The First of the Boda Boda Stories

Town and country boda bodas may look alike, but the experiences are very different. This photo was taken in Kakamega Town where the children and the boda boda drivers are considerably more sophisticated than those I met when I spent a day teaching at Ikoli, an isolated secondary school.

About a week after giving a workshop for English teachers, I agreed, with some trepidation, to teach the classes of one of the workshop participants.

On the appointed day, Timothy appeared out of the darkness shortly after six, shouldered my yellow pack filled with teaching materials, plans and aids, and herded us along the quietly bustling darkened road to the matatus. It was refreshingly cool, and the darkness muffled sound. Even the blaring matatu horns were subdued. The touts were as aggressive as always and I noted that they grabbed Timothy by the arm as roughly as they had grabbed Sarah and me another day. I had wondered at the time if their insistence had been caused by our white skin or the fact that we were women.

We rode twenty kilometres past the stadium where the man had been killed in pre-election violence, by the Lurambi market where vendors were unpacking things in the pre-dawn light, toward the Kakamega rainforest. We alighted at the junction just beyond the entrance to the forest. It was seven o'clock and still cool.

Waiting for the boda bodas, we watched as the primary school children began to arrive in groups and ones and twos. They looked like small uniformed turtles with their backpacks, laden with books. Several stared at us, their heads still turned towards us as they walked toward the main road. Out here, despite the proximity of the forest, the only tourist attraction in the area, white people are still a rarity. Timothy told us that most children in his school had never before seen a msungu.

We remarked on the clean smells of the countryside and Timothy began to speak of the hill country where Ikoli is located. He had been a town boy when he accepted this post at a poor isolated day school, and had a great deal to learn about rural people and their ways. There was pride in his recounting of his transition from being a teacher who arrived, taught and escaped back to town at the end of each week to becoming a member of the community.

Would he stay long? No, he had ambitions and he didn't want to spend his entire career teaching at Ikoli, but for now he was happy. He cared about his students and he wanted to give them exposure to experiences they would otherwise never have. That is why he entered them in competitions in which they had little chance of winning; why he had made the effort to bring us out for the day.

He had warned his students that they must not "stare at us with their teeth", so few gaped open- mouthed, but as the day progressed I realised that my strangeness was a definite hindrance to communication. I expected the children in Forms 1 and 2 to have a poor command of English so I worked more slowly and carefully, but as they day wore on, I became tired -- and more comfortable. I made the mistake of assuming that the older students were far more competent and comfortable with spoken English than they actually were.

But I have jumped ahead of myself.

The boda bodas arrived and we climbed aboard. Timothy had talked about the seven kilometre climb, but he hadn't mentioned the state of the road or the steep descents into the river valleys or the stream fordings.

If you've never ridden on a boda boda, it may be difficult to imagine the difference between riding your own bike and riding on the back of one of these. The drivers are in excellent physical shape: strong and lean. They are riding single speed bikes over very rough terrain carrying large loads of produce, luggage and passengers on padded seats immediately behind the driver. The bikes have been adapted to carry passengers. Usually they have welded handles just below their seats and small footrests in the appropriate location.

Usually.

I have ridden on bikes without any handles or with stubby sharp edged handles that do not encourage holding on, and more than once have been forced to let my legs hang because the footrests caused my legs to cramp. Today, both handles and footrests were fine … and thank God for that. This was the longest, roughest, most thrilling series of rides I've ever had on boda bodas.

On your own bike you may traverse tough territory, but you can always see where you are going. On a boda boda what you see is the driver's back and, with your peripheral vision, the countryside that flashes by.

On this ride we passed cane fields, forest, peaceful shambas with thatched roofed mud buildings, and rumbled over bridges that crossed rushing brooks. Pedestrians, boda bodas carrying cargo and heavily laden donkeys shared the road, but very few motorized vehicles appeared.

Neepya grass being transported along asphalt road near Mumias

We hurtled down hills at breakneck speeds, the driver following the topography of the rutted red road by swerving around the largest bumps and navigating between the ridges. Because I could not see what was coming up, these zigs and zags almost invariably caught me by surprise and I worried that I would unbalance us. I shuddered to think what kind of landing I would endure if that happened. I considered closing my eyes but decided against it, so I endured the kaleidoscope of bouncing images and terrifyingly sudden changes of direction, my knuckles turning white on the handles and my knees clinging as best they could to the diagonal metal strip against which they rested. I felt great relief when we stopped at the bottom of steep grades to walk uphill.

The higher we climbed, the more beautiful became the countryside. Mist rose in swirls and the vistas grew in scope, fields and woods stretching out green and fertile.

We stopped at a market crossing bustling with activity and Timothy deposited us with his neighbour who runs an orphanage while he went home to pick up his bicycle and a load of books he had borrowed earlier from the Teachers' Resource Centre. He bought batteries for the tape player I would be using, and we picked up two more boda bodas for the final leg of the journey. From here on the road was restricted to non-motorised traffic. Great rocks studded the roadbed, and if I had thought the first part of the road was bad, I had a real experience in store from here on up to the top.

More rivers, donkeys, cane fields. Fewer rides downhill. More climbing on foot. It became even more peaceful as we went through shaded areas. Then we passed a noisy mill where they were grinding cane to create pebbly sugar used in candy-making. Another corner or two and there was a primary school with children staring and shouting mzungu. We waved and called out our greetings of habari and mzuri sana , and then there was a roadside restaurant on the left, a magnificent view of the surrounding hills and valleys before us, and the Ikoli Secondary School with its flag on the right.

I couldn't have imagined a more beautiful place to teach.

The main building was composed of a line of four classrooms with the staff room and headmaster's office in the middle. There were two small outbuildings and a latrine. Basketball hoop rings and a flag pole were placed seemingly randomly on the grounds.

We put everything in one of the outbuildings and went to meet the headmaster and the staff members who were working in the staff room. Then we entered the first class.

I won't go into detail about the teaching. Suffice it to say that I had generally overestimated ability, and learned a great deal more than I taught. That doesn't mean that it was a total flop. It wasn't … but I would do better the next time I embarked on such a day.

One small anecdote illustrates the the enormous gulf between my experience and that of a young Kenyan high school girl I worked with in the Form III (grade 10) class. I had asked the students to make up funny fictional excuses for not doing homework or for being late to class. They shared their stories with partners and then with the class. One girl had no partner so she and I told each other our stories. Her first was a long involved account of having to walk a few kilometres for water, which then evolved into a long list of chores that she had to perform before she could do homework, and by the time she had finished it was dark and she had no light to work. I laughed and said, "It's not true, is it?" She looked surprised and assured me it was entirely true. I said the story was supposed to be made up. She tried again.

This time she told me about going for water. A man attempted to seduce her. She refused. He insisted. She argued as best she could. Kenyan girls are uncomfortable arguing with adults, especially with men. He offered her money for school fees. She refused again. He grabbed at her and she ran away. He chased her until she reached a place where there were people. "Where is the water?" her mother asked her when she returned home empty handed. When she explained, her mother sent her back to get the water, and so she was late for school.

"Now that story wasn't true, was it?" I asked.

"Oh yes," she replied. "It really happened."

Lunch was the daily staple of stiff corn porridge called ugali, the wild greens called sukuma wiki and the toughest chicken with the best juice I've ever eaten. It cost one hundred fifty shilllings for all three of us … ($3).

Timothy asked if I would say something about HIV/AIDS. I was working with the Form 2 class. Using the personals ads from the local paper I was able to draw their attention to the number that noted the need for HIV testing. But I asked Sarah if she wanted to do that part with the last two classes. She told a simple story Erma uses in her workshops and it was very successful.

The story was about a man who insisted that he didn't need to be careful because he was praying to God to keep him safe. Three different people tried to warn him. The first suggested abstinence, the second that he be faithful to one partner, the third that he use a condom. The man kept insisting that his prayers would keep him safe. Eventually he became HIV positive and later became sick and died. When he got to heaven he expressed his annoyance with God. "You let me down. I prayed and you let me get the virus anyway."

"I let you down," roared God. "You let me down. I sent three people to try to get you to change your behaviour and you didn't pay any attention to any one of them. You let me down!"

The story ended with the ABC's of prevention: abstinence, being faithful, using a condom.

In the last class, many of the students were Sarah's age, and Timothy really put her on the spot after her story by asking if she had a boyfriend. Yes. Was she abstaining? Sarah blushed and said no, but then said that when she got home she would definitely insist on condoms.

When four o'clock came we gathered our things together and went over to the staffroom to have sodas and the favourite sweet, a kind of doughnut called mandazi. The wash basin was passed, the prayer was said, and we started to eat and drink. The headmaster made a pretty speech, as did Timothy and the deputy head.

And then we climbed back on the boda bodas for the ride back. Sarah rode Timothy's bike with the bright green wheels this time. Our descent down the rock strewn road was even more precarious and terrifying than the first trip had been, and this time it was accompanied by Sarah's squeals as she hurtled down. She insisted that was how she stayed on. At the end of the first bad hill, Timothy mentioned that he had been very surprised that the drivers had not asked us to walk. As I swallowed my stomach, I managed to squeak, "I rather wish they had."

Further on we got to a very long hill with fewer rock outcroppings where my driver was really able to pick up steam. Someone ascending the hill called out laughing, "Pole, pole," and my driver laughed and said, "He means slowly, slowly."

"I know," I said, "And please remember that you should go pole pole. Don't forget I'm a mzee." Either he didn't believe I was really an old woman or the wind rushing past his ears prevented his hearing, but he certainly didn't slow down. If anything, his speed increased as we descended.

We reached the market place in one piece and he tested his brakes. "Please don't tell me you don't have brakes," I said.

"The brakes are very good," he laughed.

Now that I didn't have to mount the boda boda again. I could afford to laugh with him.

Timothy put us into a vehicle travelling to the junction and I sat wedged between the door and a tiny Kikuya man who insisted he was very rich and wanted to welcome us to Kenya by paying for out fares. His pores exuded alcohol fumes but he seemed nice enough. At the junction he asked for my phone number in Canada and no amount of reasoning about costs would do but that I give him my card.

He flagged down the matatu for us and I finished our journey squashed between a sugar sack of fish and a breastfeeding woman holding a chicken which squeaked like some demented squeeze toy. The baby was absolutely wide-eyed when she saw me and stuck her fingers in my mouth and pulled at my cheek. Better than screaming in terror, I guess. I felt as if I had inoculated her against a fear of wazungu. When the woman disembarked she carried the still nursing baby, the shrieking chicken and the huge sack of dried fish.

It was a good day.