In Kisumu and other towns in Kenya, men on bicycles will give you a ride for a small fee. A ride from my house to town costs 20 shillings, or about 25 cents US. It's fun to take a boda boda around town, unless they don't have brakes or they're on a road with lots of cars and buses. As you can see from the picture, the bikes have a padded seat on the back and some have handles for the passenger to hold onto just under the driver's seat.

Karen, on the back of the boda boda, is a medical student from Canada, studying to be a doctor, and she is in Kisumu to learn about health care in Kenya. She enjoys taking the boda bodas all over town and especially to the hospital where she works. "Boda Boda" means "border to border," and came from Uganda (the country west of Kenya), where supposedly you can pay a guy to ride you on his bike from one border of the country to the other.