Motorcycle Club

I believe sometime ago one or two of brothers had asked that I post a picture of me riding to work on the motorcycle.  Well, with less than two weeks left in Rwanda here they are. 

It has been interesting to me that riding a motorcycle nearly everyday went from the one reason I might not want to take a placement as a methodology trainer in Rwanda to one of my favorite parts of any day.  While riding a motorcycle over unpaved roads for sometimes nearly two hours one way can be physically taxing, it is never boring.  Rather it is like a free documentary movie on Rwanda every time I hop on to ride.  During these documentary style rides I have laughed, had my breath taken away, been awed, saddened, intrigued, and seen some of most pure displays of human and natural beauty in my life.  All fleeting, all brightly lit, in three D, and with surround sound.

While I still hang on with both hands, the reason has changed.  Initially I was hanging on with a full vice death grip because I felt uncomfortable; fearing, I guess, that I was going to fall off at any moment or somehow go flying off into the ditch with the slightest bump or swerve.  I now know that this is very unlikely to happen and I hang on with both hands as I like to look around (I am no longer trying to drive the moto with my eyes), relax, lean back on my arms, and enjoy the scenery.  It also does help for those occasional quick stop or series of bumps that even the best of drivers cannot avoid.

I suppose that there are many volunteers around the world who use this mode of transportation who have several humorous stories to tell about their adventures.  I do not, although I got a fairly good chuckle, rightly or wrongly, out of a young lad wearing a surfer’s wet suit as his-going-to-market attire today. (No, you really don’t need to wonder where all your donated clothes go-they go to places like here, but that is another story.)  I suppose others have tales of woe, flat tires, and mud soaked adventure as they too ply the back or busy roads. For the most part I do not, although I did have one disturbing walk in the middle of nowhere after a flat tire for which I was escorted by someone suffering from mental illness and carrying a sharpened sickle, but that too is another story.  Instead my moto riding has been a series of brief and gorgeous glimpses into the life of Rwandans living outside of any city center or town; people going about their daily lives without fanfare or expectations of sudden changes.

Most of the roads that I take go through the heavily farmed land of Bugesera District,  therefore, I have had the privilege of watching the many subsistence farmers go about their business in this land of field to mouth living.   I have watched them plant and harvest their crops in a variety and succession that would make many an American farmer’s market farmer envious.  I have seen them pick each coffee bean as it ripens, use the patience of a Buddhist monk to willow and clean the tiny sorghum grains, slowly and methodically turn a field that had gone to seed into a field ready for planting with the use of only a hoe, and I have seen an entire human-labored rice harvest in the converted marshes of the Akagere River.

I have watched what it means to truly, without much choice, live off the land using every available natural resource to its best advantage.  As such I have seen people build homes from the sun dried bricks they shaped from the soil on their small plot of land.  I have seen them cut and carry wood for cooking, tools, and homes.  I have seen them collect grasses from the swamps for weaving baskets or as larder for the goats.  I have also seen people collect and carry their water on a daily basis where sometimes the easiest source is the muddy puddle left behind from a rain storm.   Usually it is a small child we swerve around who is using this source, scoop after muddy red scoop filling his yellow jeri can with precious water.

I have laughed as the smallest of child waves, dances, claps and shouts out, “Komera Muzungu!”  their cheers of, “be strong,” helping me to get through some of my difficult moments of being a Muzungu here.  I have been saddened to see children too poor to go to school dressed in dun colored rags, often with the distended stomach of malnutrition, watching their peers on their way to school, elderly people still flogging their body into work to survive, and one too many men drinking local beer out of recycled yellow cooking oil jugs in front of their local brewer’s home in the early morning hours.  I have been charmed by the attire of some of the older men in their Woody Allen spectacles, suit coat, dress shirt, and fedora, the antics of goats, and the packs of students getting themselves to school from great distances including the smallest of the small; usually running, usually carrying water or sticks to contribute to the school lunch efforts, and almost always smiling.

I have observed pure beauty on these moto rides and often wished I could stop and tell the people who have given me these moments of their beauty.  I wish I could stop and tell them that for at least one person at one moment in time they were perfect.  If I could do this I would tell the old woman riding a bike taxi side saddle dressed in her finest clothes, head wrap, glittery shawl, and sunglasses that no one ever looked more self assured, beautiful, or chill.  I would tell the women who stop their monotonous work in the fields that when their faces break into a smile as they return my wave that they possess beauty women of means have cut and injected their own faces for in the pursuit to attain a fraction of this beauty.  I would tell the new mother with her baby strapped to her back holding a colorful umbrella overhead as she walks down the red dirt road to the market that both she and her child are a stunning picture I wish I could keep and capture.  I would tell the young boy running down the steep hill in graceful abandon that he is perfect in his youthful, loping athleticism.  Perhaps, if I am brave, I will still find the time to tell the old man in suit and tie, out sewing in front of his pale blue home every morning with gold rimmed glasses on, tape measure slung over his shoulders, that he is still the most handsome of men.  Perhaps…

I will miss these rides through the beautiful countryside of Rwanda; red dirt beneath green banana trees, rolling hills and flowering trees.  How can I not?

P.S. Thanks to Reverien for all the safe rides!

Feats of Strength: Finale

What inspired it all in the first place…

I was riding a bus to Kigali some several months ago when the bus came up on a dump truck which, although moving quickly, was not moving as quickly as the bus.  An occurrence I was glad for as it afforded me my first glimpse of one of the many Rwandan feats of strength to follow; feats that have continually shamed my own physical and mental capabilities of endurance. 

It was raining quite heavily and the usual 80 plus degree temperatures must have been a mere 70 degrees as the bus approached this truck speeding down the road. Through the steam fringed windows I could see three young men on bicycles hanging onto the back bumper, hitching a free ride as the truck roared down one hill, bumped heavily over a bridge, swerved to miss another bike, and then accelerated up the hill on the other side.  I was riveted and only briefly took my eyes from this exploit to see if my fellow passengers were as equally amazed as I was, only to be further amazed to see that they were not. 

It was without a doubt riveting to watch this spectacle of strength as spray continually splattered these young men dressed only in light cotton shorts and t-shirts, drenching them in road slime and grease, exhaust fumes spewing in their faces, and our large bus bearing down on them for the near 10 kilometers we followed them. However, what I remember most from this captivating scene are their hands and their faces.  Each youth with one thin arm stretched out to hang on with four slim fingers to cold metal as their other arm remained in contact with the bike, their faces showing neither stress, fatigue, nor concern.  Rather all three had their heads down, eyes half closed, faces relaxed; all as if in quiet repose as the road churned below them.

Not having a camera that day I was unable to capture this mode of calorie saving ingenuity or foolishness by these young men who make a living by hauling goods on their bicycles.  However, while visiting Burundi recently Dan and I were able to take a few less dramatic shots of some “long haul” bicycle taxis working from the capital city of Bujumbura.  The road out of Bujumbura is as long as it is steep and winding.  It is stunning and it is home to hundreds of these stalwart bicyclists.  Riding the bus up out of Bujumbura we passed truck after slow moving truck belching its way up the mountain, each with at least one bicyclist hitching a ride up.  So too as these bicyclists rode up those who had already endured the free ride up were flying back down laden with goods for the city that only the countryside can provide.  Their clothing rippling in the draft, eyes focused, and their faces impassive.

I am sure someone has made a documentary film about this type of work, and if no one has someone should.  However, whether someone has or has not here are a few shots of what started me thinking about feats of strength in the first place.

Feats of Strength: Part III

FEATS OF STRENGTH III: Kings and Queens of the Road

I think there is a person under there

Rwanda is loosely translated as ‘land of one thousand hills.’ But the inaccuracy lay in the likelihood that there may be more like ten thousand hills. The capital, Kigali, is a city spread over four major hills. When you walk from mumuji (downtown) in any direction you go downhill. To reach the outskirts of town (another loose idea since adjacent towns seldom leave a gap between the city limits) you walk down hill for a mile or more then climb an equal distance up hill before reaching the boundary somewhere over the crest if not somewhere down the hill on the other side. That is true in all directions except for north and south where the Akagera River flows in and out of the city. To the north it is just a long walk downhill and some miles of flood plain. To the south, it’s some miles of twisted, long and gradual highway before you leave town. In a country rebuilding and developing its road infrastructure, working two-lane pavement in any direction is more important than a single major highway. Thus major trucking routes do not exist as many of us imagine.

 That is not to say that trucks do not ply the highways carrying materials and goods from one part of the country to another. But it does mean that most of those trucks are long-haul. The business of getting things from farms to town, farms to farms, or town to farms is left to much smaller vehicles. No doubt pickup trucks prowl the paved roads and some of the dirt roads. However, the real moving is done by two-wheeled vehicles. Yes, it is bicycles which rule the transportation industry of Rwanda in sheer numbers of rider/drivers and overall volume. Bicyclists haul people, animals, and every imaginable thing everywhere and do it with a fearlessness and purpose that make this country work.

20 cents gets you a long way

They start hauling hours before the sun rises, throughout the hot or rainy day, and late into the evening.  They are fearless not only in their wild abandon as they fly down every hill, the repeated whoosh of their decent ringing in one’s ear as each successive daredevil flies by, but also in their  faith that the diesel powered vehicles they share the road with will be able to see them and therefore avoid them in the darkness. It is a wonder to see them pushing unimaginable loads up monster hills burning more calories than the money they can be earning could buy to replace them. All the while, sweat dripping and faces impassive, they turn their pedals.  It is a wonder to see also the ingenuity and deftness with which they load these bicycles.  Multiple one hundred kilo bags arranged to get the maximum load and if an additional twenty kilo can be carried on your head all the better.  Metal doors, lumber, chickens, goats, monster bags of cabbage or pineapples, bunches and bunches of green bananas, six, seven or eight water containers, metal roofing three meters across or vertical, wooden bed frames, and absolutely massive bags of empty jerry cans all find transport on these average sized bicycles.  In all the time I have been here I have only seen two mishaps: a bag of beans fell off the back of a bike, spilling gracefully across the road, and an unfortunate rooster who found his neck in a rather precarious position between the bike frame and wheel.

The hierarchy of the road is as follows: big trucks, small trucks, pickups and SUV’s, bicycles, wheel barrels and pedestrians. If in doubt about who yields to who consult the pecking order above. Pedestrians move to the far right if a bicycle bell rings. Bicycles move right as far as possible when a pickup truck honks. Everyone scrambles when a big horn leads the way for the big trucks. It may not be right, but might makes right on the Rwandan pavement, dirt and, some, barely recognizable roads. Dear reader you may choose to discount the veracity of this since there is no picture to back it up: I saw a live pig, a large live pig, strapped onto the cargo platform of a bike just a few days ago. The pig lay on its side, feet toward the road and head hanging over the shoulder. Does a person reach for a camera every time? Or does a person, once in a while, just stare in wonder and enjoy the moment? I will end with this: the pig did not look happy.

weaving materials

beer distributor...really

earthenware headed for market

gotta feed the goats

100 kg = 230 lbs

For good measure, a reminder that some places require the most primitive of transport methods