Bike Trips

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I have been doing a lot of biking recently. When I returned to my site after IST, I spent about 10 days there re-remembering how to speak Jaxanke before biking out to visit some other members of my work zone. The ride was about 40km; I woke up early and arrived in about 2.5 hours. We conducted a short pepiniere training with the middle school in my friend's village (see pictures below).

My village is located halfway between the city of Kedougou and the rest of the members of my work zone. The last two times I have come into the city to Kedougou I have biked in; this ride is also about 40km. The first time I was by myself and had a nice early morning ride. The most recent time I biked into Kedougou, my whole work zone rode in together; the other four volunteers started from their sites at 5:45am and I joined them halfway when they reached my village at 9:15am. We had a long ride in the heat and encountered some bike trouble along the way, but eventually we all made it to the transit house. I will not be making that ride ever again during the heat of the day if I can avoid it.

Through my biking I have learned that riding on a dirt road is much slower than riding on concrete. I have also found it easier to talk about bike rides in terms of time rather than distance; the time it takes to reach a destination depends so much on the road quality that distances are less meaningful. The dirt road into Kedougou is slower than a paved road would be, but it is much faster than bush paths like the one I take to my luumo (weekly market). It is hard to track the distance to the luumo because the path does not exist on any map, but I know it takes an hour. It's probably about 10km. The ride to Kedougou takes me 2 hours 40 minutes and is 40km. These times of course include walking my bike up the big and moderate hills. Senegalese bikes almost never have gears, so everyone walks their bikes up hills that have even a moderate slope. I have adopted the practice: why tire myself out riding in granny gear up a steep hill when I can just walk up and get a little break from riding? I am never in a hurry to reach my destination, so saving 30 seconds by riding instead of walking up a hill has no relevance here. Unfortunately now that April has arrived I will probably not be able to bike in to the house too frequently; it is just getting too hot, even when I am on the road by 6:30am.

I hope that when the rains come they will be semi-predictable so that I can ride into the house and be fairly sure that it will not pour on me during the 3-hour window while I am on my bike.



Group picture after the training

Holding tree sacs while dirt is filled in around to stabilize them

Filling tree sacs

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