OPINION: A non-swimmer motorcycling in the oily Indian Ocean

Believe it or not, at one time in the late 70s and early 80s I used to ride an iron horse, a 1,25cc Yamaha Enduro motorcycle in and around the streets of Bongoland’s capital, Dar es Salaam.

Then motorcycles were a rare contraption in Bongoland. They were so rare that motorcycle owners and riders in the city used to literally know each other.

Not that these iron horses were not available in the country. No! They were plenty in the specialised shops and service centers in that vast metropolitan habitat.

Rather it was on account of ‘ukwakwasi chechefu’ as the later Bongolanders would call the prevalent liquidity problems.

And here I have to admit that I did not own the iron horse because I had fallen into money, one way or another. Again; No! Far from it.

Rather, I was a skint young reporter with the government-owned Daily/Sunday News. My salary was basically peanuts.

That fact, supplemented with my unnecessary excesses and nocturnal overindulgencies in the many watering holes in the Bongoland metropolis, ensured that my monthly remuneration lasted at most three days, and not more.

I was not alone in this. Many other scribes at this august publishing house were like me, if not worse.

No wonder, an anlightened management, recognising and appreciating this shortcoming, and wanting us to be fully productive throughout the month, devised an ingenious way to make this happen.

They enterred into an agreement with the nearby YWCA Hostel management, hosting young and single working ladies at rediculously cheap rates, to also cater for our daytime neals. Here it should be noted that the hostel was located on the same Maktaba street we were.

The cost of the meals we consumed were to be deducted from our monthly salaries, making us even poorer. Well, that is again a story for another day.

All in all, we were far from being members of that priviledged class which could afford such toys as motorcycles.

But I, and a good number of other scribes at this paper, did indeed own these spectacular iron horses, notwithstanding the odds.

This was again on account of the ingenious systems put in place by our management to solve trasport problems for the many scribes at the office who had to necessarily comb the vast city everyday in search of news and information

Accordingly the management enterred into an agreement with a local agency for Yamaha motorcycles and loaned to us the machines, further throttlling our meagre monthly remuneration.

We selected and received the new machines and learnt ‘on the job’ how to ride them. And ride