Help needed writing a bicycle repair manual for use in rural Uganda

[cameron_15]

Google Docs Link: Bicycle repair manual - Uganda

Hi Rotorburn,

In a few weeks I will be arriving in Uganda and heading out to the rural district of Lira to assist a local organisation which, in addition to many other things, aims to provide bicycles to individuals and organisations in the remote area. Union of Hope, the organisation I will be visiting, is run by Ugandan local Moses Fredi, who I will be teaching some mechanical skills to in preparation for the arrival of a new batch of bikes supplied by Bikes4Life (An Australian charity).

In my discussions with Moses it has become clear that while many bicycles have been distributed in the area and spare parts are often available, few people have the skills nor the money to fix their bicycles should they break, rendering many of them unusable or unsafe. For this reason, in addition to working directly with Moses, I will be travelling with him to a few of the organisations and community groups which have received bicycles from his organisation in the past to teach basic mechanical skills to leaders of the group and anyone who would like to attend.

As my time will be limited to a few weekends, we have decided it would be valuable to produce a simple, easy to understand repair manual which can be distributed within the communities, as no such resource exists in the region. I would like the manual to cover basic things from changing tubes and removing wheels to more involved processes such as servicing hubs and bottom brackets and to include lot's of pictures to make things very easy to follow.

Union of Hope has previously distributed over 150 "Hero Bicycles" to various groups. These are tough single speed bikes with plenty of options for carrying cargo and are very common in the region. These bikes (Pictured below) should be the focus of the manual and I'm hoping to find some reasonable quality photo's of various parts of the bike to generate diagrams to aid in the explanation of mechanical processes.

At present, I do not have time to write the entire manual myself (and feel it would be more comprehensive and easily understandable if more minds contributed to it) and am wondering if I were to make a Public google document (or similar), would you guys be willing to contribute towards it's composition? Your contribution would not need to be substantial, but if many of us work at it we should be able to get it together pretty quickly.

Moses has agreed to translate the final product from English to "Luo", the local language in the region and will arrange for the final document to be printed in Uganda. I will contribute as much as I can to the manual and already have a list of processes that I believe should be included. If people are happy to contribute, I will create a google document and get things underway.

Thank you

 

[MARKL]

Sounds like a great initiative. As you have said it should focus on the hero bike. It may help to have a structure that describes the bike and specs - internal BB, & cone hubs etc. That way people can fill in the relevant parts pretty quickly - The Duckmeister will probably have it done by lunchtime anyhow.

 

[OCD'R]

Not helping with the native language and may be too comprehensive but the park tool blue book has lots of pictures and how to sequences. Just a suggestion as a back up plan - good luck, enjoy the experience.

 

[ForkinGreat]

Not helping with the native language and may be too comprehensive but the park tool blue book has lots of pictures and how to sequences. Just a suggestion as a back up plan - good luck, enjoy the experience.

+1 on the park tool book. the park tool website also has lots of free online resources that could help in writing up the manual(?)

 

[danncam]

if there are issues with literacy or English is not the first language, try and keep it simple. Lots of clear pictures. In addition try training the trainer. If you teach kids who are keen they can help others. Don't underestimate the bush mechanic ethos. It might be more lack of tools and spares than lack of nous. I say this as a person who grew up in Nigeria. Have fun and listen as much as you talk.

 

[bell.cameron]

Out of all people to ask, I think a church might be the best to ask in regards to language barriers. Going to a bible basher school I discovered that a lot of branches have missionaries in such areas and may be able to point you in the right direction.

 

[cameron_15]

Apologies for the slow follow up. I've got a basic outline together now and have started filling in some gaps. If anyone would like to contribute ideas or simply error check or format it better along the way, the google docs link is below, let me know if it doesn't work.

Bicycle repair manual - Uganda

The 'Flying Pigeon' bicycle is very similar to the Hero bicycles that have been distributed and I believe there are a few other brands that manufacture nearly identical bikes which could be useful for image resources etc.

I will have more time to work on it over the next week and will gladly accept any feedback, contribution or ideas.

 

[cameron_15]

I've decided to change things up a little bit and will continue writing the manual during my stay in Uganda. That way I will be able to take a bunch of photo's of the actual bikes whilst there and further clarify what should and shouldn't be included in the manual based on the available resources.


At the moment it is very messy and still very much a draft. I will be tidying it up, adding to it and separating the book into two sections, one just for the Hero bicycles and one for road and mountain bikes (I have decided to include this as the organisation will be receiving geared mountain bikes from Australia shortly).

I do still welcome any input or feedback!

 

[cameron_15]

I arrived in Uganda a couple of days ago and travelled by bus from Kampala to Lira, a rural district in Northern Uganda. The bus drive was an experience in itself. When I asked the driver when the bus would leave, he simply replied "soon". 3 hours later we were on our way and I arrived in Lira at about 2am to meet with Moses, who I had only spoken with via email before hand.

The next day we travelled about 50km's by motorbike to the town of Aboko where we met with a women's group providing support to people with HIV in the area. This particular group had received about 30 bicycles from the organisation last year and use them frequently for collecting water, travelling to the hospital to collect medicine and to get to and from school, among many other things. Despite their dire situation, these women were so happy to have visitors and had many questions for me. It was very hard to keep it together as I learnt the stories of these women. Rebecca, the young girl in the photo, contracted HIV from her mother during birth, her mother has since passed away from Aids complications leaving her in the care of her grandmother. She is currently too small to ride one of the local bikes given to the group, so her grandmother rides her to and from school each day. Hopefully in a few weeks when the bikes arrive from Australia she will be given her own small mountain bike so she can ride by herself and make life a little bit easier for her grandma.

After inspecting the fleet of bicycles I discovered many of them were in need of some level of basic repair. Loose headsets, cones, bottom brackets and poorly working brakes were common on the bikes. Their biggest concern was the bottom bracket, which is a common problem that they cannot fix and the price to pay someone to fix it, about $2US, is too high for many of them.

I was shown the tools that the locals have at hand, which consisted of one pair of pliers and a multi tool which comes with the bicycles over here. This multi tool was a sheet of steel with cut outs for various size bolts and a couple of open ended spanners. I was impressed by their ability to keep the bikes running with such a limited toolset.

I will be returning to this group next weekend with a set of spanners and some other tools and hope to show these people how to dismantle and service or replace a bottom bracket so that they can keep their bicycles running smoothly and no longer have to pay for expensive repairs. With a local I've searched far and wide in Lira for a C spanner and a few other tools to make servicing of bottom brackets easier. We've had no luck, although we did speak to a few local mechanic who said they just use a Flat head screwdriver and a hammer to tighten or remove the BB lockring. While this will work, it's not my preferred method, and using a C spanner I find makes it much easier. I will search for one in Kampala where I will be during the week, but if I cannot find one will have to use the screwdriver method.

I will also be working alongside another local mechanic from a different project, we will be sharing knowledge and skills with each other during my stay as he has been fixing the local style bikes for many years (with a very limited tool kit) but has limited experience working on geared sports bicycles which are not all that common here.

When we return next weekend we will be taking many photos as we fix the bikes. These will be used in the manual which I hope to have finished before I leave.



Side note: We are so incredibly lucky to live in Australia.

 

[rowdyflat]

Fascinating stuff , very inspiring, good for you , sounds like something I would do when I retire and more interesting for me than some of the First World problems on RB.