Have you noticed an increase in the overall cycling infrastructure in Namibia?

No, infrastructure development has been slow to get moving on. The city of Windhoek is however close to releasing a call for tenders on a non-motorised transport master plan for the city, something that certainly wasn’t on the radar when we first started lobbying for it.

Are more citizens choosing bikes as their primary mode of transportation?

Yes, anecdotally cycling is increasing. We feel that BEN Namibia has had some impact on this, as we have now distributed almost 15,000 bikes in the country, most of those in the last two years.

Has BENN partnered with other community-based organizations like Hope Family Services to supply bicycles and training to?

We have 22 partners throughout the country that we have helped to establish community based bike shops, including FHS.

How is the emergency transportation/ambulance service going?  Are you seeing an increase in overall community health with this support in place?

The ambulance project has been challenging because of lack of resources within communities to manage their maintenance. We have begun reallocating some ambulances to be within range of our partner bicycle shops to enable maintenance to take place. In locations where they have been maintained, though, they have enabled people to provide emergency medical transport where no other alternatives were available.

Is BENN offering employment opportunities within the organization?  What jobs are available to the community?

Each of our partner bicycle shops employs up to 5 people. The shop network currently employs 90 people, exactly half of whom are women.

Is Josh still active on the bicycling circuit in Namibia?  What has his progress been since we last saw him?

Josh is still cycling, though he’s based in South Africa where he studies. I have heard that he is racing with a team in South Africa but haven’t been able to confirm this.

The world’s fastest land animal, capable of reaching speeds of 70 mph, the cheetah is an endangered species. Formerly a common animal found on 5 continents worldwide, due to loss of habitat, conflicts with humans and loss of genetic variation, the cheetah population has been diminished to approximately 10,000 worldwide. The largest remaining population is in Namibia where CCF champions their conservation.

The bare-bones but highly-motivated staff of CCF have a laser focus on cheetah survival through its many modalities: conservation of the species through rehabilitation, sanctuary, controlled release programs, habitat retention and reclamation, farmer education, genetic resilience, enriching its prey base and offsetting the competitive dominance of larger predators. A daunting but holistic to-do list to keep an endangered species from extinction, the CCF team is clearly up for the challenge.

We rise to document the cheetah feed the next morning – a journey to multiple compounds with the now-seasoned Earthwatch volunteers who are nearing the end of their two week tenure here at CCF. Volunteers hop jauntily from the back of a pickup to fill a bin with… cheetah food. Big cats are carnivores and they require large scale meat supplies on a daily basis for sustenance. Volunteers are candid about the experience of providing real meals to real cheetahs, “The first day we were here we had oryx heads… that was kind of gross. Random donkey parts aren’t quite as unnerving as feeding them a head with eyes and everything.”

We drive through a series of gates and once inside the compound, volunteers position themselves in the back of the truck. Volunteers hoist portions off the back of the truck as we speed along at around 30 mph, a pack (A sprint? A snarl?) of 14 female cheetahs barely gallop as they escort the feeding vehicle. With each portion tossed from the truck, the big cats hiss and spit at one another as each spirits away into the high grass with their “prey”, 14 throws later, the girls have been fed and the volunteers have one chore done in their daily list of chores that keep CCF running like a well-oiled machine, appreciatively dependent on its volunteers and dynamic as all get-out. In our short visit we witnessed the hosting of a worldwide cheetah conference, with representatives from the remaining African and Middle Eastern countries that have cheetah populations. The CCF is breeding livestock guarding dogs to distribute to farmers (fewer predator kills to livestock, fewer justifications to kill predators) alongside an aggressive farmer education program. They’ve brought local farmers to the CCF compound and watched them marvel at animals who they’ve spent a lifetime threatening and fearing… their wives and daughters holding hands to their hearts in panic as the farmers laugh nervously and take pictures with their camera phones (yes, cell phones are EVERYWHERE, even, maybe especially, in rural Africa). Visits that begin with nervousness and novelty give way to conversation and the realization that this organization understands its subject and may have some wisdom to share. Bridges are built, fingers are pulled off triggers, traps aren’t set and cheetahs survive another day.

Volunteers plant shade trees in the morning and participate in game counts on the CCF’s extensive property in the afternoon. Binoculars aimed out every direction from an aging safari vehicle, a single Earthwatch volunteer acts as accountant, pencil poised to paper as the reports chime in:
“I see 3 maribu storks,“

“ 5 warthogs…”

“…2 baboons – one juvenile, one adult…”

“…and is that a jackal?”

As the vehicle slowly lumbers back to camp, the sun begins to tilt toward sunset. The clouds collect; the winds kick up. Arid Namibia will get another hit of rain this evening… no one’s complaining, particularly not Matti, senior researcher, lead of the game drive and ad-hoc tour guide. “We Namibians, you see, we are so happy when we see this!” Clapping his hands, with a million-dollar grin on his face, he says, “It means that, oh yes, we will have a year of plenty. We live in a desert, so rain is very, very good.”

The timing of our visit was fortuitous. A female who’d been captured by a farmer had been brought to CCF 6 weeks prior. She’d been through countless trials including a root canal – hard enough for humans to endure, but how much more vexing and terrifying to a wild cheetah? The broad tracts of land that CCF has purchased outright or managed agreements with property owners have created a buffer of habitat for wild cheetahs – the right habitat and room to survive.

We drove to a clearing at the edge of CCF’s property as one of the cheetah keepers said, “We know there are a couple of wild males out here, so we know it is a viable habitat and she’ll have some company”. Her loading box is placed at the edge of high grass. A volunteer stood atop the box and slid the door ajar, which was followed by a snarl and the aggressive scratching sound of high speed nails building up for a departure and, like a shot addled with fluidity; we held our breath as she disappeared, the last snap of her tail an au revior. The crowd erupts into cheers – a fine day of work on behalf of the cheetah, now off to Sundowners (African cocktail hour).

The efforts of CCF staff and Earthwatch volunteers are like the voices of individual instruments in an elaborate musical piece – all parts feeding into a remarkable achievement designed to protect and preserve the wild cheetah. As powerful, inspiring collective, their efforts are a definitive force working toward the preservation of an endangered species.

In a partnership with Bicycles to Humanity, BENN receives shipping containers loaded with bicycles donated from developed countries along with spare parts and tools. These “shops in a shipping container” are received by BENN and then distributed to community-based organizations to be run as bicycle workshops that offer bike sales and repairs in impoverished communities. In a land where personal cars are a rarity; public transportation and taxis can be prohibitively expensive yet great distances separate people from basic necessities, bicycles sustainably expand individuals’ range and efficiency of travel, allowing workers to get to their place of employment, students get to their schools and health care workers reach the homes of patients living with HIV/AIDS and malaria.

The humble shipping containers filled with second-hand bikes that transform into BENN bicycle workshops facilitate the distribution of bicycles into communities, but also operate as income-generating businesses. Along with the container and its contents, BENN provides recipient organizations with vocational training in bike mechanical skills, small business management and customer service. Profits from these businesses flow into community-based organizations such as Family Hope Center, serving 450 kids in the Katutura community by providing educational programs, meals and health care to orphans, HIV positive or otherwise vulnerable children.

But bike workshops are just a part of BENN’s work. They have also built and distributed over 100 bicycle ambulances – simple but sturdy gurney trailers that attach to the back of a bike, facilitating the transport of sick people from outlying communities to health services, sparing patients the cost of taxi services that, in many cases, puts medical treatment financially out of reach.

BENN also aids the Physically Active Youth (PAY) program in Windhoek, Namibia, an after-school program that provides tutoring and sports activities for financially challenged students that, with the donation of bikes from BENN, has added a cycling program including a racing team.

With the distribution of bikes to PAY participants, marginalized kids take ownership of an identifiable possession that liberates them, expanding their physical range and efficiency of travel along with all the positives of involvement in an organized sport. An additional regional, cultural component makes this program really novel, the equivalent of putting a man on the moon in the 1960s – putting a girl on a bicycle in Namibia in 2008.

The gender divide, particularly amongst the impoverished in Namibia, is profound and most of the students in the cycling program had never seen a woman ride a bike before seeing the girls in the program pedal alongside them. The girls we spoke with were warned that “girls aren’t supposed to ride bikes” by their family members; teased and threatened by schoolmates and strangers alike.

I spoke with Emily who told me that she was the first girl she had ever known to have ever ridden a bike in her community. Marianna and Sonya, two other girls in the bicycling program, told me that Emily was the first girl they’d ever seen ride a bike and when they saw that she could do it, they figured they could too… now all 3 of them race, speak with pride about surprising their families and communities with their accomplishments in a sport that their participation had never been dreamed of before.

Aside from supporting the endeavors of the PAY project, BENN has its own racing team (Team BENN) that’s committed to developing the sport of bicycle racing as well as combating the spread of HIV/AIDS in Namibia. These may sound like lofty, disparate goals, but when your athletes are primarily from poor communities that have been ravaged by HIV/AIDS, the connection’s an easy one to make.

The main focus of Team BENN’s educational mission has been focused promoting HIV /AIDS testing and, as Team BENN’s bright jerseys state, “KNOW YOUR STATUS” alongside images of red AIDS ribbons. Leveraging the excitement around racing events, BENN offered incentives encouraging testing including entry in a lottery to win a bike. A phenomenally successful program, testing participation increased 6 fold during the promotion.

What of the racers? They’re damn talented, especially in light of the fact that most of the team members come from backgrounds where owning any bike, much less a racing bike, was cost prohibitive, these racers are taking podium positions with top finishes in a sport that they’d never dreamed they’d ever participate in, much less compete. With fire, discipline and assistance from BENN, team racers are competing alongside riders with sponsorships and thousands of dollars of equipment and placing as top finishers. A recent Team BENN rider signed a contract to ride professionally with a South African Team, while his former teammates are challenging the established teams, snatching up podium placements and getting word out about AIDS awareness and testing every mile of the way.

Bicycle Empowerment Network Namibia – humble non-profit; incredible achievements.

Robert Schultz, the Senior Project Manager at DRFN’s Energy Desk took us under his wing for a day to share energy projects with us. His portion of DRFN’s work is a mix of education and creating prototype programs to see if they are viable investments. Our first stop was the parking lot at DRFN, visiting the Energy Demonstration Trailer. Lofty name, simple, grass roots use, the trailer is a rolling emissary for alternative energy, hauled into off-the-grid communities for multiple day visits. With its solar panels and wind turbine the trailer can run a computer, large screen monitor, sound system, multitude of lights along with a small freezer. In this region, the majority of household fuel is expended for cooking, the trailer is also outfitted with examples of fuel efficient stoves in graduated levels of sophistication – techniques and tools that make cooking faster, more economical and more efficient than common open-flame fire. In the simplest measure, DRFN exposes people in rural communities to more cost-effective ways to cook while giving contextual visual education on practical energy usage solutions.

Our next stop was into an unelectrified informal settlement – a community outside city limits operating without standard water/electric/sewage services. Residents have little in the way of resources, but what they’ve been able to do with so little is mind bending … dirt roadways were laid out straight with evident junctures; the paths were clean and convivial… we walked by a church that was simply congregants, a pastor and a cross on a treetop. Lack of services, however, does not keep the citizenry from modern conveniences. Cell phones are commonplace and seemingly in constant use. Many cell phone users charge their devices at their places of work within the electrified grid of the city, but there are still plenty who don’t work in town, and most everyone runs low on juice over long holiday weekends.

DRFN had an idea: What if a cellular cell phone charging station could be turned into a profitable business? DRFN did market research prior to investing into their first station to make sure that the cash-based market of the informal settlement could provide enough income to pay off the initial business investment before putting additional outright income into the business owners’ pocket. It turned out that it made enough sense to set up two stations – singular solar arrays on roofs wired to an assortment of adaptors for the myriad phones that arrive in the shops that offer an in-demand service that provides income augmentation in off-the-grid communities.

The last prototype we visited captured all of our imaginations, a merry-go-round designed to “harness children’s boundless energy” by attaching a gearbox to the common playground equipment to transfer the generated power to run a refrigerator, lights and a number of other small 220V appliances at a local children’s center.

But back to what makes DRFN’s work different is that they pay close attention to the difference between the “should be able to” versus “actually achieved” components of their prototype tests. As of our visit, the data wasn’t back as to whether the merry-go-round was a successful, consistent source of power that was worth the investment to re-create. Robert liked the idea of the energy kindergarten, but if it didn’t perform, it was back to the drawing board. DRFN don’t stand behind any of their designs (or anyone else’s) until they are backed by clear, calculable supporting data.

As we rattled down dirt roads away from the merry-go-round project, Robert shared yet another prototype they’d worked on – an energy efficient shack. Sounds a little oxymoronic, but their goal was to take the materials that any impoverished individual would have and see if they could make a structure that dealt with heat, cold and sun exposure more efficiently… and they did, by a few degrees here and there. In places where poverty is rife and services few and costly, simple, economical efficiencies are what can make the difference between abject poverty and life with possibilities.

Passion can be a great fuel for positive change and DRFN wants to partner good deeds with level heads. DRFN assures that efforts and monetary investments are spent to improve lives in Namibia are effective and economically sound, making for happier benefactors and beneficiaries. DRFN: three cheers for “enhancing decision making.”