Not a small number of the cyclists are women, who didn’t really use the machine for transportation before the onset of COVID-19. You also notice that some of the bicycles are brand new, and that some of the riders are novice riders from the way they sit on the saddle, self-consciously riding their machines.
In fact, the Eritrean child learns to ride the bicycle before he properly starts reading his books, and his first request of his father is for a bicycle.
“I didn’t hire bicycles from shops,” a friend in his sixties, who learned how to ride a bicycle much earlier, told me.
Other children, who were luckier, and had a bicycle in the family, slipped out of the house, rode their fathers’ bicycles and learned how to ride it the hard way.
If, by any chance, the child falls, they teach him the principles of bicycle training: “You can’t learn how to ride a bicycle without some accidents,” the learner is told.
