Kona BikeTown Africa

Bicycle Retailer Love

The BRAIN folks give a brief low-down on the project...

http://www.bicycleretailer.com/news/newsDetail/282.html

Katima, Namibia

Well, the trip, as I said, was a complete success.

The representatives from Kona, Bicycling, Bristol-Meyers Squibb, Bicycle Empowerment Network Namibia and Base Camp Communications all met up in the town of Katima in the Kaprivi region of Namibia, a region where 43% of the population is HIV/AIDS positive. We spent one very, very long day assembling the 150 bikes with the help of some of the local health care workers who will be using them. The health care workers, or 'buddies' as they are called in the program, are volunteers who were also learning bicycle maintenance so they could properly care for the bikes.

We also had a chance to visit some patients and buddies in their villages just outside of Katima. One buddy, Anna, said on average she walked 10 to 15km in order to see her patients, and it would take her all day to make her visits. She said having the AfricaBike would cut the time required to see her patients by two thirds, and enable her to see as many as six more patients in a day.

On our last day in Katima, there was a celebration and ceremonial handover of the bikes, complete with singing, dancing, speeches and a massive group ride on the streets of Katima.

Despite the fact this region has been hit incredibly hard by HIV/AIDS, all the people we worked with were smiling, laughing, happy and full of life.

I'll post more shortly...

Steve Madden's podcast

Well, we're back. The trip was a complete success, and also a mind-blowing experience.

I'll post images and more info soon.

For now, you can hear about the trip from the man himself, Bicycling Magazine's Steve Madden. Listen to Steve's podcast here.

There's a link to the webpage here - http://rodale.typepad.com/bi_audio_blog/2007/08/biketown-africa.html