The idea

My name is Tom Martin, and I live in Kathmandu. I worked at different bike co-ops during college, fixing bikes, teaching mechanics, and organizing volunteers. After I graduated (with a degree in English-- unrelated to my bicycle aspirations) I moved to Nepal, a little country nestled between India and Tibet ('China'). I didn't plan on working on bikes out here at all. I got a fancy job teaching preparation courses for English language exams, and planned, at first, on passing the time teaching and sightseeing. But plans change.

Nepal is the ninth poorest country in the world. Living in Kathmandu, as an American, the effects of this poverty seem entirely apparent. But there's more to it than just what you see on the surface; many of the beggars on the street, a significant percent of them children, actually came to the city to escape poverty. Nepal has traditionally been a country of farmers, largely subsisting on its own crop production. However, as the country's powerhouse neighbors gain economic strength and it's own government slowly dissolves, Nepal has been left behind by industry, and suffers from a total lack of governmental infrastructure. People simply cannot support themselves here, trying to compete in a 21st century global job market. A lack of education means that jobs requiring language or analytical skills are out of the question, and a lack of capital means investments in industry and technology have been absent at the crucial moment in the country's development when Nepal could have ridden the wave of success shared by its neighbors. Government is largely to blame, in my opinion, as are strained political relations, but the effect is widespread poverty, regardless of the reason.

Working as an IELTS (International English Language Testing System) teacher here, I can make more in a year than a room full of Nepalis without specialized skills. And to what end? My students don't improve their English in my 6-week course, at least not noticeably. What they do gain are ideas about how to play the system, give the test graders what they want, and earn higher marks. This increases the likelihood that they will be accepted to a school in America or England, where they will have a chance to find a career that will pay them enough to support a decent lifestyle, one that includes running water that is safe to drink, electricity, health care and real food. Only the richest are able to take these classes, and have usually already attended the best schools in Nepal. As a result, those privileged with an education are routinely skimmed off the top, making their way abroad, often never to return. I can't blame them, not at all. However, those they leave behind are stuck in poverty, not benefiting from this intellectual migration.

I started asking myself what I could do, and this project is what I came up with. If you teach English here, it's practical and useful, but it often doesn't help to break the overall cycle of poverty. What job skill could I bring to Nepal that would give work to Nepali people who might then be encouraged to stay in the country? The only other real skill I have is bicycle maintenance. I would love to teach people how to farm organic produce for export, or how to set up micro-finance operations, but those are projects for someone qualified in those areas. So bike mechanics it is.

Here's step one: establish a bike shop that employs Nepali people, hopefully young adults who have been abandoned as children or sent from their homes to the city to escape the poverty of the countryside. One point on the agenda is to partner with an organization, of which there are many, that feeds and shelters these children, and to set up a cooperative relationship in which young adults are allowed to work in the shop part time only if they are also completing their school work. Upon graduation, then, they will have a complete set of intellectual and practical (although I don't stress that dichotomy) skills.

In Kathmandu, there are a lot of bicycles, but also a lot of bicycle shops. Bike shops are normally hole-in-the-wall places that manage to scrape together parts and tools and do whatever they can. There's a lack of specialized knowledge and specialized tools, as bicycles are seen as inferior to their big brother, the motorcycle, king of Nepali transportation. If you have a bike here, it's because you can't afford a motorcycle. Similarly, if you're a bike mechanic, it's because you aren't a motorbike mechanic, yet. I hope our organization can do something about this. Rather than creating competition in the market, I want to actually increase the number of bikes here, by making them affordable and reliable. With a little luck and a lot of work, by the summer I hope to have a large number of bicycles donated to the organization, putting those in need on the road and starting to create a customer base for the shop. It will be difficult competing with motorcycles, but as the petrol crisis continues and people choke on the thick city smog day after day, we've got environmental conditions on our side. In fact, the only thing stopping bicycles from becoming more popular are the motorbikes themselves, a scary competitor in traffic. Otherwise, Kathmandu is a perfect biking city, fairly small with an adequate network of narrow (bicycle-sized?) roads.

So, train people who need jobs, increase bike popularity and potential, put bikes on the road, address environmental concerns. The last objective is to make this a flexible, dynamic model. The organization will have rotating leadership, provided by one or two western volunteer mechanics who will update mechanical techniques and create detailed documentation on the project. This documentation should serve as a record that will provide examples of what to do (or not do) and how to go about doing so. In exchange for their work, volunteers will receive credit through their universities, another complicated aspect of the project that needs to be arranged.

In short, a lot of work to do. This blog is the first step towards total, transparent and publicly available documentation of the project. Look out Nepal, here come the bicycles.