I've been hiring a bicycle from one of the security guards at the Nam Hotel and yesterday he agreed to sell it to me for 110,000 shillings added to the 46,000 I have already paid at 2000 per day. It's a robust, sit-up-and-beg (hate that term for some reason) Chinese-built machine with 3 Sturmey-Archer type gears. It's the same as most bikes here except for the gears which put it in a superior class. In general cycling is pleasant and safe. The back roads are very quiet(traffic-wise I mean,there's always music) so you can dodge from side to side seeking the shade or avoiding the pot-holes in the tarmac roads and sand pits in the dirt roads. Lorries, buses, and NGO 4x4's hurtle along the main roads, but on either side there is nearly always a very broad stretch of flattish ground where pedestrians and mostly non-motorised traffic circulates, free from any restrictions of Highway Code or rules of any kind. In these sections you can go anywhere, any way, any speed. I tried to work out the protocol for passing on-coming traffic when you are on the wrong side, left or right? I've come to the conclusion it's just a free-for-all. Find the smoothest, firmest path and stick to it, only edging across at the last minute. My dithering almost caused some major spills at first. On my commute to work I'm one of the only single occupancy bicycles. The others usually have at least one passenger on the back carrier and sometimes two schoolkids on the back and one on the handlebars. Then there are the freight bicycles. I divide these into WIDE LOADS, eg doors, rolled-up corrugated iron sheets or lengths of piping, and TALL LOADS, eg four stacked crates of Pepsi. Maintenance is no problem.
Open-air bike repair shops are every few hundred yards under the trees, always with a nice big stirrup pump being vigorously worked up and down. Riding after dark is fun. There are only two sets of streetlights in Dodoma and I haven't seen them switched on yet. So unless it's a very short trip I usually opt for the Dalla-dalla at night. And that's another story.
Makes taking the 8.06 train from Bexleyheath seem so civilised - although given recent events elsewhere in London and about the country Dodoma seems much more civilised - street lights or no.
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