We’re super excited to announce this large donation from the amazing 8th grade class of GEMS Academy! Working Bikes is one of twelve charitable organizations selected by GEMS Academy as beneficiaries for their annual fundraising efforts!

GEMS aims to reinforce important values like generosity and volunteerism into their students. Students, parents, and the entire GEMS community work together to raise funds. Last year they raised over $3,400 for each of our chosen charities. This year the raised managed to raise over $86,000 total for all 12 charities, of which $7225  was given to Working Bikes. In addition to the money, the 8th-grade class held a bike drive for us on MLK day and got the full Working Bikes experience in Brandon’s Bike Shop, our volunteer workspace.

Yesterday Andrew, our volunteer coordinator, attended their “big check” presentation to explain our mission and express our immense gratitude for their awesome hard work. Working Bikes is very proud to have been chosen by this amazing group of youth and we are always grateful to the Chicago community for supporting us in our efforts to spread goodwill to our local and global communities.

Learn more about GEMS World Academy here! Like to make a donation to Working Bikes? Learn how you can get involved today!

On February 28 Working Bikes Board members Lee and Phil delivered 210 children’s bikes in a rented 26-foot truck to FB4K in Madison. They needed the bikes to help meet their goal of giving out 1000 bikes at their giveaway event on March 24. They are partnering with 39 community organizations to line up recipients for the bikes. We at Working Bikes love to partner with other bike organizations to get bikes to those who need them.

Our first shipping party of the year was sent to CESTA in El Salvador today!

For those who don’t know, The Salvadoran Center for Appropriate Technology (CESTA) was founded in 1980 by a group of academics to protect this Central American nation’s increasingly fragile environment. Their mission is to promote environmentally sustainable and socially equitable transportation operating a bicycle import, repair, and sales workshop. Working Bikes has a long-standing relationship with CESTA.

For the January shipment, we managed to fit 253 kids bikes and 256 adult bikes into the shipping container with the help of our awesome volunteers.

Working Bikes is always excited to help other local and global organizations that have a similar mission to ours.

We expect more large bike donations to arrive in February, so be on the lookout for our next Shipping Party!

On November 12^th, Working Bikes mechanic, Patrick Tivnan boarded a series of planes to travel to Bwindi, Uganda to assist in the training of the staff of a new bicycle project in a village bordering the Bwindi Impenetrable Forest. Patrick brought with him two bags of bike-specific tools, clothes, and a budding mustache. Working Bikes had already sent a total of 849 bikes within two containers, but Patrick would be the first to open them, with the exception of Ugandan customs agents.

Over the course of the next 8 weeks, Patrick w1uld train nearly two dozen women in elements of bicycle mechanics before the five staff members of the new Bwindi Women’s Bicycle Enterprise would be made final. Patrick worked with the women, and the staff of the BCH Bwindi Community Hospital and Guesthouse and Inn as well as those of the Sanctuary Gorilla Forest Camp (of A&K Philanthropy) to create a bicycle work stand, and begin inventorying and repairing the bicycles. As Patrick prepared to leave, sales began with hospital staff. The excitement of available bicycles spread through the community and Patrick returned to Chicago knowing that the future of the remaining bicycles were in the capable and thoughtful hands of Scovia, Proscovia, Penlope, Bridgette, and Beth.

Starting 2018 off right with our annual inventory day where we count all the bikes in supplies in the shop. This year we counted a total of 5,257! The purpose of holding inventory day is to help our gracious bike donors save some extra cash on their taxes. Thanks to Paul from Desmond and Ahern accounting for keeping us on our toes again this year. Learn more about our events and other happenings at on our events calendar or visit our facebook page for updates.

Burr! With single digit temperatures hitting us this week, it’s a great time to gather resources to keep you safe and warm through Chibera winter months!

Our Staff has recommended the following youtube channels and articles to get you on the right foot!

Let us know your tips and tricks for winter cycling during the cold season, and we’ll post them on our social media channels!

When the orupaanga touches the bretch pad on the buryo side, we can tighten the enuti empajye on the bumosho side with the spanner empajye, and that should pull the orupaanga back to the bumosho side. This operation can only be done a certain number of times until we run out of ehuzi ye’mpajye. In that way, each omupiira can only live for so long.

The dominant tribe in this area, and most of south west Uganda are the Bakiga, their language is Rukiga. The Bakiga are one of many tribes speaking one of hundreds of Bantu languages. I vaguely remember something about the Bantu expansion from an undergraduate anthropology course. The internet reminds me that they undertook a massive migration and population increase from an area in modern Cameroon, in a broad south east direction starting perhaps in 1000 BC and continuing to AD 500. Descendants of the Bantu expansion make up the largest ethno-linguistic group in Sub-Saharan Africa. Their migration brought them into contact with indigenous groups like the Batwa, here in Bwindi, and the Khoisan in South Africa. The Batwa, commonly known as Pygmies, have a troubled and seemingly enigmatic history in the area and will be a topic of a subsequent report. All the Mutwa (a Batwa individual) that I’ve met speak Rukiga, and varying levels of English comparable to the Mukiga.

So far I’ve only encountered two locals with whom I can speak in a rapid fire American

dialect. The accent of Ugandan English is heavy and requires patience between both interlocutors. I’ve noticed that two children of American medical volunteers often address the Africans in what sounds to me like a heavy South African accent. The Africans told me that the children lubricate their words and they hear them quite clearly. I’ve yet to muster the audacity or drink enough waragi (banana moonshine) to affect a similar accent but I am considering it. If my wifi connection is strong enough unlikely I’ll re-watch Niel Blomkamp’s 2009 sci-fi film District 9 and maybe give it a try. Meanwhile, one of the most helpful things I’ve done in the bicycle mechanic training, is try and use Rukiga nouns for the bicycle parts. It is much better than using English terms that no one is familiar with, or saying “this one” every five words. Sometimes pronunciation is all that matters, brake becomes bretch, and circle becomes sarcle. A cone nut might not look like an actual cone until someone tells you that is does. If you can’t understand what that someone is saying or don’t know what a ‘cone’ is, how many ‘this ones’ will you be able to file in your mind? Thankfully, everyone seems to understand that an enuti omubirikira kind of looks like an omubirikira.

A phrase favored by my father’s fifth grade math teacher places the burden on the listener:  “when they were handing out brains, you though they said trains, and buddy you missed it.”  Here in Bwindi, the burden is on me, the speaker. If I say cone, and they think I said phone, then no one is going to answer it.

Report number 1

On the long flight to Uganda I reread King Leopold’s Ghost by Adam Hochschild. The book documents the tragic history of the Congo Free State, the personal colony of Leopold II King of the Belgians from 1885 – 1908. King Leopold made an incredible personal fortune, initially through the Ivory trade, later and more substantially through the harvest of wild rubber. He was able to profit during a short window between the industrial worlds realization of rubber’s value, and the maturation of cultivated rubber trees. In between, an extensive and murderous regime of forced labor was used to harvest wild rubber vines.

A few individuals in the history were of pertinence to Working Bikes. John Boyd Dunlap invented the first pneumatic rubber tire for his son’s tricycle in Ireland in 1887. William Henry Sheppard, an African American minister from Virginia, and early critic of Leopold’s regime, claimed to have been the first person to ride a bicycle in central Africa.

Two containers of bikes are sitting in a small valley. In one direction, Bwindi Impenetrable Forest National Park rises over the adjacent hillside. On the last leg of my arrival, in a 12 passenger Cessna with one propeller, I was able to take it a spectacular view of the forest interspersed with passing through three rain showers. From above, it resembled mountains made of broccoli blossoms. I marveled at the national park before wondering if in decades and centuries past, perhaps this entire region was as lush. This protected patch of 128 square miles are home to half of the worlds remaining population of mountain Gorillas. Over a hill in the other direction lies the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

Work on the bicycle program has not quite begun. I am still gathering supplies and being introduced to interested community members. Yesterday I sourced a tub of grease and two bottles of lite lubricating oil from the local hardware store, which was less than half the size of Working Bike’s stock room. We have secured access to a large storage room and shaded veranda in a building a few yards from the containers. I was able to bring two of each common bicycle specific tool in my baggage. An employee from Bwindi Community Hospital is in Kampala, the capitol city, purchasing non-bicycle specific tools today. They should arrive by bus on Friday. This afternoon I’ll continue my introductions, saw a few sheets of working bikes particle board to place over tables that are being temporarily loaned, and begin to get a few bikes in proper order. It is my understanding that our trainees likely do not know how to ride a bike. Learning to ride will be their first introduction to the project.

I’ve been met with both optimism and skepticism about how the project will work and if it can be sustainable. Factors I had not considered include a cultural reluctance for women to ride bicycles. The few flying pigeon style roadsters I’ve seen have been piloted by man. All of the women in the area are seen wearing skirts, so step thru frames may be of a particular advantage. During the mechanic training, our participants will not be paid, and may not be rewarded for some time, until the bikes can be sold. I’ve learned that during the training, lunch will have to be provided and arrangements are being made for a pot of beans to slow cook over embers each day. I’ve been told that Ugandans are entrepreneurial but that it is a society which prioritizes relationships. I’ve yet to meet the trainee mechanics but am beginning to understand that offering 28 days of technical instruction may not be well received unless the trainees are comfortable working together, with me, and understand that their investment in time and learning may not bear fruit for some weeks or longer.