He finished his meal quickly, placed his small bowl on the concrete counter and kissed his wife goodbye.

“Be careful my dear,” she said in French as he climbed on to his old L’aviner bucycle.

It wasn’t a long ride to work but it was a steep climb up a very busy, narrow road with with many dangers lurking along the way. After all of the climbing, there was a steep drop down into the center of town and his office, sitting in the shade of several large trees. If it was raining or he went too fast, disaster could be just around the corner.

Piles of trash sitting on the side of the road and wild dogs were just a few of the dangers awaiting him on his way to work. Trucks with bad brakes and poorly trained drivers were just a few of the other dangers he faced.

As he climbed higher he could look down from his lofty perch on his bike and see his small, cinder block house, covered in white stucco, below him. He was proud of what he and his wife had accomplished in life so far.

It was a forty minute ride up into the mountains to his office if all went well. He grabbed onto any handholds he could find on the large trucks, buses or other vehicles that he might find. He would grab onto window frames, bumpers or door handles that might pull him up the steeper sections of the road. If he couldn’t find something to hold onto he would have to walk up the steeper sections of the road.

The trip made him feel young again and close to “his people.” He had done this often as a child, against his mother’s harsh warnings. If it rained, which it did nearly everyday during the rainy season, his ride could be miserable.

He always carried a large trash bag, “” just in case,” in his pocket. It was a cheap and efficient way to deal with the the weather.

No one ever suspected this thin, middle aged man was the Chief of The Kigali Police Department. He felt like he was one of the lucky few who had both, a great job and a bicycle. Others only had walking as a mode of transportation if they couldn’t afford a bus ride to work or on other journeys.

The roads were usually covered in throngs of men, women and children doing just that. It seemed to him that all of humanity was walking in his country. Interestingly, many young men and women wore shirts with American and European team names and emblems splashed on their backs and chests in this land so far from either.

The roads were dry, now that the rains had moved north for the time being. There was no reason to expect them to stay that way, however. This was an ever changing landscape. How ling the wet weather would remain “up north,” was anyone’s guess.

He had received this bike from his father many years ago as a gift when his father decided, reluctantly, that he was too old to ride it any longer. He was sixty-nine when he came to that hard decision. He had never owned a car or learned to drive. His son, now the chief of police was the first person in the family to have gone to college.

The ride to work was always exciting and filled with potential danger, injury or worse. He found it stimulating and kept him on his “mental toes.”

He climbed slowly up the road filled with sharp switch backs almost a thousand feet up in altitude on this mountain side just above his comfortable, little, house.

The ride gave him time to think as he climbed.

The journey was much like his life had been.

He had started working for the government at the bottom in the post office. After working there for a few years he took another civil service test. He passed the second test as easily as he had passed the first.

He then became a low level police officer with the police force. The work was filled with opportunities and pitfalls. Someone was always waiting in line for him to make a mistake and to take his place.

Many took bribes as a matter of course. It was the way things were back then. He refused and often paid the price for being an honest man in a dishonest bureaucracy. After twenty-five years, he became the Chief of Police. Finally attaining his office was a great relief. That had been his life long dream.

Dogs chased him as he thought about his life and then he went too fast. Often, the rough roads made him keep his speed slower than he wanted.

Then, near the end of his ride, as he came around a bend in the road, he saw the final stretch of smoother road and sped off down the long downward slope to his building.

When he reached the front door, he stopped and brought his bicycle in with him. If he didn’t, chances were good that it would be stolen. He then walked in and put it in the far corner of his office.

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I will not have my computer with me but I will continue to work on this story.

I hope you are enjoying it. It has a slow pace now but perhaps that will change.