Waiting for the “waiting list”

I’m Silvie, FAR’s first employee, where I’ve been working for more than 13 years.  Among other projects, I’m in charge of providing bicycles to many people without means who have no other mode of transportation…

Though the project has been running for 4 years now, I can’t help being really touched every time we open the possibility of getting on the waiting list, which never has fewer than a few hundred applications, and I see the long line of women, whose living conditions are very precarious, waiting in the blazing sun, from early morning, for their turn to apply for a bike…

Transporting people with a “mototrycicle”

A bicycle in Rimkieta is an indispensable tool for moving around a neighborhood of long distances, no public transport and very little private transportation (scarce taxis or motor-tricycles meant to transport merchandise but that wind up carrying people); indispensable but available to very few.

At FAR we are happy to have reached 2,000 “France au revoir” bicycles (quality bikes, resistant and solid, brought second hand from Europe).  Here a bicycle is not for sports or recreation.  Here it is a necessity that helps alleviate – greatly – the great weight of women’s family burden.

FAR’s bike beneficiary carrying her daughter to school

From a social perspective, bikes revitalize a society that would otherwise have a very, very limited range of interaction.

FAR bikes are easy to spot, as they are painted maroon and numbered.  Hardly a day goes by that I don’t see a woman or a child pedaling one around the neighborhood.

I am moved every time, thinking how for each of those 2,000 bicycles, an entire family is benefits. As families here have six, eight, or more people, you can imagine how many beneficiaries there are.

We have to move around every day, at any time, for one reason or another.  Mothers for myriad activities:  to take their young children to school (often their own and their neighbors’ – sometimes carrying as many as three children on one bike);   to fetch water or firewood; to carry out their small commercial dealings faster and further afield, etc.

Not easy walking at 40º in these streets

Children to go to school and to help their mothers get water or wood.  If you don’t have a bike – which most people don’t – all of this must be done on foot under high temperatures. At 40 degrees Celsius, walking is slow and laborious.

Just observing daily scenes like these, one can imagine the relief a bicycle must provide in Rimkieta.  Thanks so much to all of you who spread joy by way of a bicycle in Rimkieta