road construction?

after living in ghana for two years, i would actually be relieved to get stuck in some orange cones and traffic barriers.

road construction in ghana is completely different than in america. in america, roads are clearly marked, lanes indicated, and construction is completed as quickly as possible. sometimes, before one road is demolished, a temporary road is even built to ease the flow of traffic.

not so in ghana.

i have lived here now for almost two full years, and the same stretch of road between accra and kumasi is still at the same stage in its construction. it's close to a two-hour stretch of road that is being repaired: a dusty dirt road filled with potholes that could easily swallow a car. no lanes are indicated, so it is a free-for-all with traffic from both directions. cars weave back and forth in an effort to avoid the worst holes and bumps, coming within inches of hitting each other...or falling off a cliff.

on occasion i have seen a few people working. more often, i just see people standing there. more often than that, not a person is in sight, as endless lanes of buses and cars pick their way over the awful terrain.

i live in a regional capital. i am very lucky; most of the roads in my town are paved. also, i don't travel very often, so i don't often experience the dusty bumpy awful dirt roads common throughout ghana.

this section of construction between accra and kumasi is just too much. these are the two biggest cities in ghana. so much of ghana travels between them every day. to put it as best i can into american terms, it would be like if half the road between new york city and washington dc was under construction, all at once, for a duration of over two years.