Kona AfricaBike in Tanzania for WWF International Project
On the 22nd September 2008 Kona Europe sent Mats Petterson, Joonas Vinnari, Claude Rebord, Russell Carty and Gael Leopold from World Wildlife Fund For Nature to Tanzania to donate and build 100 Kona AfricaBikes to be given to the Water User Associations of the Great Ruaha River project run by WWF.
We knew there was a small delay with getting the bikes to Tanzania as the container ship had encountered technical problems on route, but we were informed that the bikes should arrive one day after our arrival.
That following day we were told that the ship had missed its scheduled unloading slot and due to the port being full of other boats it would be delayed for a few more days.
So as we had a couple of days to pass until the bikes arrived and we could start building we decided to visit a self stainable electric generator project run by WWF in Ngarambi.
WWF have donated this electric generator to the village and it will run from Bio-Fuel which the village will grow and produce, hence it will become fully self stainable. This was a big eye opener as it was our first time being really in the bush, driving for 6 hours on dirt tracks and seeing a village that up until only a year ago didn’t have any electricity at all.
After this trip we headed back to Dar es Salam to find out that the bikes had still not
been uploaded from the ship so we decided we should head to Iringa to meet the Water
User Associations.
We wanted to see the job they are doing and how the Kona Africa Bike will benefit them.
8 hours later we arrived in Iringa, we were given a presentation of the Ruaha River Project by our host and program coordinator, Petro Masolwa and then the next day back into the bush to Mkoji in the Mbeya region and Mbuyuni to visit some of the Water User Associations to see the work they do.
It was great to meet these water managers who were very pleased to see us and it was great to hear and see the passion they have for protecting the Ruaha River and of course there lively hood.
All the water managers are volunteers and give up their time to travel along the river banks to check for illegal water use, checking water levels and keeping an eye on
protected areas.
The Rufiji River Basin is six times the size of Switzerland, so these volunteers have a long way to travel so where very pleased with the Kona AfricaBike as it will make their work and lives a lot easier.
The importance of the Water Mangers came into effect when after two stops we came across illegal felling of trees which had been put up to protect a water source and on the second stop found farmers illegally siphoning water from the river for his crops.
Without these water managers staying on top of these problems the river will run dry again.
Unfortunately the Africa Bikes still had not been unloaded from the ship, but were scheduled to be unloaded the day before we left so we went back to Dar es Salam ready to spend a long day building and teaching how to build the bikes.
But some more bad luck came our way and the full moon was shining that night so this signaled the end of Ramadam and two days of national holiday. WWF Office and Shipping Port Closed....
This meant we had to leave Tanzania without building any Africa Bikes, but we have already filmed an instructional video on building the bikes and will have this sent to WWF early next week and WWF have confirmed we will have video and photos of the bikes in action and being used in the field.
Overall a great trip, a real eye opener for us all, a trip like this makes you value life especially the one we have in Europe. It was great to know that we are helping and to see that a bike is involved.
The video of this trip will be online in the coming month.
Just bought one of your bikes, without knowing about the project. Now i am a little bit happier with it ;)
Cheers from Hamburg, Germany
http://www.ringfahndung.de/archives/africabike-radeln-fuer-afrika
Posted by: ring2 | October 14, 2008 at 06:05 AM
hi my name is Hussein .i m a Tanzania. that a very good job done by kona . i would like to volunteer in maybe in a similar project .do you have any representatives in Tanzania that i can contact
Posted by: hussein | January 21, 2011 at 11:12 AM
Most ignorance is vincible ignorance. We don't know because we don't want to know.
Posted by: clonecd144 | May 09, 2011 at 12:10 AM
There's a great power in words, if you don't hitch too many of them together.
Posted by: expediacom802 | May 14, 2011 at 06:32 PM