My Mamba skills

I arrived in the Netherlands in February 2020, in the middle of winter. Cold and rainy weather tormented me. What made it even worse was that most people here rely on public transport which thankfully is quite efficient, well heated and immaculately clean, but the inconveniences brought by this weather when walking or cycling to these public transportation platforms can be annoying. I noticed that everybody cycles including the queen whose photo had appeared on one of the newspapers on her way to a public library. Her appearance opened my mind and I knew that, unlike my homeland Kenya where a bicycle in my youth was a symbol of the peasantry, here it a mark of civilization.

As soon as I was able to settle myself in a tiny apartment, a wave of Corona arrived with its vicious attacks forcing the government to declare a lockdown. I ran to the supermarket, looking for food and other necessities. The very first things which disappeared so fast from the shelves were bread, sugar, wheat flour, and toilet papers. I saw people grabbing things from the shelves as if there was no tomorrow. It is a human trait that appears when scarcity presents itself. You could see fear and uncertainty written on everybody’s eyes. Their only flicker of hope was to have enough to eat and be able to empty one's bowel in a decent manner.

A lot went on during the lockdown but recently, a lay of hope brought by summer had the country’s doors opened in some places apart from workplaces.

“When are you going to ride your bicycle”, asked my friendly neighbor who had seen me walking all the way to the train station on a daily basis before the lockdown. This question cut my stomach in half with a sharp razor of memories of those early years of my life when my grandfather would roll a heavy piece of metal that he called a bicycle. Apart from the saddle and the tires, the rest was an assembly of heavy metalwork. He lived on his farm a few kilometers from ours. Our home being a few meters from the shopping center which he regularly visited to catch up with the latest news and to have a beer with his friends, he would leave his bicycle with strong warnings.

“Let me leave this ‘auto’ of mine here and nobody should touch it! Do you hear! ”, he would warn us before heading to the village shopping center. He got so drunk on such visits. Unable to lift even his own body, he would forget his bicycle and stagger home, singing and hiccupping, and cursing, and would only remember his bike the following day after regaining his soberness, thereby sending one of his workers who tended his peasantry tea farm to come for it.

The bicycle brand had a golden crocodile logo stuck on its head tube with the word ‘Mamba’ (a crocodile in Swahili) engraved on it in shiny black ink. Locals call it black mamba. To me, it was as lethal as its name.

As soon as he turned around the corner, my brothers would grab it like a hot cake and would enjoy free uninterrupted lessons with it. Since their tiny bodies could not lift themselves on the saddle of that monster, they had to devise a way of getting on top. They would roll it up to a high edge by the road and mount on it, gain balance, and roll downhill. In most cases, they landed on thorny shrubs and thickets, getting bruises which they would not complain about because my mother brought us up with a hand. Such forbidden objects were not supposed to land in the hands of children who were between eight and twelve years but they did. Soon they started riding with confidence as they cycled standing, their tiny bodies balancing on one side with one leg across the bar as it rested on the other pedal. It was magical.  

As for me, I treated it with wary respect because, in one instance, I had unsuccessfully joined them in their expedition. After unhooking this Mamba monster from its stand, it felt so heavy in my hands and as much as I tried to roll it up to the higher edge on which to mount, it pushed be backward, downhill. Fearing that if I let it roll back it would get damaged, putting me into trouble, I soldiered on with my brothers acting as cheerleaders.

“One step forward, three steps behind. Two steps ahead five steps behind.” I was in this motion for less than a minute before I lost full control of the Mamba. It pushed me downhill with a force that thrashed me violently into some thorny bushes as it flew past me, landing on top of a thorn tree bough. None of us could even try to climb to remove it because apart from giraffes that nibble their leaves with relish, all other animals including snakes find such trees unbearably frightening.   

That evening, Murphy’s Law was at work when my grandfather presented himself as sober as a judge. He needed his bicycle very urgently because his herd of Zebu cows was reported stolen and he had to cycle to a police station which was five miles away from home. I will never forget his frown when my brothers escorted him to pick his bicycle from the thorn tree.

With a furry of an African man heading to rescue his wealth, he took a machete and cut a long strong twig with which he managed to bring it down. Thankfully, it was not broken and up to his death, he never believed the story from my brothers that I sent his Mamba flying up on a tree. According to him, a young girl like me was a victim of my older siblings.

With all these memories ripped off from my skull where they have been lodged for years, I looked at my neighbor in the eye wondering whether to narrate this story to him.

“I don’t know how to ride one”, I responded. He acted as if he had heard this from many female foreigners.

“Really? Can I get you an instructor?” I agreed and in the evening, he appeared at my door with a young wiry man with a walrus mustache whom he introduced as Mr. Welheismen. He has been my instructor for the past one week but I am sure he is wondering what I am made of.

On the very first day last week, I mounted on the bike with high hopes, telling myself that it isn’t hard to ride one because toddlers in this country cycle on the road while holding great conversations with their parents or minders on their way to school. I had also seen very old couples who limp to their bicycles but when they manage to mount themselves on one, their legs work on peddles in some mysterious ways, slashing their age by half.

“We will be taking our lessons in the park. So let us walk there”, he said and we set to the park with him briefing me on how to apply brakes, how to balance and such talks but since I am a visual person, I had to see it in practice. When we got there he demonstrated how to ride, dos and don’ts, and a myriad of other rules but I must say that my mind was in Kenya on the thorn bushes by the road near our house.

 When the instructor told me to try and balance myself on the bicycle, I thought he was joking. I held the handlebar grips with both hands with my body so tensed like a fist. I put my feet on the ground and used my body to push the bicycle ahead but my feet would not leave the ground. I got scared and wondered whether something was wrong with my brains. Having seen many of my kind, the instructor tried another trick.

“Put your legs on those pedals and cycles as I push you so that you can have a feel of how it is to be on a bicycle”, he said and I obeyed. I moved the pedals just like I had done before in a gym a while back. We made a few rounds with him chasing, panting behind.

“Don’t cycle so fast!” he shouted.

“Hold the brakes! Hold the brakes” he kept on shouting but I could not see them because the bicycles that I had seen had them on the handlebars but this one was different.

“Stop cycling!” he commanded and this time, I lifted my legs up from the pedals and the bicycle stopped with a jack while I wobbled on top of it, trying to gain balance by holding the handlebars tightly as I moved my body on the opposite side. Finally, I panicked, shouting at the top of my voice as I landed on the ground with a thud. The Moustache, like a captain who did not want to be blamed for negligence, grabbed the bicycle from the falling object. I did not suffer any injuries apart from a few bruises on my legs. As I lifted and dusted myself, idlers at the park surrounded us, some smiling, taking photos and videos with their mobile phones while some joggers demanded to know whether they could administer first aid. An elderly Dutchman with an athletic body who claimed to be a doctor examined me by pressing my joins.

“Does that hurt?” he would ask before shifting to another. “…and that one?” he would quizzically look at my eyes to see whether I was in pain. After that, I left for home very distraught wondering whether I was under a spell because to me, it seemed that everyone else knew cycling tricks apart from me. My gracilis muscles felt like there were on fire that day from friction with the saddle.

On the succeeding day, Mr. Wilheismen appeared as boisterous as he could be. He told me that he had seen worse learners than me but he was just being nice and encouraging. I wondered whether I would handle another lesson without tearing my legs apart because they felt like they had shads in them not to mention gracilis which felt as if I had sat on a hot frying pan the whole night. We walked towards the park and the number of people had increased in number that early morning. Some walking their dogs, others jogging, doing exercises and young mothers and fathers pushing prams of their offspring singing lullabies to them. This made me nervous and especially when some wore a recognition smile.

“Can we be doing these lessons at 5am in the morning?” I suggested and he agreed.

“I am flexible as long as it will make you less nervous. Today we will start our lesson on that gradient path so that you can flow with the gravity as you balance”, he said as his bony figure pointed towards the direction with a lot of obstructing trees, seats, and permanent barbeque stoves set by the city council for picnic lovers.

I had googled on how to ride a bike and I was ready to put all that knowledge into practice. Mr. Moustache handed the Mamba to me and I mount on it.

“Try and lift your legs. As long as the bicycle is moving you cannot fall”, he said with his Adam’s apple oscillating up and down like a yoyo. Feeling empowered, I lifted my legs and the bicycle moved freely downhill making me wonder why he had not brought me up to here the previous day. But this reckoning moment was instantly cut short when I forgot to slow down, lift my legs, place them on the pedals and move them backward in order to brake and stop. When I looked ahead, I saw a large tree and my adrenalin instantly commanded me to leave the bicycle and jump up and hold on to a tree branch that looked more settling that a moving bike. My mouth could not remain shut as I glared at the danger ahead. In that nick of time, the bicycle left me, rolling undisturbed before falling in a slow-motion as I hang suspended on a thorny branch like a fool.

The prickly thorns tore into the flesh of my palms and I immediately gave up the branch landing on the ground but not before the branch bounced downwards with a force, hitting my back giving me a hard landing that woke up all my nerves that morning. Before I could tilt my body, Moustache was by my side.

“I am so sorry. Woo! That was hard”, he said and soon a group of runners was by my side trying to help me. Most of them were asking questions in Dutch and the only words I could hear were ‘astublieft (please) and niet goed (not good)’. The doctor who had examined me the previous evening was there and gave me another free examination.

“Did you hit the tree with your head?”

“No”, we said in unison with Mr. Moustache. Relieved, he examined me for a broken bone like he had done the previous day and gave me a bill of health. After that, we did a bit of cycling with the instructor holding on to the back but not before he had demonstrated how to pedal at snails’ pace. As I followed the instructions, all went well and our second day had no other incidents. I had not felt the impact of that fall until I got up on the third day. In the morning, more shads and thorns were eminently embedded into my palms and my biceps. I had set an alarm to wake up at 4.45 am and had only managed to wash my face and brush my teeth when the doorbell rang.

The boisterous Moustache welcomed me as I opened the door promising me that it would be a great day. We went to the sloppy ground and I flowed with the gravity with a lot of determination as I steered the handlebar with care not to hit the thorny tree. This worked like magic because as soon as I put my feet on the pedals, cycling came naturally following the track to the amazement of Mr. Moustache. After balancing and cycling for a few hundred meters, I tried to recall how he had directed me to do in order to brake but I couldn’t remember. I continued feeling like a warrior even though the gradient was steep, assuming that I would stop ahead on a flat plain.

“Kijk uit! (watch out!) Rey en Reina! Kijk uit!”, shouted a woman from behind but I couldn’t turn to look because I could fall off the bike if I did. I still kept looking ahead wondering whom she was shouting at until I heard two canines backing behind me. Runners who were coming from the opposite direction looked behind me bewildered because they knew that I was a learner on two-wheelers who had no guts to be given a chase by playful dogs. Rey and Reina, two beautiful huskies, overtook me and I could clearly see the danger coming. They circled around me as if I was an old friend. Dogs from where I come from are guard dogs. To me, they are not supposed to be trusted not to bite and especially when they are giant vicious-looking creatures. In that confusion of not knowing how to react, Reina and Rey came so much closer to the bike and I lost balance. One of them got hit and barked sending me chills as I tripped over the bike and fell, this time bruising my right hand badly.

After that, I sat on a bench and drunk some water, taking deep breaths in order to relax and determined to continue with my lesson of the day. Meanwhile, Mr. Moustache aggressively engaged the dogs' owner in a quarrel for unleashing her dogs against the park rules.  I have never seen such a mighty looking lady in her 70s. She profusely apologized to me in Dutch, ignoring the haulage from my coach.

“Sorry, ……astublieft…… hounden” (sorry,…..please…..dogs), was all I could pick from her fast spoken Dutch as she gestured with her hands, holding her chest at times with both palms probably telling me that she was speaking from her heart.

After that encounter, my coach demonstrated to me how to brake. I followed and continued riding my bike in high spirits as I ignored the pain from multiple parts of my body.

Yesterday was my fourth day and I cycled without an incident. Today I tried my skills on the cycling path and although it was hard to keep on my track at times, it was not bad. Despite all these impediments, I have finally managed to ride a ‘Mamba’, a great achievement during these hard times of COVID 19 when everything else is not working. By the time the world opens its doors, I hope to ride seamlessly on these populous cycle paths of Amsterdam.