days later, whilst they were still clearing up the mess from the tomato lorry, a car overturned at the same junction. Again, they’d speeded through the green lights to avoid waiting. This time, it was a cyclist that ignored the red light or, I suppose, thought that it didn’t apply to bicycles. Miraculously, no one was killed.As with so many things in Ghana, when you see what appears to be a green light, proceed with caution.