Travel Tips: Taking a Taxi in Ghana

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).

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 offering. 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. Read the rest of this entry

Tripping - Argument With Taxi Driver

[ad#ad-2]Tomorrow I’m working in Cape Coast. I’m not amused. One of our volunteers there is causing trouble. I’m doing damage control. Our volunteers, one out of ten of them acts matured. The rest of the time it’s just like running a nursery school. It’s the pettiness that kills me. Anyways so I’m working in Cape Coast tomorrow, If I wake up.

Today, I worked on the refugee camp. Getting there was a 45 minute drive. I go there every Thursday on evaluation visits with our volunteers there. How things have changed! We now have volunteers who seem happy with the improvements we’ve made. Last year I had to deal with the devil and her cohorts. It wasn’t pretty, I had just been employed. Dumped into incredible chaos.

Today, only one out of the three camp NGOs, I scheduled meetings with was available as assured. Then, I had to run around the camp looking for the second person because she wasn’t where she said she would be. The third person was out of coverage area.

This morning I had an argument with the taxi driver I took to work. He wanted me to pay more. It’s very annoying when a taxi driver does that. I got to the road side flagged him and told him where I was going.

“2.50″, he said.

“I’ll give you 1.50″, was my response. Read the rest of this entry