Romão and the Bicycle

In our previous lives we used bikes as integral parts of our daily transportation solutions. Luc had a phase when he biked over 40 miles a day commuting back and forth over the San Francisco Bay to Stanford from where he lived with his brother in Fremont. We assumed, given the primitive state of Mozambican transport infrastructure, that bikes would give us some options and a degree of freedom from the mostly insane minibuses, at least over short distances. Peace Corps provided us the funds to purchase two bikes, which we did during the first couple months of service. We quickly grew to regret the day the two Chinese mountain bikes showed up at our homes, delivered by some neighbor that caught word that we had 5,000 Mets to spend. We took it as a bad omen when, on our inaugural spin, the handlebars fell off one of our brand new bikes. Basically, every time we took the bikes out we had to do a complete pre-departure tune-up just to get going. Its not that we bought a couple lemons, everyone in Mozambique has the same struggle to maintain their bikes. Despite being very accustomed to doing repair work, methods are frighteningly brutish, almost always involving a hammer, a tool neither of us used during our years of bike maintenance in the States. Every time out something would happen. We made it as far as Malawi, which given our situation in a border town is not too impressive. Once the pedal started to fall off on a regular basis, and having to push the bike back from Malawi, Luc just gave up. The bikes unreliability stripped us of all the joy we had anticipated experiencing on circulating freely driven by our own muscle power. So the bikes are now under the sole jurisdiction of Romão who derives his greatest life pleasure from zooming around on those accursed contraptions. Its about as cool as being a high schooler in the US with a car to be seen driving around town in. Plus, he actual enjoys spending endless hours tinkering with his one tool trying to get the bike into riding form. By cannibalizing the parts of one to sustain the other he has been able to get some remarkable life out of the bikes, especially considering how hard he rides the fragile things. Unfortunately, just before our departure to America the last low quality wheel cover wore through, exposing the frail inner tubes to all kinds of popping hazards, which rendered the bike unusable. A new tire would be 300 mets, or about one month and a half of Romão’s income. So the bikes sat idle, but Romão had a plan. He began fishing and selling his catch. Apparently he’s a pretty good fisherman, because within three weeks he had enough to buy the part he needed to rehabilitate his prized mode of speeding around town. He made a trip to Malawi, and sorte! (good luck!) they had the tire he had been hoping for. He spent every met he had saved, but he was so happy to be biking again that he barely noticed he had no food to eat that night. We felt proud that Romão was able to set a goal and achieve it, although we wish he could get as motivated in schooling or other life improving activities as he does over the bikes.