Motorbiking Milo

So I had my first motorbike lesson today...and within about 20 minutes of starting I found myself driving along the dirt roads of Tamale for the first time. The motorbike is pretty much the primary mode of transport here in Tamale. Its a common sight to see entire families (mum, dad and up to three kids) piled onto a bike chugging along the city streets, not to mention people transporting live sheep and cows on the back! The bikes are of varying quality, everything from good quality Japanese off-road bikes to rickety contraptions that aren’t much more than a bicycle with a lawnmower engine strapped on the back.

My bike is a red Haojin 125 cc which cost about 500 euro and shes a divvler on the dirt roads!

Anyway my first lesson came free of charge via Mr. ‘ I can fix anything which has moving parts’ Ebbe , and took place in a local school yard. Nothing too unusual there until you consider that it wa s about 1pm in the afternoon on a Wednesday. We pull up to the school yard, Mr. Ebbe dismounts and points at the clutch and says ‘Here is the clutch…only use it small small’, then the accelerator and advises ‘This is the gas…only use it small small, now you try’. So after a couple of stalls I figure out the meaning of ‘small small’ and manage to get the bike moving, at which point fifty or so school kids stream out of their classrooms into the yard. By the looks on their faces Im pretty sure none of them had imagined the treat that was store for them that day..a big hairy ‘salaminga’ learning to ride a motorbike on their soccer pitch at lunchtime! And so with a bunch of them running after me trying to touch my elbows and the rest shouting and jumping back and forth on my track I repeated figure of 8s until Mr. Ebbe managed to clear them all to get out of my way. He shouted at me that we should go elsewhere and it was at this point I realised that I wasn’t all that sure about the slowing down and stopping process. I mean I knew that I had a foot brake and a hand brake but wasn’t aware that the clutch was also needed! So after a juddering halt we decided that it would be much safer for everyone else if I learned to ride on the road itself.

One and half months and over 2000km later Im feeling pretty confident riding my Haojin pretty much anywhere. I’ve had a few minor falls but only when going really slowly over rough terrain when lack of balance and the desire to keep my feet dry have resulted in some comical tip-overs. In terms of terrain there are three types of surface here…regular tarmac which is pockmarked with nasty potholes, dirt road which is pretty bumpy but a lot of fun to ride on and then of course off road trails which is where the good times are had. Many of the rural villages which we have been visiting are accessible only via these dirt roads and the extended rainy season which we are having has resulted in the deterioration of these roads to comical levels. We have some classic footage of us riding through long stretches of knee deep water. Usually I have Shannen on the back which makes the bike a little more difficult to control and sometimes a little more stressful…now I know why backseat drivers are such a nuisance! My record for carrying stuff on the back was on Tuesday last week when we rode from Tamale centre to our house carrying four 10 foot long drain pipes. Initially we were riding with them supported atop our shoulders which elicited shouts of advice and caution from the locals but soon realised that this wasn’t going to work on the bumpy roads near our house and transferred to the much more sensible underarm method!

Pictures to follow (I brought the wrong cable to the web cafe so real ones of me on me bike will have to wait!)