Well, I didn´t carry them to Africa. But we sure as hell carried a lot of bicycles up the stairs in that old warehouse.
I spent most of Saturday hanging out at Re~cycle´s Wheelie Big Bike Drop on the outskirts of London. Re~cycle was started by Merlin Matthews, who realized a very simple thing: a lot of people have used bikes standing around doing absolutely nothing. Why not ship them to Africa, where people have to walk for several hours on a daily basis? Wouldn´t they be of more use there?
That was 12 years and 35 145 bicycles ago. Now, british bicycles are used by women, men and children in many countries in Africa. Re~cycle ships them down there on cargo-container ships as ecologically as possible, and they are then handed over to local organisations. These further train mechanics for the bicycles, giving jobs to locals, and the bikes themselves are placed out into villages. In one country, the school authority had already complained that the kids had to walk such long distances to school (2-3 hours one way) that once in place, they just slept in the class-room. Just one bike per village can make a huge difference. In some places they have been rebuilt with the help of Re~cycle to function as ambulances to freight patients on a seat or stretcher behind, and Re~cycle have set up a program using bikes to get nurses out into the more outlying villages for HIV/AIDS-treatment that also includes giving talks about how to prevent the disease.
You can see their website and Africa map here: http://www.re~cycle.org/.
On Saturday, Re~cycle was doing the first collection in London itself. They will now be doing that every month, collecting used bicycles that people want to donate. You can read about it here: http://www.abelandcole.co.uk/the-wheelie-big-bike-drop.
I haven´t got the final count, but it looked like they got about 500 bicycles – a very good turnout. The volunteers from Re~cycle and from Abel&Cole then helped carry them inside and upstairs for storage, which the company has volunteered to keep doing as part of their Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR). Re~cycle is currently looking for both more patrons and more volunteers to help get those used bikes out of the shed and off to transform people´s lives in Africa. They are also looking for more volunteers to go to Africa and run programs on the ground, helping to coordinate the shipments, placement and the training of mechanics. They also train women in this, to empower local women to have their own job and their own income.
Re~cycle is one of those simple but brilliant ideas, and they are making a huge difference on an every-day, practical level in Africa. You can read more about their work and support it here: http://www.re-cycle.org/Donate/Money.
The Wheelie Big Bike Drop was full of volunteers and screaming children. At the barbecue you could buy beef- or soy hamburgers with organic salad (the beef ones were great, says our intrepid reporter) and for the kids there was face-painting and bales of hay to jump around on while people came biking in on bikes that were going from here to away, away to a new life of helping carry children, water, food, or maybe even patients along long stretches of dusty road under endless African sun.
It´s a sunny Sunday in London now. Steady streams of tourists move outside, the first beggar has sat down in his sleeping bag at the end of Millenium Bridge and choppy winds give the Thames a rugged face today, promising more wind, colder days, the smell of damp from the coat of a stranger standing next to you on the bus.
