Broken Bicycle Builds Bridges

Well, the functionality of my new wheels was short lived. On Friday morning, riding back to the administrative compound where I live from a trip downtown, I noticed that my rear tire was flat. I pulled over in front of the hospital to check out the situation. At first there was a problem with the valve on the tire, then there was a difficulty with a part missing from the pump. By this time, after a few minutes of tinkering with the tire, a small crowd had gathered around me (I tend to attract attention here) mostly of school boys - it was kind of a guy thing. Soon they began to join in trying to get the valve to work, trying to get the pump to work, offering another pump to try. In the end we connected a functioning pump to the valve, only to realize that the tire had been punctured and wouldn't refill with air. But, by this time, even though we hadn't spoken much we had become a team: a broken bicycle had built a bridge between us. The boys were enthusiastic when I offered to take their photo. Unfortunately (as you can see) even here there is some influence of the "gangster mystique," with the boys imitating hand gestures and poses they had seen but don't really understand.



I tried to take a photo of one of the shyer boys (in the center), but only managed to do so with two of the more extroverted jumping into the photo, too.