Bike power
June 12, 2009
They're cheap to run, good for your health, faster than walking and better for the environment than motorized vehicles - and an NGO in Namibia has also proved how the trusty old pushbike has the power to change lives.
The Bicycling Empowerment Network, BEN, uses two-wheelers to grant the disadvantaged easier access to health and education facilities, provide jobs and offer those in need the chance for a brighter future.
In a pale purple container in Namibia's Katutura township, Maria manages a BEN bicycle workshop. It is something of a departure for the 36-year-old, who up until not so very long ago, was working the streets and feeding a drug addiction and alcohol habit.
"Prostitution is just one word, but it's an umbrella of all evil," she said. "An umbrella of street kids, orphanages, broken houses, broken marriages, HIV/AIDS, you name it!"
A way out
Maria, who is a mother of five, worked as a prostitute for four years and she hated every moment of it. She finally found her way out through the King's Daughters, a church project which helps women like her to escape the world of commercial sex and learn vocational skills.
For Maria and her five colleagues, all of whom were previously prostitutes, that means training to become bike mechanics.
Michael Linke, the head of BEN in Namibia, says it is crucial to get women off the streets and away from the massive dangers inherent in the nation's sex industry.
"You've got all kinds of risks of physical violence that sex workers face around the world, but here you have a population with 20 percent HIV," Linke said, adding that because of the illegal nature of their work, prostitutes rarely have the power to insist on the use of condoms.
It is a world of risks that Maria and her girls, as she refers to them, are only too happy to leave behind.
"By working here, I am not sitting at home drinking, thinking, thinking of hunger, thinking I have to go and see someone, I have to sell my body," Maria said.
Looking ahead
Maria's dusty workshop is just one of several such BEN centers around Namibia, and Michael Linke is convinced of the important role bikes have to play in improving livelihoods and contributing to sustainable development.
"Namibian villages are very scattered," Linke said. "Some 60 percent of Namibians have no access to motorized transport, no taxis, no buses, no private cars."
And these are the people that the Bicycle Empowerment Network hopes will benefit from the beautiful simplicity of the bicycle. Since 2005, the NGO has distributed more than 7,000 second-hand models - donated by American and European charities - across the country.
Maria and her girls have played a role in selling those bikes, and they are happy to work hard to be a part of something so important.
"To be honest," Maria said, "I used to be nobody, but now I am somebody."
Author: Barbara Gruber (tw)
Editor: Kate Bowen