Luisterverhaal op zondag: In autometropool Nairobi bloeit de liefde voor de fiets op

This is the story on Sunday of NRC Vandaar. My name is Naim Der Bali. I'm a director at NRC. In this episode, you can listen to my story. In "Auto-Metropole Nairobi, Bloe te lievde voor de fiets op". This story actually came to my mind when I left. The story came to my mind when I visited my correspondent last summer in Nairobi, Koeut Lindeyer. A colleague told me how he participated in a kind of "fiets tour" in the city. He meant to set up a space in the city for the fiets. I thought it was special, because in Nairobi, everybody moves, or with the car, or with the foot, but the fiets are quite invisible. And I had to think about a part of our former colleague Lothiel Hamidi, about the lack of fiets culture in the Moroccan communities in the Netherlands, where the fiets are not seen as a sign of freedom, but rather as a sign of misfortune. I decided to read in, to talk to experts and organizers of the fiets tour, to understand how Kenyans actually look at the fiets. Of course, there is no single answer to that. And in the end, I decided to take part in the tour. So I learned the fiets of my correspondent to go with them and to talk to people in the reportage, and to actually experience how it is to put the fiets in such a big city, which is not actually designed for the fiets, and where the car, let's say, is king. It was quite a special experience, but you really feel that the fiets do not belong in the city, or do not fit in there. You have bombers and automobiles who drive very close to you, because they are not used to keeping in touch with people on a fiets. In any case, cities are not designed for that. There are also almost no fiets. And at some point it felt like you were driving on the A20 next to car traffic, which caught me off guard. And what surprised me was actually the social load that is connected to the fiets. It is connected to the colonial history. It is introduced by the British and it also has a gender aspect. So it depends on whether you are a woman or a man who drives around on a bike. It is also associated with social classes. For Kenyans, cycling is something that is associated with poverty. Listen to my story. The story in "Autometropol Nairobi" shows the love for the fiets. Read by Nienke Brinkhuis. Frederick Auinjo closes his eyes. He grabs his hands and holds his voice. Slowly the soft rattle of cycling chains dies, the playful tingling of children's bells and the noise of tires. At the parking lot next to the Nairobi hospice, along the Gong Road, one of the most important traffic jams of the Kenyan capital, parents and their children form a circle around Auinjo. "Thank you that we can cycle on this beautiful day," he begins. "Stay with us, protect us from it. Think of our safety." In Nairobi, the following metropole that is designed for the car and where safe cycling paths break, should start every cycle with a prayer. Auinjo is one of the marshals that the monthly cycling caravan of Critical Mass Nairobi has to walk safely through the city. What started in 2015 as a modest group cycle, increased to a popular platform for inclusive mobility, with monthly hundreds of participants. With the protest, the grassroots movement literally wants to move up in a city that sees the cyclists as the top of their heads. Today the formula is different. This something more intimate is for children and families. The choice for Sunday is entirely optional. With most people in the church walking through chaotic traffic, and have all the youngest cyclists, accompanied by an ambulance or a police car, the chance to cycle through the city without fear or fear. Throughout, Hirk Dorcas Bewozi is next to her youngest son. He pulls the child's band of his helmet on and faints with his thumb what stops his head. She looks up and smiles. Her two boys, the nine-year-old Shaman and the six-year-old Shon, are today in top shape. The one is a bit sturdier than the other, because they have grown up with their bike thanks to their mother. I want to give her something memorable, something that will keep her active, something that she will say later, "Mama did her best," says Bewozi. The motherly care rages hard with the reality of Nairobi's culture. Outside of the safe circle of this group of cyclists, Bewozi is not allowed to climb the street. Not only the hobbles and small berms keep her against, even with two children on the bike, they hardly participate in the traffic hierarchy. Only on days like today, she wades herself on. Otherwise, it is too dangerous. She later tells in the care of the peloton that she is slipping through the city centre. Only the escorting marshals, the influrrifying hedgehogs, shy Bewozi, of the past dendren cars and boda bodas, motorbikes, share the road. Viewability is our way to force respect. We want the city to embrace us, but not even being tolerated, says Bewozi. Because however there are daily about 55,000 cyclists in Nairobi, something more than 1% of all locations, the reality of cyclists remains broken again. The rare bicycle paths keep up abruptly, or, step by step, colonized by cars, motorbikes and even shopkeepers. The bicycle lobby mainly feels political disinterest in the company of the cyclist. However, since 2022, about 10 km from cycling and walking paths, cyclists have often been on footpath infrastructure. Moreover, Nairobi's city limits have increased to 8 times their original scope. This means longer travel distances through a lively city, which makes cycling less attractive. The cyclist club, Critical Mass, tries to counter that image, and fights not only for physical space, but also for awareness. This is how the organization is in conversation with travel schools, so that future cyclists learn how they have to keep up with cyclists on the road. An aspect that now breaks apart in the education. An unusual impression. That's how Hilary Niangala feels when he's riding through the streets of Nairobi. His wheeler shirt, blue with red accents, is straight up on his upper body. His back carries a simple message. Cyclists lives matter. I heard that they have all the way in Dubai, exclusively for cyclists, says Niangala. A cycling coach for children and people with disabilities. Even in the Netherlands, cycling is a way of life. That's where you see yourself as an agent on the bike. We can only dream of that. Here we mainly get hate over us. From debt parties to motorists who almost drive us away. They think they own the road, says Niangala. He turns off his sunglasses to make eye contact and spills grass. But we are the road riders. As a twelve-year-old, Niangala sells out-eiser. Until he saved 5,000 Chilling for about €35 to buy his first bike. I had rich children who were riding around on beautiful bikes. That surprised me. Since then, I could only think of one thing. For me, it was about status, yes, but also about freedom. I just wanted to be like he is, he says. Against his city story, there is the memory of Dorkas Bwosi, who made his first bike far from Nairobi. The were cramped meters on the flat roads outside the southwestern Kizumu, near the Victoria Sea. Not on a just city bike, but on an unmistakably flat model. We just swung our legs over the saddle, and then it was a matter of staying in line. But it happened. You have a few scratches, maybe it heals a little, and the next day you try again, you tell them. Outside the city, a bike was not a hobby or sport. It was an emergency, says Bwosi. Even my mother was cycling. She had no choice, she had no car. So she went on the bike for groceries. She just heard the bike live. And if your father had a black mother, such a heavy black bike without gears, then you might have been the richest man in the city. That memory is not on itself. Following Dorkas in Tokyo, mobility researcher at the Technical University Dortmund, and co-author of the book Cycling Cities, the Africa Experience, fit them into a broader socio-cultural reality. More than in the city, the bike is part of the social wave on the countryside. In rural areas, the bike remained long-popular, even after the car, in the second half of the previous century, made its appearance as a status symbol. There, the bike is connected with pride, a form of cultural expression. There even existed love songs in the Luo, a language of a large ethnic group in West Kenya, in which the bike became a symbol of prosperity. Now more and more inhabitants of Nairobi are discovering their love for the bike. As a bicycle seller, Charles Trileba, the last ten years of staying close to the growing bike culture in the capital. The Green Cycle Shop, in between the cities and buildings in southwest Nairobi, started as a hobby business with about ten, fifteen fixed customers, he says. It has now grown to a local understanding. More than 10,000 Facebook followers are calling Trileba for lovers. Bikes get feet on the ground again. I have customers who say, "I had a car, but with all the traffic, a bike is better." Trileba refers to the abundant collection of shiny racing bikes, robust mountain bikes and children's bikes that hang in the showroom. People think automatically that who rides is poor. Most people associate wealth only with cars. That's why they scream when they hear the price. "How can a bike cost a thousand dollars?" he says. In Kenya, the bike has always had a social and political dimension. He says mobility researcher Dorkas Ntoki. Initially, everyone took the bike, he says. But the heritage of colonial segregation is still working today, both in infrastructure and in cultural image formation. During the colonial period, the bike was now involved with the daily work of many Kenyans at the post office, the railway or other government services. Because the British often used the car names, the bikes were associated with the workers' classes, he says. In the exciting approach to the Kenyan independence in 1963, the bike became even more an instrument of colonial control. The British protected ethnic minorities as the Kikuyu, Ambu and Meru as a risk of safety, due to their extensive involvement in the Mao-Mau uprising. The authorities used these communities' names and addresses in large letters in order to engrave their bikes. More and more people were afraid of the bike. Under the first president, Jornal Kenyatta, the Matato system was promoted. Buying goods openly led to the good connection with the needs of the working classes. The bike became even more popular in the background. Later, he stimulated his successor, Arap Moi, the national car industry. Cars were presented as the future, a symbol of success. And again the bike came to a standstill, says Toki. The same bike, once a symbol of exclusion, has now been refurbished. Especially Kenyan women choose, despite the harrowing traffic, the bad roads and the bad prices of passengers aware of the bike. Not only as a means of transportation, but as a form of emancipation. Bikes are independent. Bikes are abandoned, says Cyprien Odada, city architect and co-organizer of Critical Mass Nairobi. When I took the bike, I took the space that was never meant for me. In her own research into female bikers in Nairobi and their movements, one theme comes back. Autonomy. What was the answer again? It makes me independent. It offers me freedom, says Odada. That also applies to Anne Wambui, a 40-year-old from Nairobi with three sons, Jason, Jabari and Jayce. They learned to bike only last year, depending on a home trainer in the sports school. Since then, she has been riding with Critical Mass every month, where she tells her children to let them know how it is to bike safely on the road. While she learned to bike, she discovered Wambui, as soon as the city was not ready for her. According to Odada's report, almost three-quarters of female bikers in Nairobi are confronted with verbal or physical intimidation. "Bikers should offer me freedom," says Wambui. But my first time on the open road was terrible. I was reminded that women do not listen to bikes or were bothered by what I saw on the road. It puked me out. The bike has always been a mirror of gender relations in Kenya, tells mobility researcher Dorkas Ntoki. And that is still the case. In the old days, the bike was a manly means of transport. Women were allowed to sit high behind it, with a manly reluctance or real need, she says. Even the sitting position of women on the luggage rack was in the past subject of a heated debate. They heard both legs sitting over the frame or just sideways, with closed legs. The first, the so-called "straddling", became terribly damaged. If your legs were closed, there would be a known expression in the duo. In some municipalities, in some conservative and strict Protestant municipalities in the Netherlands as well, even the idea that women would lose their majority due to bikes, says Dorkas Ntoki. Also during the critical mass races, the women are numerous, pregnant, young, old and visible, on fur-colored bikes and with the child up high. I wear red expression. My bike is red. I want people to see a woman on a bike. Only the visibility, says Cyprien Odada, is political. It breaks the cultural stigma that bikes for men, poor Kenyans or the elites are determined. We show that bikes are also something for mothers, for daughters, for ordinary women, says Odada. Yes, we are still the weakest vehicle on the road, but we iron space, and that is the beginning of real change. You heard the "Luis der Frau" on Sunday from NRC today. Last time read by Nienke Brinkhuis. Edited by Jeroen Jaspers, editorial by Rogier van het Hek. Nienke Brinkhuis