Bike Wonk

Tuesday and Thursday mornings often find me and a few pals cycling early. That kind of kickstart then leaves bikes on my mind until bedtime.

One such day, I stopped by a small noodle shop for lunch. I’m friendly with the owner. His bike, parked out front as usual, looked like it could use a big tune-up. The chain appeared not to have been oiled since before last rainy season. He confessed that the brakes squeaked and the shifters quit working some time ago. I offered to take it to my favorite mechanics and have them work their magic.

The owner said, “no need to trouble yourself.” I’ve lived here long enough to know that he might have really been saying “maybe I wouldn’t mind, as long as you don’t end up spending too much.” So off the bike went for some service.

The repair guys told me it was a cheap Chinese model and not worth a big investment. By this time, I’d already walked the bike over from the noodle shop and I couldn’t bear to bring it back without at least a bit of spiffing. They got the shifters and brakes working again. They talked me out of replacing old parts with new ones, explaining that some of the sizes were non-standard and therefore expensive.

The bike owner insisted on paying for the repairs. The bill wasn’t huge, but I felt shy to tell him the real number because he and I hadn’t talked about the price beforehand. I told him I had spent about four times less than I really had.

Right away his tire went flat. Rather than walk the bike back over to the repair shop, I rode my own there and bought a new (non-standard-sized) tube. I figured I had all the tools we would need, and that it would be easy enough to fix the flat ourselves. Then I looked at his bike again and realized that it doesn’t have quick-release wheels because—as I’d been told—it’s a cheap Chinese bike and not worth putting too much effort into.

He again said, “no need to trouble yourself,” and this time I wasn’t quite as certain about what the code stood for. I felt badly when I saw him leave and come back with a pair of wrenches that I’m sure

he bought brand new solely for the purpose of taking off the front wheel. Then the repair got really messy as I spilled talcum powder all over the floor of the noodle shop as we tried forcing a slightly irregular tube into a fussy tire. We got the job done but we cursed and sweated more than we had expected to.

To be honest I’m not sure how much he ever will ride the bike in the future—or ever did in the past, for that matter. Looking back, I regretted talking bikes with him on a day that for me had begun with a good ride and good friends. Feeling slightly guilty about the whole episode, I came back home and whined to my flatmate about how I maybe hadn’t learned the lesson of so many backwards development projects here. Often, well-intentioned donors provide money for schemes that to them look like solutions to obvious needs, without asking enough questions about what the community actually wants.

My flatmate listened politely and then pointed out that most people wouldn’t have seen a problem in the first place. “You see, John, you are a Bike Wonk. You assume other people think the way you think. But actually, most people don’t really give much thought to their bikes.” Hmmm. I hadn’t realized until then that I am a Bike Wonk. Something new for the business card.

Latest on Rohingya Expulsion

For the moment, and likely for the foreseeable future, there’s no such thing as home for the Rohingya. For most of them, it’s not clear that there ever really was such a thing, regardless of where they were born, or how often they moved around in Myanmar.

What seems more and more certain is that they won’t return to this country. They’re not wanted, they’re not interested, they’re not able.

Repatriation was supposed to begin two days ago, under an agreement signed last November between the Bangladesh and Myanmar governments. Instead, similar meetings will probably continue, generating PR points for the negotiators but little change for the refugees.

High on the list of priorities for the Myanmar side seems to be acquittal of all blame for what’s gone on during the past five months. Not only were many Rohingya killed while fleeing, but security forces and armed Rakhine neighbors also destroyed homes, fields, and livelihood possibilities in order to prevent returns. Now the military wants outsiders to provide it the same pardon that its own official report has already given to itself.

(A precise number will likely never be known, but some estimates suggest one percent, or over 6,500, of those who ran never reached Bangladesh. That figure doesn’t count victims of rape, families whose villages were burned, or those who lost their livelihoods. The Myanmar armed forces insist they never targeted civilians.)

Return talks could also be prolonged by a seemingly limitless list of issues and actors: How would returnees’ identities be verified? Who else ought to be at the negotiating table? What can be done to make the return of any expelled Rohingya not only safe and voluntary but also sustainable?

And many questions, given unbudging public opinion here, appear to simply not be up for discussion: When might international aid groups and media, and the United Nations special rapporteur on Myanmar, be given permission to freely visit northern Rakhine State? What will be the effect of pressure by outside bodies such as the International Criminal Court, the UN Human Rights Council, and institutions that have proposed targeting military officials or specific Myanmar industries with new economic punishments?

Finally, a few unanswerables: What if a few Rohingya militants hadn’t handed the Myanmar army an excuse to retaliate? What if the region had a better early warning system? What if after World War II the British had drawn the colonial border between what are now Myanmar and Bangladesh a little bit further east and south? What if in 2017 the world wasn't worried simultaneously about North Korea, Syria, and Yemen?

On the Bangladesh side, the complex of refugee camps housing Rohingya now qualify as the world’s largest, having doubled in size during the past six months. The exiles’ former homes in Myanmar may have been bulldozed, according to reports from the few outsiders allowed access to the areas where most of the nearly 700,000 who fled this time lived. (Some reports describe new economic zones being formed in areas that have been designated as “abandoned.” Other accounts suggest that razed villages are being replaced with government-built longhouses.)

So far, formal education isn't allowed in the Bangladesh camps. Also, Bangladeshi authorities reportedly don't want the new refugees learning the local dialect. Such decisions are justified in the same way I recall Thailand’s government denying all but essential services to Cambodian refugees during the years I worked in those camps: “If we offer them a better life than what they’re used to, they won't go back.” The English translation of that official Thai policy was "humane deterrence."