motorcyle dreaming

'Journey in an Unknown Culture'

Forget Plato. Forget Nietzsche. Forget that idealistic dreadlocked hippy that tried to give you pamphlets made from organic vegetable ink and recycled toilet paper. Everything you need to know about emotion and philosophy can be found on the back of a motorbike. In my case it was on the back of an old Yamaha that was being ridden by a one-eyed Ugandan called Duncan.

I don’t know how exactly he lost his eye or whether or not it had anything to do with the scratch marks running parallel on the side of the bike. All I know is that my passing comment to a local teacher about wanting to see the area the night before had manifested itself at dawn on two wheels outside my door. He smiled. I jumped on. The Yamaha purred.

The motorbike created an anarchic and eye opening freedom. As we weaved around the potholes, the strategically placed road marking rocks and the occasional over-laden bicycle my senses became immersed in the fusion of the forest’s tropical aromas and fast rising humidity. A thin layer of sweat bonded us together as we rode up the red stained track above Uganda’s Lake Bunyonyi.

All the restrictions and conventions that would have seemed commonplace back home were gone. Who needs a helmet in a place where the dust can leave you with a facial rouge resembling Yosemite Sam? Or a running motor when cutting it to roll down hills on the cheap can allow you to take in the kind of hectic serenity that only a rainforest can offer?

Every corner, every bend and every metre I spent bouncing on the Yamaha’s ripped seat was a new experience, another preconception reviewed, another book taking on another interpretation. As we left the damp shroud of the forest and into the town, the further we rode and the more ‘unknown’ I realised existed.

You rarely read about the corroding signs you pass on the roads telling people to ‘avoid morning sex’ with their prudish, yet somehow educational, accompanying artworks. You don’t know that when you enter or leave a town that it smells of burning plastic and rubber. Or that that the kids on the side of the road know how to sing out with a smile ‘how are you?’ and that whatever your response may be will soon be followed with another few rounds of the perfectly replicated greeting.

Soon the bike began to slow to a halt; the purr of the engine ceased and my feet once against touched the red stained ground. That is how I had experienced this unknown culture and land. As part of a perfect trio: Yosemite Sam, the Yamaha and a one-eyed man named Duncan.