HELLO MOTO

You haven't lived until you have experienced a ride on a moto in Kigali, it gives you a sense of freedom while also giving you the relief of being alive when it's over. You always swear that you'll never ride them again but you always do, simply coz they cost a quarter of the price of a taxi. The first time is always the worst time, firstly the speedometers never work, I have now ridden on over a dozen and the speedometer never works. This is mainly to put the customer at ease because if they knew they were twisting round corners at 60Mph they would truly freak out but that is as far as they go in trying to make you comfortable. You have to approach them with disdain, never appear too keen, never show them you are in a hurry. Summon them with the arrogance of a Frenchman and as they pull up, don't negotiate, simply tell them your price and if they refuse then just walk off.


They will follow you but stick to your guns, summon another moto just to piss him off and like a spurned playboy he will cave in. the safety equipment is rudimentary but efficient, a green helmet that will at least stop your brains from decorating the pavement and the rest is left to the grace of God. The first time I rode I wanted to hold on to the drivers waist like a nervous girlfriend on the back of a boy-racers Ducati. I had to be more manly about it and gripped onto a rickety rack on the back of the seat. I warned him that this was my first time and should be gentle; he winked and laughed knowing that he would go even faster now. The helmet was ill-fitting and rattled around my head, the oily, sweaty, goo of previous users was the only thing holding it to my head as the strap was tenuously holding on. It is a full assault on the senses, the car insulates you from the surrounding world, but on this? Your sense of touch, sight, hearing, taste is fully engaged, along with other senses like a sense of foreboding; a sense of fear ; a sense of understanding as you swerve through the traffic like legalised road rage. You grip the rack like a baby on a tit; for dear life.


This is when you witness first hand the green-house effect; the sputtering hulks that are trade lorries climbing up Muhima travel at their own leisurely pace, cloaked in a black cape of smoke that starves your brain of oxygen just long enough to give you a buzz. A buzz that lasts long enough until the next scare; you realise that life is a precarious balance of forces beyond our comprehension. If the force of gravity around a certain corner exceeded a certain limit then I would be hugging the pavement. Cars and bikes go at their own pace and in their own mad way. It is truly insane how they approach roundabouts; a chaotic order takes hold and everybody finds their way but only after some serious scares. People in Rwanda are like Clark Kent; they are just impervious to cars and they walk as if they really own the road. It takes real guts to see a 6-litre monster 4x4 bearing down on them and yet they never even flinch, we are a nation of adrenaline junkies; and so the trip is delayed by the whims of the of the ordinary Joe, his minor victory is holding up traffic for a few seconds; like in The Congo when enterprising men would fill in pot-holes and block the road till they got payment.


There is a strict order here; I noticed this when a criminal was apprehended in my presence, there was a long debate as to his innocence and soon the policeman was confused. He resolved the issue by instructing the criminal to walk to the nearest station where he would deal with him later. The thief actually took the long winding road to the Police Station like a child going home to a spanking. So the Moto twisting and turning with abandon snaking the bends of every hill until you lose all fear of death and realise that yes; you have had a good life. You have exceeded the life expectancy of previous generations in history, it wakes you up; I know people that are as drunk as a Sailor on leave but take the Moto just to sober up, because it is insane.


I was in Butare and had the same dilemma when we wanted to choose between a taxi and a moto, a taxi costs 2,000 but a moto was 400 each; which later turned out to 600 each because it was longer than he had anticipated. His inner tachometer was measuring a third more than usual, the road was winding due to the erosion which left puddles and bare rock. It makes you wish you had your own Moto that you could dump leave anywhere; maybe a coin-operated one. If you go out to lunch in Kigali you can come back and find the building you were in is now a skyscraper. Buildings are going up every 10 minutes; they look at a hill of slums and they simply sweep their hand across and say it is all going to go “shweeeeeeesh!” The Kigali of long ago was pure slums with a scattering of colonial buildings; now it belies its nascent crops of glass and steel monuments to Capitalism. All along there is a veritable feast and famine; side by side, a fast developing metropolis with the egalitarian dream of the rich and poor living side by side. A thoroughly modern Norman Foster-style beauty has no shame parading next to a ram shackled tin hut, that is what happens when you develop too fast, some get left behind. But they are still next door, so they hold out until their little scrap of land is worth a decent house in the suburbs and soon the next upstart has a his statue up.


Rwanda is the most densely populated country in Africa and you see this first hand when you live here; people are everywhere, under you, over you, around you. I tried to go for a quiet walk and I failed miserably; even in London with 10 million people, you can find a quiet little spot where you get away from it all. But in Kigali you would struggle even if you were a Zen Buddhist; a typical walk will include several random people you hadn't wanted to be with. They might be just curious people with nothing to do; a hawker keen for customers, even a moto-driver who is thoroughly confused by the fact that you want to walk. The pace of the country can leave you frustrated; this country has serious problems but they are compounded by the pace at which they walk. Maybe it is the heat or the legacy of the previous regime that left the country deliberately ignorant to reduce its security bill. Now you see a country with an emerging highly-skilled class but also a deeply ignorant underclass that hasn't changed since the colonial days.


Usually the underclass is held hostage by the elite but in Rwanda it is the opposite. The elite are hamstrung by their servants; for example when you wake up every morning not to the sound of birds chirping but a servant banging away. The servant also walks a tightrope between looking busy and trying to be as incompetent as he can. A moments idleness can get them sacked, so they are always on the move, a couple hours hard work is all you need to impress the boss before he goes to work, then it's party time . I used to have a real socialist streak in me; which has faded but a few precepts remain. One is not having servants; it has been known to make you lazy, and I am starting to get that way. In most countries women run the domestic economy but here mostly men do the housework, Western feminists would be proud of this. Every now and then they show initiative beyond the call of duty like finding all your dry-clean only clothes and washing them by hand in the wrong way and totally ruin them; then a wry smile as they put creases in your jeans, creases so sharp they could kill a fly. You inform him of the latest developments in fashion such as not putting creases in your jeans, he will give the customary wry smile and apologize and you can bet your bottom dollar he'll do it again tomorrow.


So the ground hog day continues, you explain the whole creases in jeans thing, he apologizes and he'll do it again. I don't mean to put them down coz they give good service sometimes, for example my clothes were washed, and ironed, and that included my underwear and socks. I haven't had that since my mother used to do it in the overbearing days of my childhood. You feel guilty because you can send them for anything your heart desires; we have a saying in Kinyarwanda “Amata yi' mbogo” this translates as buffalo milk; meaning a herculean task you have no chance of achieving . Young men were told to leave the house and not come back until they get some buffalo milk, it was a clever way to get rid of unruly teenagers. These guys would search the ends of the earth for that buffalo milk until they got it. The young up and coming generation is going to take Africa by storm but something must be done for the little man. The man who quietly goes about his duty not knowing of the global economy or who thinks the information super-highway is made of tarmac. How he fits in the scheme of things will determine the future of this nation. But one thing is for sure; I love my country.