Bicycle inspirations from Burning Man

I saw a few cargo bike, rickshaw, and trailer designs at burning man that might be applicable to my work in Namibia with job-creating bicycle technologies. I hope to be working on a bicycle-rickshaw conversion design. While riding a rickshaw in Windhoek may not be nearly as profitable as it is in the bar scene in DC, there may be interest. I’ll ask potential users, both riders and passengers, and try not to get too excited about my own ideas of good transportation.

Photos below, and the entire photoset is at flickr.com/photos/aaronwieler.

Aaron’s life update and request for support, August 15, 2006

Dear friends,

I am writing with an update on my recent projects and future plans. From my most recent work teaching a course on appropriate technology design for development at Hampshire College and designing wheelchairs for less-developed countries, I am moving on to Namibia, Africa to work with bicycle ambulance design and manufacture.

I am writing from Washington DC, where I am pulling together the many resources that I will need for my next project: the design of a bicycle-pulled ambulance for use in rural Namibia. In October I’ll be moving to Windhoek, Namibia to work on design, manufacture, and implementation of value-added bicycle technologies, including cargo transportation, ambulance service, and other time-saving or job-creating technologies. Saving time for women in less developed economies is important because it facilitates education of women, and new jobs (where there might not be any others available) allow families to obtain better food, water, sanitation, shelter, and other needs. The ambulance in particular has a potential to decrease infant and maternal mortality rates in places where many women and infants die because they can’t get to medical care. Sub-saharan africa, for example, has a maternal mortality rate of 1000 maternal deaths per 100,000 live births (1%) Many of these deaths could be prevented if women could get to hospitals when childbirth complications arose (source: WHO/UNICEF/UNFPA estimates for 2000).

I’ll be working with Bicycling Empowerment Network Namibia, a non-profit organization based out of Windhoek that imports donated used bikes from Europe and the US, trains Namibians in bicycle mechanics to repair the bicycles, sells bikes affordably in bike shops, and donates other bicycles, primarily to women working as volunteer HIV/AIDS home based care providers in rural Namibia.

My project is being supported in part by BEN Namibia, and I have obtained the support of the American Jewish World Service organization for travel expenses to Namibia. In order to raise money to offer my support to BEN Namibia as a volunteer, I am fundraising by raffling a bicycle trailer that I built and seeking donations from friends. See below for more information on how to help.

The irony of it all is wonderful: 3 years ago, as a third-year student at Hampshire College, my first Appropriate Technology design class began working on a bicycle ambulance project for Malawi. After some research, we discovered that a similar project was already in motion in the same country, and so I came in contact with Niki Dun. She has designed a bicycle ambulance that is being implemented in Malawi; a similar design is in use in a project at Disacare in Zambia (Whirlwind Wheelchair International, for which I worked last summer, consults for Disacare). After finding out about Niki Dun’s project, I decided to design for my own community, and I worked on a DIY bicycle cargo trailer design, for which I have published open source plans (see links below). Now I am off to Africa to apply the principles of appropriate technology and design for development to my own bicycle ambulance project, where I hope to be long enough (6 months to 1 year) to attain some community accountability, instead of designing from completely outside the receiving community.

Most recently, I have been teaching a course about appropriate technology design and implementation at Hampshire College, from where I recently graduated. As an intersection of development studies and mechanical design, the course helped students learn to design technologies that might be appropriate for less developed economies, dealing with water quality, human powered cargo transportation, cookstoves, and wheelchair technologies. We built several bicycle trailers, a manual wheelchair lever-drive device, wood burning cookstoves, and water treatment devices, in addition to learning about the ways in which they might be implemented appropriately with respect to cultural, economic, social, political, and environmental differences and biases.

If you are interested in reading updates on this work, I will write and post pictures at
http://namibikes.wordpress.com

I’m looking for financial support for this project, to help pay for some project expenses, including pre-trip prototyping of ambulance components, immunizations, a work visa, and design tools to bring to Namibia. Any additional funds that I collect will help purchase materials for bicycle ambulance and value-added bicycle technologies for communities in Namibia. One hundred donations of $10 will reach my first fundraising goal, and I will accept any contribution graciously. I have been trying to get a non-profit organization in the US (BEN Namibia only has non-profit status in Namibia) to accept donations on my behalf so that they may be made tax-deductible, but I have so far not been able to arrange that. As my departure is nearing (Octobe 11th), I’m writing now; if you know of a US organization that might be able to help, please contact me and I will work on the arrangements.

If you would like to support my work on this project in another way, consider buying bike trailer raffle tickets if you live around Western Massachusetts or the Upper Valley in Vermont/New Hampshire.
http://bikecart.pedalpeople.com/raffle/

or you can send a check to
Aaron Wieler
107 Miller Pond Road
Thetford Center, VT 05075

Or donate through through Paypal (but they take a 3% cut) at
http://bikecart.pedalpeople.com/namibia

I’ve compiled a list of websites about the various projects mentioned above if you’re interested in learning more:

Aaron’s blog in Namibia
http://namibikes.wordpress.com

Bicycling Empowerment Network Namibia
http://www.benbikes.org.za/namibia/

Aaron Wieler’s bicycle trailer website with free downloadable plans
http://bikecart.pedalpeople.com

Whirlwind Wheelchair International
http://whirlwindwheelchair.org/
http://www.whirlwindwheelchair.org/videos/RoughRidersm.mov

American Jewish World Service
http://www.ajws.org

Thank you, and please keep in touch.

Aaron Wieler

P.S.
My partner Elizabeth Johns will come to Namibia for the first couple months of my time there and work with local NGOs in HIV/AIDS prevention education. Unfortunately, much of the funding for prevention education work in Africa goes to organizations focused on abstinence only and be-faithful programs, which aren’t as effective as education about safer sexual practices (including condom use), information about ARV treatments, and paths of STI transmission. If you’re interested in more information, email me and I’ll put you in contact with Elizabeth; she knows much more that I do about these topics.