On a day when I wake up, listless and unwilling, to face the day ahead, it takes all I have to just go to work and get through the day. I’ve had weeks like those, months like those, and they seem to be an endless cycle of the same old, same old.
Most recently, after a particularly listless week, I thought “I need to change something, why not go somewhere different?”
My mother’s house is in what you call a peri-urban area, but what I call a green leafy suburb. It’s what I hope my house will be when it grows up. I packed a bag and headed there, and got there when dark had already set in. It’s not a place bustling with activity, and the walk from the bus stage to the house it quite a distance. So I had to take a boda boda.
Now, I love motorcycle rides. I used to take them every chance I could get before the news features with all the scary statistics about the number of motorcycle deaths ruined it for me. Now I have to be all cautious and peer suspiciously at the boda boda guys’ eyes before I choose one to entrust my fragile life to, purely using my own instinct.
Anyway, I peered suspiciously and rejected some bloodshot-eyed guy who was enthusiastically waving at me, and picked a calm, sober-looking type. I asked him for a helmet which he didn’t have (predictably) but I felt I could trust him, so up and at the back seat I went and we were off.
I closed my eyes and could feel the cold breeze hitting my poorly insulated arms. These guys dress very warmly because they are used to being buffeted by these strong winds several times daily. Still, mind over matter. I could imagine that I was flying. It was exhilarating.
I opened my eyes and looked up at the dark sky littered with millions of stars, stars that I never see in the city because there are so many lights and houses and skyscrapers, and I felt alive. I felt blessed. I felt happy.
And all it took was a boda boda ride.
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