If many of my friends and family came to Senegal and saw me
in my day to day life, one of the biggest surprises would probably be the
amount I ride a bike. Before coming to
Senegal, I don’t think I had successfully ridden a bike in more than ten
years. Every time I tried, I fell or
crashed. I never had serious injuries
but it was serious enough to deter me from trying again any time soon.
While I was preparing, it was one of the things I was most
worried about. Peace Corps told me that
all volunteers are issued bikes and that it may be necessary to bike long
distances to see other volunteers, get to markets in larger towns, and to
access public transportation routes throughout the country. But I didn’t heed any warnings to practice
biking a bit before I got here… I mean those dozen trips to REI were way more
important to prepare me for Peace Corps, right?
Like many other things about living in Senegal, I have
discovered that when faced with a difficulty in your living situation, all you
need is a little time to practice and mentally prepare. This has been true of living without
electricity and running water, living in a place where no one speaks English, and
especially biking. My village is 7KM
(4.35 Miles) away from the closest market.
I am also about 7KM from the closest Peace Corps Volunteer. It was clear very quickly that if I didn’t
get over my hesitations about biking that I was going to have a very difficult
service.
Since then, I have come a long way. I recently completed a bike trip with another
volunteer that was part of a large regional project. We were visiting remote villages in order to
make a map of all the places where someone in our health district can receive
testing and treatment for malaria. The
idea is to show where there might be gaps in available treatment so that the
Senegalese government’s malaria program can train and place volunteers more
strategically. It was a really fantastic
trip and we traveled to more than a dozen villages in just a couple of
days. Each day we biked about 50KM (31
Miles) in order to see all the villages we needed to. I can’t imagine missing out on the
opportunity to be part of such a cool project just because I was afraid to
mount a bike!
Don’t get me wrong. I
still have my difficult days on the bike.
I’ve fallen more than a few times.
In the hot season, the sand still makes biking incredible difficult and
in the rainy season, avoiding deep puddles can be next to impossible. Bike maintenance is still incredibly
intimidating to me (although I can pretty confidently change a tire now) but I’m
learning.
Now, if I go more
than two or three days without getting on my bike to go somewhere, I get
antsy. It’s my best and most convenient
form of regular transportation and I will hopefully have the opportunity to do
some extended bike traveling through Senegal and the Gambia in the coming
months. More than that, biking represents
some of the adaptability and resilience that I have developed since being a
Peace Corps Volunteer. Every time I gear
up for a trip (pun intended), I remember just how much I’ve changed and I think
about how great it is to push my limits to discover what I am really capable of
and what really makes me happy.
Wishing everyone a happy and healthy 2015! Thanks to everyone who sent things with my mom
and my sister to give me. Belated
birthday and new year‘s packages will still be accepted J
Happy (bike) Trails!
