African Odyssey: The Red Bicycle (1971)

good morning can I help you yes please uh I would like to buy this bicycle for my son for your son oh how old is your son about 14 oh he'll be the that much a bit up yes yes oh I see so I've got the right bicycle for him do you like it I like it very much very much yes how much does it cost I'll give you 600 sh oh no that's too much oh I see but uh the price Remains the Same oh well maybe I'll try another shop okay thank you very much just wait how many do you have I have 420 Shillings 420 yes all right let's have it I'll just give it to you thank you very much thank you very much one 200 3 4 and20 and and 20 another 20 yes yes and 20 the bike is yours thank you very much [Music] [Music] what a very good father I have to bring me a bicycle all the way from Nairobi I'm 14 today and I have the only bicycle in Batumi my father had one one but that was when I was very little and besides it was not [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] red we grow mostly Maze and coffee in bisi to make the soil richer we red hay on the ground and until now I have always had to carry it on my [Music] back school is 10 KET from my house until today I had to be up before the sun to walk such a distance [Music] I think if I polish and oil this bike it will last me a long time maybe all my life all the children in bisi go to my school my teacher went to a university far away in America in a place called Boston for [Music] [Music] the first bit of luck I've had with this bike I ought to be in the city by tomorrow Sunset I come from the village of kabj near the Uganda border may I never see it [Music] again my family worked in the coffee Fields when the English still owned Kenya it was called the white Highlands then and it was very rich though God knows we were not now they've given us our own land a lot of good it did with seven of us there all on two [Applause] acres I don't know what I'll do in the city but I figure something out I don't know what a bicycle is worth in Nairobi but I don't know what CLE will bring h [Music] [Music] of course a bicycle is not a truck about a bicycle I can get into the coffee Fields I can pedal right up to the plants [Applause] I am with the Kenyan government I test coffee and tea and teach people how to grow it every day I drive hundreds of miles from Plantation to Plantation and talk with a foreman Who oversee the land the government is worried about our coffee and tea it's the main thing we grow and we need it badly it takes a while you know learning to run one's own land at first when the British left we cut up the land so much that it was very inefficient this land for instance used to be a big British owned coffee plantation now it is run as a collective with everybody sharing what is received for the crop [Music] it's my job to see that everyone works together smoothly and to help them use the best methods of coffee growing [Music] [Music] spe [Music] [Music] [Music] you they said the bicycle is BR to them but we found that bicycle 300 miles away I know that but only that they say brong to them they say Li give him the bite okay my red bicycle my father says that since the Villages of bisi found it they are now the bicycle's rightful owners it shall belong to the whole village [Music] [Music] d e [Music]