Piki Piki Training April 16th.

Less than a week before departing for Kenya I was surprised to receive notification of motorbike training set for a couple of weeks after our arrival. Though I hadn’t anticipated the assignment coming with a motorbike it is now obvious that the vast majority of the organization’s business is in the hinterland remote from Kilifi. Never having owned a motorbike this was going to be something new.

The training was in Machakos about 40 miles outside Nairobi. Requested to be in the Nairobi VSO office Thursday morning at 8:30 called for taking the overnight bus. I managed to sleep most of the way and can report the trip was without any form of incident. The training was scheduled for five days, which seemed like an inordinately long time to learn to ride a motorbike. The first day was taken up with getting everyone (4 trainees - of which 3 were female, instructor, 5 bikes and VSO driver) out to Machakos. At this pace it was easy to see how 5 days would go by. Right! After breakfast the next morning it was out to a large open field for – introductions to your piki piki. After a couple of hours of general driving and weaving around plastic cones we rode into town for lunch. The afternoon agenda called for “off-road riding” – yes! Turned out they were not kidding! True, we didn’t have to contend with traffic, just the occasional goat. Dried-up river beds and the like proved to be a great place to learn. I surprised myself with the kinds of terrain I could traverse and still manage to stay upright. The following afternoon we took a much longer ride up one of the volcanic mounds that surround town. This time there were other “road users”. First, calling significant sections of the route a road is to be overly generous. True, some sections contained tarmac. The unfinished tracks in most places were, however, far smoother. Negotiating steep hairpin bends when one half of the road has reverted to dirt and the other half is pocked with 6-9 inch deep craters is interesting. And, here everyone is a user who claims rights to the complete road. Everything from trucks, matatus, crazy cyclists careening downhill carrying impossible loads, herds of cattle, and kids using it as a playground, all expect full right of way.. In the meantime we were exposed to the requirements of the Kenyan driver license theory test.

The theory test includes the usual knowledge checks of the Highway Code and road signs. This is supplemented with a “model town-rule-of-the-road” test. The major feature of the tabletop model is a four-lane highway intersecting a three-lane city thoroughfare at a roundabout. There is probably just one such intersection in the whole of Kenya, in Nairobi where the highway from the airport meets Kenyatta Avenue. The test is to maneuver a toy car from one spot to position it behind another vehicle on the board. Given the convoluted nature of some paths it is hardly surprising the majority of drivers negotiating the Uhuru-Kenyatta roundabout do not adhere to the patterns memorized to pass the test. The test day was Monday, and that is what it takes – a day!

No schedules here. Everyone (on this day 28 applicants) wishing to take the test arrived by 9:00 am.. The police inspector arrived shortly after – we were lucky I was told. She then addressed the assembled crowd in the courtyard spending the next hour or so going line by line through the two application forms as everyone filled them out. Then one by one the theory quiz. Pass and one now waits for the practical. For the motorbike this consisted of riding out of the driveway onto the main road into town, riding out about a 100 yards or so and when safe doing a U-turn and returning to the driveway – finished. Well not quite. Now more forms before we managed lunch around 2:30. Oh - yes I did pass. Now all I need is a piki piki – this week inshallah.