Meeting with the Boda-Bodas

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 station.

We organized the maintenance workshop and divided up the responsibilities. They are to be the instructors and I'm just providing the structure and funding for the event. I gave out some Western T shirts and then we got to work on the bicycles.

We took apart one of the Hero bicycles and did some of the basic maintenance on it. I became the student because they were experts at this. I know how to work on modern bikes, but not these. We changed tubes, repacked bearings, changed brake pads, lubed chains, and trued wheels.

My mother has a nice home that is brick with two bedrooms, an office, a living room and a kitchen. She has a dog named benji, two mother cats named Sweet Pea and Flash, and many tiny kittens. She also has a chicken coop with many hens, a rooster and lots of little chicks. I've take video of them and will show you when I get home.

We put up another video, this is the account that Mark setup since I was asleep when he was uploading videos:

http://www.youtube.com/user/uganda2010

Everyone has been very friendly to us. And the children call out: Mzungu! How are you? Which is usually the only English that they know.


This photo shows our first presentation of the bike with the whole group of Boda-Boda at the main town sports field. They were excited to ride it and we had a great discussion about the Hero bicycle.

It's very dusty here and hot. I don't know what the temperature is but I think 80s and 90s. The dust bothers my eyes, so i need some eye drops. It cools down at night, so we've been sleeping well. Being on the equator means an even 12 hours of daylight and 12 of night time with a very quick transition in between (it seems).

We've been eating some traditional african food. goat, chicken, rice, beans, sweet potatoes, avocado, pineapple. We saw a pineapple plant today, and it's not what you'd expect. It grows up from the ground like a big flower plant. Who knew?