Ngeli ya baiskeli II: Adopt a noise week

The most Dutch thing in this world that a foreigner can do is get a baiskeli. Considering just how many baiskelis there are in this country and what with the soaring costs of gasoline in the world and the fact that it cost one arm and part of your leg to get a driving license in this country, perhaps a baiskeli is not so bad an option.

Well in the spirit of my living in this here parts of the good Lord’s earth, I had to comply with being Dutch. So a day after I landed in the Netherlands, I got a bike.

My bike is a story on its own; its an absolute student bike. It has a good solid layer of rust on one side and a squeaky chain in-between the rusty guard. Its lights didn’t work and still don’t but somehow decided to start working one random evening so I guess there is someone out there looking out for me.

If all humans in this world could adopt an attitude where they care for their fellow man, wouldn’t this world be a so much better place to live in? Remember the statements that have been repeated over the ages; I was hungry and you gave me to eat, thirsty and you gave me to drink and such like statements. In this light, my bike would be a saint by now. Yes, if I was you I’d also be struggling with the puzzled look on my face right about now but I will explain.

Ever since day one when I got my bike, it has been picking up stray abandoned and unwanted noises and packing them deep inside it. Talk of magnanimity; no noise is too large, or too horrible or too loud to be accommodated by my bike; a true saint indeed. I’m all for generosity and looking after the abandoned and lonely, but where do you draw the line on your bike’s chronic adoption issues? Is it when riding your bike sounds like a mobile orchestra as mine does currently? I think it is. Riding my bike is hard enough and only this week, it adopted two new noises; a squeak when I pedal and a clanging noise cause by a broken spoke sticking out of the standard position spokes should be maintaining. It was hilarious the expression I drew out of a lady as I was riding right by her; she almost stopped to ensure that the circus was not in town what with all the clanging and banging noises moving right by her. Classic stuff I tell you.

So really, I tell you when you get a bicycle, it should be like my bicycle; the kind which can be a conversation starter even with the people that you don’t know.

Ngeli ya baiskeli

Baiskeli is Swahili for bicycle; the rest you will pick up as we go along.

Where I come from, cyclists have very few rights...scrap that...cyclists have absolutely no rights. Shouts of 'jinga wewe toa mkebe barabarani' (idiot, get that piece of junk of the road) rent the air as the struggle for road supremacy between cyclists and motorists peaks right around rush hour. Needless to say, the motorists always win primarily because cyclists may as well be a non-entity on Kenyan roads, what with no designated bike paths, cycling is really at your own risk.

Be that as it may, there are still very many cyclists riding to their various destinations in Nairobi; surprisingly, most of them ride a black called a black mamba christened Blackie. This is typically a bike that is mainly used by casual workers as it is really really cheap...and in some areas, the carrier region is modified with a really comfortable seat and colours of all sorts and it becomes a taxi commonly known as a boda boda...

Flash-forward to Delft, where everyone rides a bike....and the most typical is the Dutch city bike which bears a startling resemblance to the blackie....so imagine my shock and surprise when on landing in first world central, I find a blackie and get this, its the coolest bike to have around and seeing as I tend to be a cool one in general terms and everyone here rides a blackie, I now own a blackie.

Isn't irony just the bomb?