Caboose

I decided shortly after moving here that a bike would be a good way of getting around the local area and going for trips into the bush. Last week I wandered into town to find the one shop that sold bikes with gears. Unfortunately it had vanished and people at several other shops insisted that bikes with gears don’t exist in Nigeria, I had obviously imagined the other shop.

After a while I found a little bicycle shop tucked away beside a motorbike shop, with a little old Hausa man who spoke very little English but managed to show me what thay had, including the magnificent Hamilton Storm 18-speed mountain bike. He refused to negotiate on price, but NGN 13000 was a good price anyway, so I bought it.

There was a little argument over an additional charge of NGN 500 to actually make the bike ready to ride (attaching brakes, fitting pedals, etc.) but I won and the shop’s boy started work. He seemed pretty good at the basics, especially adjusting the spoke tensions so that the wheels ran true, but obviously hadn’t had much experience setting up gears.

By the time he was finished it was getting a bit late, so I cycled back to Simon’s place in Kawo before it got dark and left the bike with him for the weekend. Yesterday morning I pedalled out to NTI.

The bike is, like many things in Nigeria, a cheap Chinese make but it seems reasonably solid and has real Shimano gears. I just need to dig spend some time twiddling the gear setup so that they work smoothly.

This afternoon I’m sitting in my office in the dark. NEPA have taken light again and it seems there’s no fuel for the generator…