Travel Tips: Taking a Taxi in Ghana

Posted by Mercy 10 August, 2008

So it’s Sunday and I’m in bed eating a very large mango and thinking about taxi drivers, waiters and bouncers. I have no patience for any. And my current impatience has developed as a result of my very many experiences with them. Let me start with the taxi drivers.

Here in Accra my usual routine is to walk down my street to the side of the main road and wait for a taxi to approach. I live on the busy part of town so getting a taxi is not a problem. The problem is the taxi drivers.

The usual thing is to stop a taxi driver, tell him where you are going and ask him how much he will charge for the distance; depending on his mood he will either smile at you, look away or give you a monkey face and tell you a figure, (sometimes reasonable, sometimes not).

Typical Taxi in Ghana

Unspoken Agreement: Always Bargain

In Ghana taxi drivers (and in fact all business people) have this unwritten and unspoken agreement that the buyer must always bargain with the seller. So you either ask for a reduction or tell him how much you are willing to pay. If he accepts you get on board if not you look for the next taxi.

But make sure you act confident about getting another taxi with the rate you are offerin Taxi Driver in Ghana g. This can actually make him accept your offer. See, taxi drivers in Accra are not very logical in their approach to their work. Maybe I just can’t figure out how they reason, but i think they operate on emotion: greed and pride being dominant.

Some taxi drivers would rather drive around empty (and waste fuel) than take your offer which may be a few pesewas short of the rate they’ve become used to. With the bargaining process a driver may give in to your offer because you raised a good argument to beat his own or through the exchange you showed that you know the taxi driver-passenger system.

Confidence is Name of the Game

But they will always take advantage of you especially if they catch you at a disadvantage. They will charge a ridiculous fare and never bargain; especially if you are looking for a taxi at a late hour in an “unsafe” spot; or when it’s raining and you have no umbrella; or in an emergency situation. But of course, that’s competitive business, you may say. Well, opinions will always differ.

The funny thing is that:

if a taxi driver finds you in an unsafe spot and you act indifferent to the situation he will bargain and compromise.

He will also bargain and actually accept your offer if you are holding an umbrella over your head in the rain and you appear relaxed. As for the emergency situation, you are better off paying what he’s demanding. Who needs who?

My Commute from Work to Home

Now I had this interesting experience where I took a taxi from work to home. It was a very new looking taxi and the driver was very friendly and polite, which is always refreshing after a stressful day. Plus he was tuned to a radio station playing smooth jazz ! Very very rare!

Most taxi drivers in Accra usually listen to the noisiest, irrelevant and most annoying radio stations in the city at a sound volume meant to damage passengers’ ear drums. And they usually get annoyed when you request a change of stations or reduced sound volume.

Some drivers will comply, others will argue with you and the worst category will ignore you completely till you threaten to end the journey right there.

Anyways, so I agreed with this (so far impressive) driver on the price of GHC2.00 for the trip, and I had a rather relaxed ride home. Mr. Impressive Driver asked me how my day was and I replied with the usual complaints.

When we got to my residence I paid him the fare and then he offered to provide me with taxi service anytime I needed it. Cool . I thought. This will save me a lot of hassle . So we exchanged numbers. And then he handed back GHC1.00 and said he will only take half the agreed fare from me. I did a double take right there!

A taxi driver charging me less than the agreed rate?! Am I in Accra? What I know is taxi drivers lying to me that they didn’t have enough change after I have handed them my money and they usually do this when they realise that the situation will allow them to go off with my change. So I was really wide-eyed surprised and didn’t know whether to be happy or freaked out, because the amount he was taking was also actually a loss to him. Anyways, I thanked him graciously and said goodbye.

The next day after work, I called him to pick me up. He arrived in 20 minutes, we agreed on GHC2.00 and once again I had another good ride home. On this second ride I gave him GHC2.00 and he handed back GHC1.00 to me again! Now either this taxi driver was insane; after something; or I’d walked into the twilight zone.

The first time I thought he was just trying to win me as a customer. But now he had me thinking: why would a taxi driver offer me such good services and take so little in return? Which rational being works at a loss? There must be something going on here. The following day I decided not to call him. I took a random taxi home. 15 minutes after I got home he called me and asked if I was going to need his taxi services.

“Not today thank you.” I said and then feeling bad I added, ” I’m not in Accra at the moment.”

” Oh where are you?”

“Cape Coast.”

“Really, I come from Cape Coast, I could have taken you there.”

“Oh I didn’t know that. Anyways I’m in Cape Coast for work so it’s my company’s car I came with.”

“Oh, I see. ok. Let me know when you get back so I can pick you up from work.”

“Ok. Thank you. bye now.”

After that call, I decided to end contact with this “taxi driver”, he was beginning to freak me out. Ghana’s taxi drivers just don’t behave like this. They are usually rude and greedy to Ghanaians and polite and very greedy to “White Foreigners”.

Well, life being interesting, I decided to call him for his services the next day because I felt too tired to walk to the side of the road. He arrived on time, took me to my destination and repeated that strange act of taking only GHC1.00 from me. That cured me. I stopped calling him. He continued to stay in touch.

He called everyday to find out whether he could pick me up and drive me home, or pick me from home and take me to work or anywhere I needed to get to. Each time I gave a creative excuse. After some time I just wouldn’t answer his calls. With time I think he realised he wasn’t going to get anywhere with me and so has stopped calling.

But now I always find myself looking out for his taxi in case I flag him down accidentally.

It looks like I’ll have to do the waiters and bouncers another time. I had more to say about taxi drivers than I thought.

You know, I used to think that taxi drivers took more advantage of white foreigners than Ghanaians. But in comparing my experiences with the stories I’ve heard from my white expat friends and housemates I think it’s the same for everyone.

I think the “white presence” in Ghana is gradually losing it’s initial “uniqueness”.

Mercy is a young and promising writer from Ghana. She is almost a regular contributor at this blog. She also owns a wonderful blog called Escaping the Rat Race.