The trotro is the name for the commercial bus in Ghana. The name trotro comes from people paying tro - the currency’s least denomination in the country - back in the 1950s.

The trotro has evolved since then. It’s gone from the place where you smell all sorts of food … while you ride on to the place where you hear all sorts of noise while you ride on. That’s some “re-sense-volution”, ryt?

Yet there is a lot to appreciate in these buses when you board. Apart from the nerve-racking - ear-itching - noise called news that spews from the bad speakers of the bus, and drowns everyone’s mood, because all you hear is bad politics and unfiltered pubic opinions during phone-in sessions. The trotro is a space where the country’s best sales persons practice and hone their art. It’s a space to meet some of the best sales persons in the country. To jump onto any bus and get people to open their purses and wallets and offer money for something they’d not planned for is no mere feat.

I am in awe of these sales people. From the preacher who asks for monetary offering, “support God’s work and God will replace it in tenfolds”, after they’ve finished sharing the gospel of Jesus christ to the traditional medicine “expert” who knows every symptom of every disease he says his medicine remedies.

Sometimes they are annoying because you are just not in the mood to listen to them. You just need some quiet. But these guys don’t consider your mood. They consider the total mood of the bus or perhaps the mood they intend to induce. The guys who end up selling everyday are the guys who tell stories (success stories) , who sell promises, who sell hope, and also believe in what they sell with all their hearts. You see this total conviction in their eyes.

What makes a successful trotro sales person? … a question I intend to answer.