The Bike Shop

I bought a bicycle a couple of weeks ago (more on this in the prior story) at the Nakumat (the big department store in town). While the bike came assembled it was not considered road-worthy so it was necessary to take it to the bike shop for a tune-up. The recommended bike shop was the same one that Frank and Cindi were sent to when they bought their bikes at a different store. In a town of 300,000 people which also has a whole lot of bikes I figured that this shop must be pretty impressive.

The bike shop wasn’t actually a shop. Instead, it is a guy in overalls working under a tree with a small sign attached to the fence behind him. He had a sitting bench and quite a few tools. He didn’t even have a bike stand. Given that my tune-up would cost 200 Kenyan Shillings (about $3 Cdn) what did I expect?

When I returned a few hours later the bike wasn’t quite ready. I could see that it wouldn’t be long so I sat on the bench in the shade. I’ve spent my share of time in bike shops, although never one like this. However, there was something I noticed that was consistent with bike shops at home. Besides the two guys working on the bikes there were three guys just hanging around, their mountain bikes lying nearby. The fact that they even had mountain bikes and not the ubiquitous one-speed World War II specials indicated that they weren’t your average cyclists. So there we sat, a bunch of cyclists hanging out at the bike shop, something that you would find in bike shops around the world. As different a setting it was and the obvious difference of me being a mzungu I still felt like this is a place I belonged.