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We arrived in Kigali on August 2nd to find
that the airport was still showing signs of the war. It was pretty shot up,
with very few windows left. Mortar and rocket holes in the walls were in
the process of being patched, and soldiers roamed among the incoming passengers,
eyeing baggage and just generally maintaining a presence. The trip to our
hotel revealed more of the same: small mud houses and shops riddled with
bullet holes, and fortifications surrounding the upper-class homes. Trucks
full of soldiers (armed with AK-47s) and Gendarmerie (national police) were
prominent in the local traffic.
Our first day was used to set up the program, select the training site, and
locate the other resources needed. The training site was a barbed wire enclosed
compound, formerly used by United Nations peace keeping forces who assisted
in bringing relief to the country after the genocide. It was comprised of
a dozen or so portable buildings (much like you'd see on a construction site)
with a sentry posted at the gate, behind sandbags and tin roofing. The compound
was now the Communal Police bike training center, and also where our students
lived. Although it was a twenty-minute drive from the hotel, the place worked
to our advantage, as the fortifications kept a very curious public from
interfering with the training.
The next step was to assemble the first 50 bikes and apply the "Police" decals
and visors onto the TREK helmets for our students that we'd meet the next
day. This process took - with the help of Ernie Buck and Brad Sauer of ICITAP
- about four hours. We worked at the training site (in production line mode)
that afternoon into darkness, which also coincided with an onslaught of
malaria-bearing mosquitoes. Their buzzing about was our signal to pack it
in and head back to downtown and our hotel to rest up for day one.
The hotel was supposedly the best in town, where most dignitaries and
international relief agency personnel stayed. Imagine a Holiday Inn in decent
condition. and you have the Hotel Mille Collines. It was the Taj Mahal to
us. The food at the hotel was imported weekly from Belgium. and we ate breakfast
there each morning and ate very well. However, a couple of nighttime excursions
into Kigali for dinner had mixed results. One place was a very nice outdoor
restaurant specializing in pizza cooked in huge stone ovens near your table.
It wasn't New York Italian. but hey, we were in Africa! The other venue served
''brochettes," (Shish Kabob) with meat that didn't look or taste like any
beef I'd ever had. The jury is still out on that place. It's probably the
source of the Hepatitis-A I brought back with me. But that story's a "whole
'notha" column
The next morning our first group of students was waiting in the classroom
at the compound. They dressed in blue uniforms with military style hats,
black belts, no weapons, and no badges. Ages ranged from twenty-one to
thirty-five. but most appeared to be very young (the civil war took its toll
on the male population). A sergeant was the only person who spoke and read
English. So, Fred (his real name) was assigned to us as our interpreter and
assumed the title of class leader. As it turned out. his title was well deserved;
had it not been for Fred, we would have been lost trying to teach through
the language barrier.
We began by having the class sign a roster, but we were told that only a
few could write, so Fred became the scribe as well. A show of hands revealed
that six students had never ridden bicycles in their lives. These men were
from Kenya and lived as farmers and cattle drovers growing up: no time or
money for bicycles. These guys were our biggest challenge.
All the officers were fitted to one of two frame sizes, had their saddle
height and fore/aft adjustment set, and were then each assigned a bike. We
helped them adjust the straps and padding on their helmets, which they chose
to wear everywhere, even during classroom lectures, until the novelty wore
off.
We covered the entire PC Course outline, including "Effective Cycling" (modified
to match their traffic patterns and roadways) and two days of cone drills,
and then it was time for our first road ride. We were particularly concerned
about a few of our Kenyan officers, as they had a difficult time with some
of the cone drills, but Fred was way ahead of us and made three of them stay
behind to practice. Assured by Fred that his men were ready, we lined the
rest of them up, single file, at the gate.
Mark rode point, and I took up the rear of the thirty would-be bike officers,
a mass of humanity and equipment. Our support vehicles covered the front
and rear and blocked intersections for us as needed. On this ride, their
commander, Captain Joseph, occupied a seat in the chase vehicle to observe
his men riding.
Citizens lined the roadway by the dozens, cheering us on and chasing the
officers as they rode by. With every subsequent ride we took the crowds grew
larger and larger. We were an event! In a country with so little and with
so little to be happy about, the sight of these officers on mountain bikes
must have brought them a small dose of fun. Even the somber workers building
a monument over a mass grave (located next to the compound) stopped what
they were doing to wave at us and smile. On some rides we experienced what
it must be like to ride through the crowds that line the roads in the Alps
in the Tour de France. It was truly an unbelievable experience for two "muzungo"
Texas bike cops!
(Many of the children were shouting "muzungo!", which means "white man!"
in Kenyarwandan —the most common language of several spoken. Fred told
us that depending on the tone of voice used, a Rwandan shouting "muzungo,"
could lead to a detrimental change in your well being. However, in this instance,
the citizens were happy to see us helping their police so, "muzungo!" was
a sort of salutation. We were relieved. I might add here that during all
the training we were watched over by an armed Gendarmerie officer and never
felt that our safety was in jeopardy.)
About ten minutes into the ride, we encountered a downhill about half a mile
long. Coasting, you could reach speeds in the high teens and lower twenties,
and that's the tack some of the riders decided to take. I was unprepared
to immediately find that all previous lessons on the use of the gears went
out the window for some, as did the idea of using the handbrakes to slow
down, and of steering the bike by leaning instead of turning the handlebar!
I tried to ride next to riders having problems and correct their errors,
but they seemed dazed and frightened by the speed and paid no attention to
me. About halfway down the hill, two rode with their feet off the pedals,
their legs out to their sides. They coasted and wove back and forth, into
and out of the oncoming lane. all the while increasing speed. Another was
furiously pedaling in the small chainring and largest rear cog, giving it
his best effort, while his comrades were frantically trying to avoid colliding
at speed as they "steered" into each other. The few Kenyarwandan commands
Fred taught us were of no avail. It was an instructor's nightmare!
Eventually one rider could no longer control his speed, and veered into a
drainage ditch and crashed. Two more collided in the middle of the lane,
and lay sprawled among their wreckage (with a case of road rash appearing
as I approached). Another sideswiped a taxi in the oncoming lane, before
laying down at the bottom of the hill. Captain Joseph witnessed it all. We
loaded a couple of bike carcasses in the support vehicles, and gave the seriously
wounded transportation back to the compound for treatment.
The rest of the class pedaled on through v villages and market places, and
arrived at the compound after six miles of what had proved to be a tremendously
exhilarating experience for them. They tackled steep hills and long grades,
dirt roads and congested traffic, and learned how useful all those gears
really are. They were pumped and ready for another lap! I have to admit,
we were pretty pumped too, so we did go for another lap and enjoyed it as
much as the first. We also found out that these guys were well acclimated
to the hills and thin air. While we were gasping, they were yuckin' it up
and slapping high-fives. With a little more saddle time, they'd be hard to
keep up with.
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