Freedom is a funny thing, you can define certain things that limit it, but sometimes it is hard to define what gives it to you.

Growing up in Kenya I had freedom in the form of a 'piki'. Piki-Piki is the Swahili term for a motorcycle, perhaps the equivalent of English "putt-putt". It allowed me to wander and see things that I wouldn't see any other way.

I first drove a piki after I finished ninth grade. I was looking after a family's house for a month of vacation, and convinced them to let me use their piki for the month. I can't imagine now why they would have let me, but I certainly don't hold it against them! I was supposed to stay at Kijabe with it, but I wandered a bit, but never onto the main roads. Dad drove it some and found that he could use it for some running around with work. With that in mind, and a little encouragement, he thought about buying one. I got a piki in October 1980, at the start of my tenth grade. Of course dad had priority over me, but I usually could get it when I wanted it.

There were several times when a group of us would get together on a Saturday and head out across the Great Rift Valley on our pikis. The valley floor was mostly flat, 30 km across, with a volcano rising 300 m above it. The area was dry, uninhabited grassland, with areas of thorn scrub and a few dry water-courses. We would head cross country looking for animals. My first time out I was chasing a Kongoni (large antelope) at 60 km/h when I hit a large hole. I wasn't hurt too bad, but I bent a few things on the piki. It wasn't enough to stop me from continuing. Some time later some people I was with chased a giraffe until it fell down. We stood around it for a while, but it never got up. It was then that I began to question the value of chasing animals.

One of our favourite trips was climbing Suswa, an ancient volcano on the Rift Valley floor. It was huge and not too steep. It had two concentric craters, the outer one being several kilometres in diameter, with one edge eroded level to the crater floor. The inner crater was more of a moat, with a sloping platform in the middle. It must have been one of the most inaccessible places on earth, involving a very steep decent to the floor, and an almost vertical climb to the platform. We never attempted to get there. In the outer crater was a series of caves. There were a couple of places where the roof had collapsed, leaving a pile of rocks and an entrance to the rest of the caves. One I remember must have been 10 metres wide, with a flat, sandy floor, and a curved roof over 3 metres high at the peak. You could walk at least 50 metres along this before another roof cave-in blocked it. It would have been a great place to camp.

On one of our trips we decided to see if we could find a route behind Longonot, the other volcano on the valley floor. We knew what was on the other side, but none of us had ever attempted to take that route. We hit a track that turned into a sandy river bed, with cliffs to either side. The deep sand made for terrible driving. I think that I was the only on who did not go down on it at least once. About seven kilometres along the river bed, the walls to either side began to get closer. When the sand turned to rough rock, two of us went ahead to see if we could continue. The walls kept coming together. A short way on, we found the narrowest point -- about 2 metres across, but with a huge boulder completely blocking it. Beyond that was where we wanted to go. We turned around and drove back through the awful sand.

I never had a proper licence to drive on the main roads, although I could get a learner's permit for three months at a time that allowed me to. Lack of a licence didn't always stop us from using the highways. I took one trip with a friend to a point looking across to Kijabe. We could get to it by a poor dirt road running roughly parallel to the highway. We decided to use the highway going back, because, as my friend said "There are never any police checks on this part of the road." We pulled out on the road to see a police check ahead, where they were stopping everyone. We turned around and went back the dirt road.

I only had problems with the police once. I was returning from Nairobi a few weeks after the attempted coup of 1982. I had a licence, but no ID of any sort. They gave me a hard time, but found out that I was from Kijabe, and was unlikely to give them any 'chai'. Chai means tea, but is the slang term for bribe money.

It always seemed to be a challenge around school to see what you could do to someone's piki. The common one was simply to move it somewhere. Mine was dropped once, bending the clutch lever. Someone else took the spark plug cap, so I had to coast home in the dark. This had the effect of getting piki drivers very frustrated. I think that there was only one prank that I could laugh at afterwards. One night after some event I got on the piki, flipped out the kick starter, and kicked. There was a big bang that made no sense at all. After an unrevealing visual inspection I cautiously restarted it. It ran fine. When I got home and had a bit more light, I found a pull firecracker tied between the frame and the starter.

I found all the possible paths and trails around Kijabe. I took the bike places where I would hesitate to walk. It caused me a couple accidents, but I learned what I couldn't do. I remember going up a steep path only to come to a 3 metre section even steeper, but ending on the road I was heading for. I decided to try it, but knew that I couldn't climb it directly, but needed a little run-up. I backed down the path a short ways and tried to get a short run for the bank. I let the clutch out, and watched in horror as the front wheel went straight up, and the bike started to come down on top of me. It was terrifying, but I guess I reacted right. The bike spun around and came down facing down the hill. I didn't stay on it, but I decided it was a good idea to head back down.

The 'Lower Road' was a dirt road that went from Kijabe to the main highway across Kenya. The road met the pavement as the main road was making its way down along the side of the Rift Valley. One of my favourite spots to drive to was half-way out the lower road. A small road led off to a disused gravel pit. Beyond the pit and a bit of open land was a line of trees and bushes. I discovered that after about five metres the ground dropped straight off in some rocky cliffs. I used to sit for hours on the rocks, looking out over the valley, the traffic along the main road below, and the life at a small trading town a few kilometres away. It seemed to be total isolation, yet looking out over a huge area.

For three months before I left Kenya, a college student from the States was staying with us and was helping Dad at his work for the Summer. One day I took her for a ride out in the valley. We went across the valley for a ways, past all civilization, then turned onto a small side road. We went in about a kilometre, stopped, and turned the bike off. There was the essence of Africa. We were surrounded by animals. A huge plain opened up in all directions, only limited by the walls of the Great Rift Valley 15 kilometres to either side, and Suswa, an ancient volcanos on the valley floor. We could hear birds singing, insects buzzing, and the noises from various animals all around us. We could see antelope scattered all around us, and a herd of zebra was on one horizon. We just sat, watched and listened for fifteen minutes. There was no need to talk. Somehow the vastness of Africa had swallowed us.

Another trip I remember, not so much for the beautiful scenery, but for the challenging driving. I went with two friends to the Aberdare National Park, on the Aberdare Mountains. My friends both had bigger bikes, and were more experienced drivers than me. There is a paved road winding up the side of the mountains. I found myself driving at full throttle, scaring myself as I went around every corner, as I attempted to keep up. Two of us went into the park on one bike, and saw some beautiful waterfalls in the park. At one point I took a picture of him sitting on the bike behind a sign "Beware of Lions". I'm glad we never came across any! We hit a bit of rain heading back to the park entrance, and had a slight spill on a section of slippery rock. It rained on our way home, and I got my revenge for the ride up. There was a long section of road covered by a surface that had turned to grease. I had the lightest bike, and the most control, while the other two had to drive extremely carefully to avoid wiping out.

I learned how to drive in the city on the piki. I made my first trip to Nairobi when I was 16. Nairobi is a city of a million people, and its drivers are not the worlds best. Six years later I still refused to drive a car through the city. There are places all over Nairobi to park a piki, but you never want to stray too far from it. An acquaintance demonstrated how easy it was to start it without a key. He borrowed it without my permission -- then came to visit me on it. I came the closest to a collision in Nairobi. The car that I was following made an emergency stop to pick up a passenger, -- with no brake lights. In my attempt to stop I drifted to the side, and stopped with my front wheel two feet beyond his bumper, touching the side of the car.

I wandered around a fair bit of Nairobi, just to look around. I couldn't see much while driving in traffic, so didn't try to explore too much. I always felt out of place when I didn't have anywhere in particular to go.

I have one lasting memory dealing with the piki. When driving to our school I always took a path across the yard, which cut off a fair length of driveway. At the end was a bank going down onto the road. There was a small ramp before the bank, and it was always fun to see how far I could jump. One day I pulled the front wheel up too far, and it just kept coming. I was about to fall off when it landed -- square on the taillight. I went back to the house with a few handfuls of red taillight plastic. My father was mad. He threatened to ground me for a month. There was a short fight over my key, and in the process my key ring broke. Two days later, to my surprise, he gave me the key back, on a fixed key ring. To me it meant far more than just forgiveness for the incident.

After three years of not being on a motorcycle, I went back to Kenya. The piki was still there. Dad had hardly used it, but didn't want to sell it. I was a bit slow to get it out. After three years of dreaming of the freedom it had given me, it took three days before I got it out. The first thing I noticed was that the clutch was adjusted differently than I had left it. I got on and found that it was as natural to drive as when I had left.

For all the freedom I missed by not having a piki in Canada, I was held back by fears that kept me from going too far. I was always afraid that I would end up in the middle of nowhere with a flat tire. I never had the tools to fix one while travelling, so tended to stay close to Kijabe. I never did get a flat tire while travelling.

It was always more fun to travel with a friend, and when I did have someone around to explore with, he didn't have a piki. Towards the end of the summer I returned to Kenya, I decided that if I were going to explore, I would have to go myself. I made one trip into the heart of Gikuyu country. I found a dirt road off the highway, and just drove. I wandered for twenty kilometres, not knowing if I would end up in a recognizable place, would run out of road, or would run out of gas. After driving past many small farms and some forest, I came to a water reservoir for Nairobi, and an improved road. Not too far from there I came across a town where I bought gas and headed back along a paved road. It was quicker, but not so scenic. I wanted to wander beyond there, but only had a couple weeks left in Kenya, and many other things to do.