This bicycle ambulance in Namibia allows people to get medical help far faster than they could before. AARON WHEELER
This bicycle ambulance in Namibia allows people to get medical help far faster than they could before. AARON WHEELER
What do you do if someone in your family has to go to the hospital? Chances are, you probably have a car, know someone with a car or could dial 9-1-1 for an ambulance.
But what if you live in a country that doesn’t have a public ambulance system, you don’t know anyone who has a car, and no one you know has enough money to pay for a taxi? How do you get to a hospital then?
In Namibia, cars are too expensive for most people. People get around mostly by walking, and until recently even healthcare workers walked to their patients’ homes. Many of their patients were so sick (often from HIV/AIDS or scorpion bites) that they needed to be in hospital, but the hospitals were too far away to get to without a car. Then an organization called the Bicycle Empowerment Network (BEN) gave bicycles to healthcare workers to help them work more efficiently. BEN soon learned that healthcare workers also used them to do something that had been impossible before. If the hospital was only a few kilometers away, workers sat patients on the luggage rack of the bicycle and pedaled them to the nearest hospital.
At your house, your stove probably runs on electricity or gas. In other parts of the world, though, most people cook over a fire made with wood or charcoal, which means someone has to bring the fuel home somehow. This man is bringing home wood in Malawi. JOACHIM LÖFFEL
In 2005, BEN started building bicycle ambulances. They’ve helped save many lives already, and they’ll continue to save lives until all parts of Namibia have a public ambulance system.
Using a car to haul charcoal would make this Vietnamese girl’s life much easier. Since her family can’t afford a car, she uses a bicycle, which means she can haul far more than she could in a single walking trip. LON & QUETA
In places where people can’t afford cars, bicycles are the next-best option, for emergencies and for daily life. For many families, owning a bicycle saves hours every week because they can carry big loads of fuel for cooking fires or jugs of drinking water instead of making many trips. This means they can spend more time working to earn enough money for food. In many cultures, a bicycle is a prized possession because it helps families work more efficiently to put food and clean drinking water on the table.
Bicycles can haul wide loads, too. This man in Vietnam is carrying sugar cane. STEPHEN BURES/DREAMSTIME.COM
In most countries, bicycles are an important way for adults to get around, but that doesn’t stop these Vietnamese girls from trying them too. STEPHEN BURES/DREAMSTIME.COM
Bicycles don’t help just individual families. They can strengthen whole communities by helping young people get an education. Beene is a teenager in Zambia who could go to school only a few times a week until recently. The nearest school is eight kilometers (five miles) away, and she had to walk both ways, which took a lot of time. All that walking also made her legs hurt and left her too tired to concentrate. In 2011, though, an organization called World Bicycle Relief gave her a bicycle. Now she can get to school faster than before, and she still has enough energy to study, play sports after school, help look after her nieces and nephews and do other chores. She’s going to school five days a week now, and she’s well on her way to achieving her dream of becoming a nurse.
This bicycle in Malawi is saving its riders plenty of time as they run their errands. And errands are always more fun with company! KERRI FINLAYSON
The Street Kids International Bicycle Courier Service empowers kids to earn money to feed themselves and get an education. This photo was taken in Bangalore, India. STREET KIDS INTERNATIONAL’S STREET KIDS COURIERS
In many countries, children live on the street because they’ve lost their families to war, hunger or disease, or their families can’t afford to feed them. In the mid-1980s, Canadian Peter Dalglish was in war-torn Sudan. Every day he met children living on the street, and he realized they needed a way to earn money to buy food and a chance to go to school. He and a bunch of volunteers gathered several old bicycles, a few new T-shirts and the names of businesses that needed courier services, and together they started Street Kids International Bicycle Courier Service. Kids who once lived on the street now have legal, healthy and empowering ways to earn money, feed themselves and get an education. Street Kids International is today a worldwide organization that has worked with more than two million street kids in over sixty countries.
Between 1876 and 1907, people could buy this pedal-powered saw for ten dollars. The machine weighed 18 kg (40 lbs) and could cut up to 3.8 cm (1.5 in) of pine. GARY ROBERTS/THE TOOLEMERA PRESS (WWW.TOOLEMERA.COM)
In places where people can’t afford cars, a bicycle can make life much easier. But what if bicycles could do other things—like make electricity or power machines that usually use electricity?
It’s not as crazy as it might sound. Back in the 1800s, almost as soon as the chain drive was invented, people began using pedal power to help them get their work done faster. Inventors attached chain drives and pedals to saws, grinders, shapers, tool sharpeners and drilling and cutting machines. In small workshops and households without electricity or steam power, pedal power made a world of difference in how much a person could do in a day.
As electricity became more common, people stopped using pedal power. But in many countries, electricity is still not available, or it’s very expensive. About a quarter of the world’s population does not have access to electricity. Kids do homework by lamp or firelight, and they don’t use computers because there’s nowhere to plug them in. Doctors in health clinics might have trouble helping patients because many medical tests need electricity. But pedal power can change all that.
Almost sixty percent of people in Nepal don’t have electricity. But in the early 1990s, people in some parts of Nepal began making their own power with stationary bicycles. American engineer David Sowerwine, a group of volunteers and a local builder had invented a pedal-powered electrical generator. With help from the World Bank, they set up generators in fourteen Nepalese villages. People came from miles around, hooked up small two-pound batteries to the bicycle system and pedaled to charge the batteries. Then they took their batteries home to power leds that gave two to three hours of light per night for up to two weeks. People also used the batteries to charge water sterilizers, cell phones and more.
In some places, people ride stationary bicycles to stay in shape. This man is pedaling to charge a battery that will help light his house at night. VILLAGETECH SOLUTIONS
BIKE FACTS: At a bicycle-powered movie theater in Vilnius, Lithuania, volunteer pedalers power the projector. When they get tired, they ring the bell, and another movie watcher takes over.
Since solar power has become more available, these generators have been adapted to use the sun’s energy so that no one has to pedal, but the bicycle generator was an important first step toward light for many villages.
Bicimaquinas are mostly for adults, but these children in San Andrés Itzapa, Guatemala, had fun pedaling to make smoothies. Adults can use pedal-powered blenders like this one to help make products to sell at the local market. SAMUEL ABBOTT
In Afghanistan, kids in three cities are pedaling their way to an education—on pedal-powered laptops. An international organization called One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) has made twenty-five hundred pedal-powered laptops for kids to try out in schools. Electricity is available in these cities, but it’s not always reliable. The laptops keep working even when the light switches don’t.
What’s a bicimaquina? It means “bicycle machine” in Spanish, and since 2001 an organization called Maya Pedal has built more than two thousand of them. Maya Pedal receives bicycle donations from North America. Then mechanics and inventors attach the bicycles to other important machines. Local communities get together to buy a bicimaquina that everyone in the community can use. Today, instead of spending what little money they have on electricity, people can pedal to power water pumps, grinders, tool sharpeners, blenders and more.
In CentriCycle’s centrifuge, blood-sample tubes fit into holders between the spokes. The healthcare worker spins the pedal for eight minutes and analyzes the results. No electricity needed! CENTRICYCLE/SARAH SCHWENDEMAN
What if a bicycle could help doctors treat a disability that affects over one billion people worldwide?
People with iron-deficiency anemia don’t have enough healthy red blood cells. Doctors can find out if a patient has this problem by putting a blood sample in a machine called a centrifuge. The centrifuge spins the sample around so fast that the blood separates into a liquid part and a more solid part. The solid part is the red blood cells. By comparing the two parts, an experienced healthcare worker can see if the patient has iron-deficiency anemia.
But what if there’s no electricity to make the centrifuge work? And what if it breaks and the replacement parts are too expensive or unavailable? In India, where iron-deficiency anemia is especially common, healthcare workers often face these problems with centrifuges.
A team of university students in the United States has invented the CentriCycle—a centrifuge that doesn’t need electricity or expensive parts. CentriCycles are built out of bicycle parts, and healthcare workers power them by hand. The CentriCycle team hopes that someday soon their centrifuges will be helping people all over India.
BIKE FACTS: Several health clubs in North America have hooked up their stationary bikes so that the people working out on them actually help power the building.
Around the world, people are using similar bicycles to relieve very different kinds of problems, from pollution and obesity in some countries to poverty in others. But one thing most bicycle owners have in common is how much they love their two-wheeled vehicles. And as time goes by, people are loving them even more.
When cars were invented, no one knew that the fuel would cause problems for the environment. In the same way, when people first started using electricity, no one was concerned about conserving power. Now that we know more about these valuable resources, though, people are making different choices. Choosing appropriate technology for each situation can both protect the environment and keep us fit.
If anyone’s ever given you a bicycle, you’ve got something in common with the millions of people around the world who depend on them every day. A bicycle is much more than a fun way to get around. It’s a life-changing tool that can really take you places!
BIKE FACTS: Cycling increases fitness and coordination, lowers stress, strengthens the heart and can even lengthen a person’s life span.
The pedal-powered knife sharpener that inspired this book. MICHELLE MULDER
In Buenos Aires, Argentina, I heard a strange whistle and the rattle of an old bicycle on bumpy pavement. I soon learned that knife sharpeners across the country use a whistle with the same combination of notes to call out to people who need their knives sharpened. When a customer appears, the cyclist props the bike on a kickstand that raises the rear wheel off the ground. Then he climbs on and pedals to turn the sharpening stone. His setup is cheap, and the only power he needs comes from his legs. Brilliant!
This Buddhist monk in Laos is one of millions of people who love their bicycles. DIGITALPRESS/DREAMSTIME.COM