My parents saw this postcard at the Museum of International Folk Art in Santa Fe and thought of me (hi Mom!). They know I collect toy bicycles, especially from Africa, because when they are guests in our house they stay in a room that is the valet parking lot for a whole spectrum of toy bike makes and models from all corners of Africa.

I like the spokes-and-sprockets overkill on this postcard, but I sure have some more finely wrought toy bikes, like this Red Bull example from Senegal (below), or all the ones shown in this post about my collection. (And by the way, a heck of a lot of traffic from Stumbled Upon has been visiting that post. Hi, Stumbled Upon folks!)

Related Bikejuju post:

• Beautiful Little Toy Bikes From Africa

I was very tempted to go to Maker Faire Africa this year, but the business I had in Nairobi fell through, and I opted to spend this weekend preparing for Burning Man instead. (Tough choice!) They’ve just posted a “meet the makers” short video. Looks chilly in Nairobi this week!

Maker Faire is a great event and I am pleased the momentum has carried through from the first Maker Faire Africa, held in Ghana last year (and mentioned on Bikejuju here).

As you can see, though, despite the vibrancy of the grassroots bicycle and bicycle design sectors in Africa, they are under-represented at Maker Faire Africa, especially when you compare it to the US Maker Faires, where there is always lots of bikey fun. From a distance it seems there are even fewer bicycle projects in Nairobi than last year in Accra. I have a little dream that we could use the Maker Faire Africa gathering in 2011 or 2012 as a place to bring together the African grassroots bicycle sector. What do you think?

My friend Stefania was in Nigeria and she was kind enough to bring me this great notepad with little everyday cycling scenes. Thanks!

Related:

• By Fixie Through Lagos, Nigeria
• Artist Profile: Chris Koelle • Bike Snob Book Illustrator

My friend alerted me to this story on Cycling News about a stage race held in Benin, West Africa to mark the 50th anniversary of independence.

Having swept the podium in the first stage, the riders from Burkina Faso approached stage two with confidence. Their cycling program is quite impressive. They have a team of full-time cyclists who receive military salaries. Essentially, they’re soldiers of cycling. They ride slick Colnago frames with 10-speed Shimano components, while most athletes from Benin and Togo ride old chromoly frames with friction shifters. Burkina Faso sets the bar pretty high for an African cycling team. It’s great to see them raise the level of competition in the region, but it sure makes life tough for the little guys.

So, we had our work cut out for us. Wearing the yellow, green, and red of the Benin national team, I was excited to help our sprinter Augustin Amoussouvi put on a good showing for independence day. We departed the village of Pobe for 75 kilometers of rolling terrain to Porto Novo. The national police escorted us to wave bush taxis, trucks, and wandering goats out of our path.

Digging a little deeper, I enjoyed reading two other articles by the same author, Christoph Herby, about the Benin national team. Herby is a Peace Corps volunteer and former race, who previously wrote:

Introducing the Benin National Team

Strategically mounted rapid-fire mountain bike shifters.

Amongst the riders who congregate are three members of the national team – athletes who’ve competed abroad in the Tour du Faso, the Tour du Togo, or the West African CEDEAO Tour. Robert Kponha proudly sports his combativity jersey from the Tour du Togo. Alexandre Zotogbé is a scrappy all-rounder. Augustin Amoussouvi’s thick calves identify him as the sprint star of the team.

Dreaming of the Champs Elysees:

I ride with a wiry bunch of boys who’ve somehow discovered bicycle racing at a time when football-crazy Africa prepares to host the World Cup. We’re quite a sight rolling down the highway in a paceline of scavenged parts and clothing.

If you want to poke deeper, Christopher also has a website and blog, featuring his gorgeous photographs and a little more on cycling in Benin. I’m please to see he’s connected to my pals at the Village Bicycle Project, who have supplied him and the team with bikes and parts.

Related Bikejuju post:

• Loading Bikes for Ghana

While visiting Pretoria, South Africa recently, I got to know Aaron Todd, the guard who patrols the beautiful jacaranda tree-lined street where my American colleagues are living for a few years.

Aaron, who is from Ghana, works doing bicycle security patrol on a thee-block stretch of Murray Street, twelve hours a day, seven days a week. He told me he came to South Africa two years ago in search of economic opportunity, and landed this job.

Aaron is riding a beat up old Maxwheel brand bike provided by the company, and I wouldn’t want to spend 12 hours a day in that saddle. Still, here’s a hack you don’t see every day, he has attached his rubber club to the seat tube with a bungee cord for quick access. (Conveniently there is no longer a front derailleur to get int he way!).

“This is pepper spray,” Aaron tells me. “I only used it one time – there was a thief trying to get into someone’s home and he would not leave. His eyes hurt very badly when I sprayed him.”

On the parallel street one block over, another bicycle patrol man is riding the same three-block stretch, and so on, through the neighborhood. Thanks to South Africa’s insanely high crime rate, this kind of 24-hour security presence is ubiquitous. I borrowed a bicycle and went for a ride around Pretoria, and snapped a small taxonomy of the local security company signs. (Then I got freaked out and went back to my hotel!)

My friends told me that Aaron will only respond if a burglary or incident is occurring at a house that subscribes to the security service Aaron works for, K-9 Security. The houses on the street that are under his protection carry a distinctive sign. This one is also protected by some fierce ankle-nippers.

Aaron is the world’s nicest, gentlest-seeming fellow, and it’s kind of hard to imagine him taking down a hardened criminal, but I enjoyed spending some time with him, riding his three-block circuit together, and taking his photograph. Thanks, Aaron! Stay safe!

Wandering the local market in Nampula, Mozambique, I came across these two gentlemen, Luis and Juliao. Now I don’t really speak Portuguese, but I can count to one hundred, so I embarked on the somewhat tortured process of trying to establish the prices of the bike parts they were selling.

In most cases this would be next to impossible, since my tourist status would have branded me as Mr. Moneybags, and any discussion of prices would have begun in the stratosphere–or its bicycle equivalent–the velosphere? But somehow I was able to communicate to Juliao that I would not be purchasing anything, and so as I jotted in my little notebook, I think he gave me a pretty fair version of local pricing. Which is mind-blowingly cheap.

• Hub: $1.50
• Two brake pads $0.30
• Cassette – 7 gears $3.00
• Cassette – 1 gear $1.50
• Big pump $3.00
• Small pump $1.50
• Rim $3.00

Thanks Juliao! It was a pleasure to meet you, and I’m glad I came to your market, even though some loser tried to pickpocket me about two minutes after we spoke.

• • •

(This is part of a series of Bikejuju posts about bicycles in Mozambique. Find all the Mozambique posts here. Or more broadly, all the Bikejuju African bike posts are here.)

With my penchant for cyclist profiles, especially in Africa, it will come as no surprise that I’m a supporter of the Bicycle Portraits project being undertaken by South African cyclist/photographers Stan Engelbrecht (Cape Town) and Nic Grobler (Johannesburg).

The Bicycle Portraits project was initiated by Stan Engelbrecht (Cape Town, South Africa) and Nic Grobler (Johannesburg, South Africa) early in 2010. Whenever they can, together or separately, they’re on the lookout for fellow commuters, and people who use bicycles as part of their everyday work, to meet and photograph. They’re finding out who rides bicycles, why they ride bicycles, if and why they love their bicycles, and of course why so few South Africans choose bicycles as a transport option. There is no specific range of questions asked, they’d rather just establish a conversation around the rider’s life and where his or her bicycle fits into it.

Velo Vogue has a guest post from Stan about the project. They are raising funds through Kickstarter to publish a book, and time is running out – Kickstarter is a strange model where they won’t get a penny unless they meet their pledge goal of $15,000.

I love these images – the diversity of riders, the natural style in which they are shot, the window into South Africa through bicycles, and the thoughts they capture from each rider alongside the image. They also have a nice little short film on their site on Vimeo, which makes me kind of wish they were making a little documentary along with the book. Clearly they are very handy with a DSLR and an ND filter. Maybe there’s hope for more video? Bicycles are motion.

A little Googling reveals some great images of photographer Stan Engelbrecht riding, a blog-format page at Kickstarter with more information on their other projects, and a hint that Stan might be sticking around.

I encourage you to support the project; it’s got bikjuju in spades.

(PS I head to South Africa later this summer, so email me if you’re in the Joburg area and want to ride, and watch this space for more South Africa content in the coming months. The deep reservoir of Mozambique posts from my March trip has only a few more posts left to share, so it must be time to head back to Africa!)

(PPS post updated to include the video embedded above)

It is probably not an overstatement to say that the majority of bicycles in the world have rod brakes. They are a staple component on millions of roadster bicycles pumped out each year by venerable (and huge) Asian manufacturers like Flying Pigeon, Phoenix, Avon, Neelam, and Hero.

The Chinese manufacturers are starting to switch to mountain bikes, but the black rod brake roadsters are still for sale next to the mountain bikes in many places.

Classic Humber roadsters for sale next to"mountain bikes" (with both bar ends and baskets!) in Nampula, Mozambique.

In the US today it’s extremely rare that you run across a bicycle with rod brakes. In fact until I recently looked more closely at some rod brakes, I did not even fully understand how they work. I’m still no expert, but I took some photos as I looked at old Indian roadsters in Mozambique, and thought I’d share them. Forgive me (and correct me!) if I get the exact terminology wrong (is there a name for the various pivoting joints?).

Let’s start at the rider’s hands. The rod brake levers connect at the center of the handlebars to a couple of spring-loaded pivots, where the first set of vertical rods are connected. These rods connect to the next rod via a sleeved joint, allowing adjustment of rod length and thus brake tension.

Rod brakes are often called “stirrup brakes” because of their shape. The front brake pulls up against the underside of the front rim, necessitating a different rim design than we are used to, called a Westwood rim, with room beside the spokes for the brake pads to make contact on the rim.

Extra points for this bike hack: using old inner tubing at the pivot to help the rear brake stay open until pressure is applied.

Meanwhile, as you can see, the rod for the rear brake engages a pivot at the top of the downtube. These Indian bikes have the rear brake rod coming down from the handlebars in front of the head tube, however some Chinese models like Phoenix move it to the side of the head tube and engage a different design of pivot. Here’s my photo of the pivot on an old Indian bike compared to a new Chinese Flying Pigeon I found on Flickr.

Notice anything funny? Yes the rear brake is on the left.

The rear brake rod continues along under the downtube and pulls another pivot just in front of the bottom bracket.

That pivot pulls the rear brake forward against the rim of the back wheel, parallel to the chain stays, to which it is attached.

Rod brakes are simple, bombproof parts, and you see them still working on ancient rusty Asian bikes (“black mambas”) across many African countries. I’ve never ridden more than a short distance on a roadster with rod brakes, and I hear their stopping power is so-so, but they are easy to adjust and maintain and they work. On the other hand I have ridden on several new-ish Chinese mountain bikes in Ethiopia (see my short video) where the caliper brakes were completely shot, as were the shifters, making them effectively brakeless one-speed bikes with lots of rattling parts hanging off them (as well as nine or ten unused cogs). I’ll take brakes that work so-so over brakes that don’t work at all, any day of the week, and especially on the day I’m riding a 50-pound bag of charcoal to market.

•  •  •

(This is part of a series of Bikejuju posts about bicycles in Mozambique. Find all the Mozambique posts here. Or more broadly, all the Bikejuju African bike posts are here.)

I have always loved this image, and have posted it before in other contexts. I recently got a few more details from Michael Linke at Bicycle Empowerment Network Namibia about the young woman, Patricia. It’s a great story.

Michael writes,

The young woman pictured, Patricia !Auxas (the exclamation mark is there for correct pronunciation in the Damara language) was a mechanic with the JOY Centre Bicycle Shop in Otjiwarongo, and is now studying at the University of Namibia through a bursary paid for through profits from the bike shop. The JOY Centre supports former street kids in the town, and has used bike shop profits to purchase a pick-up truck, build more accommodation and support food and educational costs for its programmes. The bike shop is part of a network of 22 shops established with community based partners by BEN Namibia in partnership with Bicycles for Humanity.

I think Bicycle Empowerment Network (BEN) Namibia is a great organization, and I encourage you to learn more about them.

Today I’m turning Bikejuju over to guest blogger Andrew M, who has a great tale to tell.

My quest for the ubiquitous African bicycle began while I was spending six months working in Western Kenya in a small rural village.  The predominate vehicle of trade was a black double top tube bicycle of Chinese or Indian make, with rod brakes, usually a reinforced rear rack, heavily modified and repaired through an obviously long life.  As I grew to know the local people and culture more the bike became a symbol to me and I had to have one.

It turns out that one could be purchased locally in Kenya for about $50 US, but getting it home was another issue.  It was hard to fly back with one since I had to make several stops on my way to the states, and shipping turned out to be difficult to arrange from my location, so I gave up.

When I got home about a year ago I regretted not trying harder and I renewed my efforts.  I went of course to various manufacturers websites, but received no response.  I went to “made in China” wholesalers, who arrange exports from Chinese factories to US retailers.  Success! Sort of, just needed to fulfill a minimum order of 500 units.  They were pretty cheap in bulk; perhaps I could make some money on the deal as well?  After some consideration and figures I came to my senses, with the aid of my girlfriend’s advice, and decided against getting into the bicycle import/export business.

More internet searching.  By this time I was spending what can only be described as an unhealthy amount of time searching forums, Chinese websites, craigslist, eBay and pouring over Google search results.  I would be doing something around the house and then I would find myself sitting in front of the computer pursuing my latest lead, with dinner burning on the stove.

Of course I discovered that Flying Pigeon have a following; they are available to order online from a few sources.  However none of those fit my needs.  Not only did I not see any Flying Pigeons in Kenya (though I’m sure they’re around), most of the ones online did not match the type of bike I saw in Kenya.  The African bicycles I saw were almost always double top tube, and never had a full chain guard.  I saw mostly Heroes, Forevers, Avon, and Phoenix.  The Phoenix SPB15 Double Top Tube For Gents, from the Phoenix website, had become my Grail, the unobtainable goal.  I required an unmodified bike, wobbly steel westwoods, questionable rod braking and all.
I appealed to Taiwanese bike shops, to more wholesalers.  My email address was spread far and wide in India and Asia, which was a little scary and hadn’t produced any results.  Local bike shops responded simply “No,” and wanted nothing to do with it.

I began to resign myself to the idea that I would just have to bring one back from Africa or China myself but I had no far reaching trips planned.  Finally this month I made one last appeal.  I posted a wanted ad in the San Francisco Bay area Craigslist, an attempt to reach out to the cycling community in my area.

The next day I woke up with several emails about the Pigeons, but only one email spoke of my elusive Phoenix.  Turned out the writer’s neighbor had one in her garage for almost 30 years, had too many bikes and would probably sell.  And she was not ten minutes from my house.  I had been searching worldwide and here, just down the street, was the object of my desire.  After some phone calls, a visit, and haggling, I found my self the proud owner of a Phoenix.

It is all original and the tires still hold air, for a while.  I took it for a ride and it’s all I imagined.  I float above the crowd on my 28″ wheels, head up, shoulders back and heart open.  I cruise along, pushing my 50 lbs of steel at a stately 8 mph.  30 years in the salt air of in our coastal town has left the seat creaky, frame rusty, brakes out of adjustment and I love it.

________________________________

Thanks Andrew! Phoenix bikes have made a few previous appearances on Bikejuju, this blue one in Axum, Ethiopia is especially pretty.