The Motorbike

It was a ten-hour bus ride to Mwanza, a crowded city on the Tanzanian shores of Lake Victoria. The bus had roared through billowing clouds of hot red dust all day, the speakers above our heads blaring, the AC cranked so high we had to wear long sleeves on a hundred-degree day. The rows were so tightly packed our knees were shoved into the seats in front of us. At the infrequent stops, everyone pushed aggressively to get off and race into the bushes to pee. Upon entering the human sea of Mwanza, with all the pedestrians and pushcarts darting in and out, bicycles and boda bodas (motorcycle taxis) swimming around us, taxis and bajajis (autorickshaws) weaving back and forth right on our bumpers, it took our leviathan coach more than an hour to creep to the hotel.

The next day, while my wife Martha was attending the annual United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees conference, I decided to buy a motorcycle. I had told