Moto...

I bought a moped. About a month ago on a Sunday I and two of the other Fulbrighters went near downtown Accra to a moped and motorcycle repair/maintenance/sales yard and spoke with Kwame. This 'yard' is literally a large open dirt and rock area that is filled with derelict cars, trucks, motorcycles, mopeds, and most things with an engine and wheels. There were two guys there tinkering with some of these old vehicles. I asked him about a moped and he gave me keys and had me test drive one. After a few hours of waiting and haggling on the phone with the owner of the moped, I bought it. I have an International Drivers' License, I bought a helmet the next day, and the moto (as they call them here) is legal and registered. So for a month now I have been driving around the streets of Accra.

About a few weeks ago Wisdom came over to visit and wanted to ride on the moto. I took him around as did Andrea, one of the other Fulbrighters. Wisdom had a blast and even talked me into letting him drive it around campus a little bit. He did well. As he drove the girls on campus were heading to dinner and when they saw him, they all cleared off the road and walked on the grass.

Just last week, as I was driving, the back tire went flat. Luckily I was just outside of a gas station with a service shop. It was about 2 in the afternoon, sunny and hot, so I was very happy that, if I had to breakdown, I was so close to a place I could get it fixed. I pushed the moto in and the guy looked at it and told me that he did not have the right tools to take off the tire to fix it. He told me that just a few hundred yards away was a shop that could do it. I pushed the moto to the next shop and the guy looked at it and told me that he could fix the tire, but did not have the tools to take it off. Again, he directed me another few hundred yards away to a third guy. I pushed the moro again, getting hotter and more frustrated by the moment. The next guys told me, again, for the third time, the same story. This time however, the difference was that I had to push it about half a mile to the nearest place. As I pushed and sweated I started to question why I ever bought this jalopy in the first place. When I finally got to the 4th mechanic, he told me that he could fix it, and that he had the correct tools to do it! I sat and waited about an hour as he and another guy took off the tire, found the hole, patched it, and put it back on. In the process however, they knocked the moto over and the headlamp bulb broke (which I did not realize until later). When they were done I paid the guy that put he tire back on 2 Ghana Cedis and started to leave. As I left, the guy that patched the tire came up to me and told me that I had to pay him too. Thinking this may be a scam I asked how much and he again told me 2 cedi (which is about $1.50 USD). As this point I was happy to pay him and get out of there with two good tires.

Since then the moto has been running fine and it is nice to have the freedom to zip around town whenever I want. The only glitch I have had was one I was when I went to the Embassy one day late in the afternoon and came back home just after dark. I got on the moto, started it up, and turned on the headlamp. No headlamp. So I had a rather slow ride home (the street lights helped a lot and the embassy is not all that far from my house). Now, I do not do a lot of driving at night if I can avoid it.