ID [PNW]

What is a “Boda-Boda?” A Boda-Boda is a person who gives passengers rides, or delivers goods on his bicycle or motorbike. He is essentially a two wheeled taxi driver. The name may come from the word “border,” as they may take your across a border. Or it may come from the puttering sound of a motorbike. Either way, the Bodas are a prominent form of public transportation in East Africa. They are everywhere, hanging out on street corners, under the shade of trees, sitting on their most valuable possession and their primary source of income. The most common vehicle country-wide is the Hero bicycle. Boda-Bodas start out with a bicycle and deliver passengers or goods for a small fee. A short in-town ride might be 200 to 300 Ush. Bicycle Bodas carry passengers more frequently in the rural areas and small towns. They attach a vinyl-padded cushion on the rear rack and bring children to school or business people to their office. In Kampala, the bicycles are more likely to be beasts of burden, ac...

September 9th, 2007 We are just finishing our packing to head to Kampala. Then tomorrow morning we get on the airplane. We uploaded another video. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SV0ZKKdu9QI We went to the renewal service at church today and it was raucous! People were singing and dancing, jumping up and down. it was great. We took some video of it. Yesterday the Boda guys gave me a handmade plaque thanking for our work here. It was very moving, they have become good friends. The maintenance workshop went great. Over a hundred young men, we did lots of fixing flats, tightening bolts, adjusting brakes and oiling. It turned from a learning workshop into a free repair clinic. They fixed others bikes while others watched. That's what the Boda's wanted to do, they wanted to be generous to their community with the gifts that we gave them. Amazing. They were the instructors and took charge of thier areas, I didn't have to do much of anything except hand them water bottles and suppo...

September 7th, 2007 We did the safety workshop today and it went really well. We did a little film with the guys here, it's rough but we only had two days. They liked it. We had about 36 at the workshop and many were new. They had lots of questions and suggestions about the bike. In fact the discussion was entirely about the bicycle, they weren't interested in the message about road safety. Of course, I wasn't interested in road safety when I was a bike messenger either. Just how to go faster and make more money. We just bought pre-paid health insurance accounts for the 10 Bodas that we've been working with. They can go to the best medical clinic in town and get treatment or medicine for anyone in their family. They were really excited about that! Most have about 6 children and one has 12! That's were much of that extra money from First Pres Church is going. We're ready to get of of here. three weeks was too long to be away. We're doing good stuff here but i...

September 5th, 2007 Yesterday we visited the 10th Boda family of Suwedi. He has 6 children and one wife and lives in a 3 room mud hut with a steel roof. He had a family photo album, which the others didn't have. And they have relatives in the US, who come to visit occasionally. We gave the wife a necklace and the kids some little toys and balloons. They fed us roasted peanuts and motoke for a snack. The peanuts were excellent and I was wondering, where have you been hiding these? The motoke is motoke. We had a good conversation about mobile phones today. I'm interested from a product designers point of view. And I love the juxtaposition of a ringing cell phone inside a mud hut. But that's life in modern Africa. Swedi was very generous to give me a live chicken, which makes a total of five. It turns out that 4 of them are roosters and they've been pecking the hell out of each other in the coop. Literally some are bloody. Patrick has separated them and tied the legs of th...

Mobile phones September 3rd, 2007 Most people here never had a land line phone. No wires, no electricity, no service. But cell phones are universally popluar even with the lower classes. The phone is a pre-paid service, one buys a phone (95-100 K Ugandan shillings) and then pays for airtime as needed. Airtime cards are available most anywhere. The ads for mobile phone companies are the most commonly seen in the country. MTN, Celtel, and U com. The most preferred phone are simple, cheap, dirt and water resistant, include an LED light, and have the longest battery life. Since power is sporadic and unreliable, the best electronic devices have rechargeable batteries or disposable ones if one has no power. The major brands are Nokia and Motorola, Nokia being the dominant player. Many can earn a living selling airtime at tiny roadside stands. Typically 200 to 400 shillings per minute. Where do you charge it if you don't have electricity? Well you can drop your phone off at a little booth...

September 3rd, 2007 Yesterday was quite an adventure, and not a fun one either. We sat through 4 hours of a bishops consecration service that lasted over 6! Along with 5000 other people. We couldn't take anymore and left. We chatted with some reporter from the Wall Street Journal who was covering the event. We then got some lunch and left Mbarara. (the food here is getting repetitive by the way. It’s the same thing for every meal! There is no going out for chinese or pizza) Mbarara is a large town in the southwest of Uganda, that is just south of the equator. We knew that we had a 5 hour drive to Kampala. All was going well until 30 km from our destination. The SUV rattled under the hood and then stopped running. It was dark and we were just going into a small roadside village. Simon, the driver, was trying to figure out what was wrong under the hood with a tiny LED flashlight. Rev. Jacob was trying to flag down a taxi-bus, but they were flying by at full speed and most were full o...

August 31st, 2007 We have uploaded a new video of the safari. it's just the highlights, and we'll have more to show when we return. http://www.youtube.com/user/uganda2010 Today we visited the homes of most of the Bodas. They have been very welcoming and friendly. Some live in mud huts with steel roofs, some live in tiny brick homes. No running water, no electricity, no lights, no kitchen. Just a fire pit outside and some pots for cooking. They gave us many gifts of fruit and vegetables (sugar cane stalks, avocado, pinapple, motoke, and others) And get this, they gave me four live chickens as gifts! I didn't know what to say or do. I've never even held a chicken before! It was very funny and yet generous. We're experiencing things that a tourist would never see. Amazing. We're going to another city for this special consecration service and will be staying in a hotel for two nights. I don't know if the hotel has internet access. So I may not be ab...

August 30th, 2007 The safari was incredible, we'll try to send some pictures tonight. We saw elephants, giraffe, warthogs, baboons, boks, and the most rare and amazing of all, we were 15 feet from two lions! The ranger found them with some binoculars and we drove right up to them (with the windows closed of course). They were lying in the shade, resting after their breakfast. We also saw a hippo. The video and pictures that we got were great. What wasn't great was the 3.5 hour drive on rutted dirt roads just to get there. I never thought that I would day-dream about smooth fast highways, but I do now. I'm being picked up soon to visit one of the Bodas families. We had our training session this morning and gave out the toolboxes. They were so excited that they called the local reporter to come right away and see and write a story for the radio.

August 27th, 2007 I'm going to try and write some and then try to send some pictures, too. But a storm is coming this way and I may lose the electricity. We just returned from having our lunch meeting with the Boda drivers, the bicycle couriers. They were very organized and had an agenda written out and were very formal. It was great to finally meet them. We didn't have the bicycle ready to show because my mom has been driving us all around town meeting everyone of her friends. Because of the generosity of our friends and Western we were able to buy lots of tools and parts for the guys. The boxes included wrenches, screwdrivers, tubes, chains, patch kits, spoke wrenches, multi-tools, and others. We also gave them a maintenance manual, grease, light oil, floor pumps, socket wrenches, pliers, adjustable wrenches, and others that I can't remember. They were so excited that they sent one on a motorbike to go in to town and came back with a news reporter from the radio s...

August 26th, 2007 Hoima, Uganda Sorry that I haven't written, it's not that we're too busy it's that haven't been able to. The hotel that we stayed at had a computer cafe, but it was only open in the middle of the day, when we were out at the University Friday. Then Saturday it wasn't open in the morning and we drove most of the day to Hoima. Then when we got here, there was no electricity and no fuel for the generator. The electricity turned on later that night, but I was asleep by then. This morning we went to church, then to a bible study meeting, and that took all day until 5pm, and now I'm back at my Moms and the power is on! You don't know how much I appreciate full-time reliable electricity like we have back home, what a precious thing. I was very sad today, as I thought about my family and missed them terribly. This is so hard, being away from the family.

August 24, 2007 Kampala Today we visited Kyambogo University . It was larger than we expected with several buildings and many students walking around, almost entirely young men, well dressed. We found the Art and Industrial Design department building which was a single story building with a dusty courtyard filled with wooden student sculptures and canopies for shade. It was getting very hot and humid, and I had a suit jacket on, so I was sweating. I kept thinking, you’re not getting air-conditioning for awhile, so you may as well get used to it. Any northwesterner would have called it unbearable heat and retreated to a cool air conditioned place, but there is no escaping it here. We met with George S. who is a Senior Lecturer and acting head of the Department, since Catherine Gombe was ill. He was very intent on starting a product design post-bac certificate program there. Their definition of “industrial design” was more like craft that would be made in multiples, but not quite m...

August 23rd, 2007 Kampala, Uganda I've arrived in Uganda safe and sound. All of the bags got here intact too. The flight to London was smooth, but I couldn't sleep at all. We took a 3 hour tour of London after hopping up on caffeine when we arrived. We walked around Buckingham Palace, Westminster, Parliament, and Big Ben. Waiting for the next plane still felt like forever though, since I still hadn't slept. It worked out because I slept the entire 8 hour flight to Entebbe, and now I feel fine. Today at the airport we lashed the bike to the roof of a van, which drove to Hoima today, and has already dropped off the bike. Then we got some of our cash exchanged and deposited the rest into my moms account. That way we can take out a bit at a time at her bank. We then drove into Kampala to buy some bicycle tools and parts. It was wild and crazy there, like NYC Canal St. but more chaos and less money. A beehive of taxis, motorcycles, cars, and people. White mini buses crammed ful...

August 21st On route to London On the plane now from Seattle to London. The time difference to London is 8 hours. I’m trying to stay up so that I can sleep well on the second flight. I browsed a “Good” magazine and read about a bike project in Rwanda, some bike shop/group in Portland, OR. (A baby is crying right now, poor mother, I’d hate to have to deal with that for 8 hours). They’ve got these green bikes with a big rear rear rack, square tubing, good for lashing stuff to. They look expensive and heavy, a lot of steel. Same basic concept as my design though. They’re making multiple bikes and shipping them though, a few steps ahead of me. What to do? Well, we’re on the same page. (What a horrible scream this kid has). A similar design is being converged to. (Yes, everyone hates you child hell-scream) When will a manufacturer get the hint? It’s always a bit disappointing to see another design that’s similar to your own. You feel like your work has been a waste of time, at l...