Counter Culture Shock
I’m home in suburban Portland now. All the streets, and most of the walking trails, are paved, signed, well-lit at night. There are more stoplights between my house and the Sunset Highway, less than three miles away, then I saw in two weeks in Ghana—and that includes the capital city of Accra. So why, during my morning run through the lovely Washington county countryside, did I feel more at risk than anywhere I ran in that strange foreign country? Let’s start with driver manners: my initial impression was that Ghanaians love their car horns almost as much as New Yorkers. In time, though, I realized they were using them out of concern for each other, warning bicyclist, pedestrians, and slow-moving vehicles that they were about to be overtaken by a faster vehicle. If the people in question did not, or could not, move out of the way, the driver patiently waited behind them until an opening became available. When our bus passed other vehicles, the maneuver always started with a blas...