Paper short abstract:

This paper explores and discusses the specific temporalities and temptations of working in - yet at times also avoiding - bus stations in provincial Ghanaian towns by adopting the perspectives and everyday experiences of both bus drivers and hawkers.

Paper long abstract:

Not unlike in other urban settings on the African continent, the bus stations that I have become well acquainted with in several provincial towns of southern Ghana appear to accommodate a myriad of activities and practices of diverse kinds and fostered by multiple actors. In this paper, I focus on the commercial practices of two kinds of entrepreneurs who commonly work, and provide their distinct services, in the towns' bus stations: bus drivers and hawkers. Yet I also show how these transport workers and station sellers regularly move beyond - at times even avoid - the seemingly confined spaces of bus stations in their attempts to cope with a competitive environment and to negotiate spatial, temporal and regulatory constraints. For instance, I explore how some bus drivers may be tempted to engage in the practice of what is labelled as 'overlapping', by which drivers avoid loading passengers inside the bus station and 'chase' passengers on nearby streets in order to make 'fast business'; or how hawkers oscillate between the safer grounds of the bus station and the risky (and often illegal) bus stops nearby. Discussing the specific temporalities and temptations of working in - yet at times also outside - bus stations is also an opportunity to grasp bus stations in Africa not as enclosed and self-contained spaces and workplaces, but rather as being part of a more complex infrastructure in which bus stations and streets resp. roads become intricately enmeshed through different actors' practices, movements and experiences.