BikeTown Africa: Great and Hidden Things

Great and Hidden Things

200 free bicycles designed to help health workers battle the AIDS pandemic. Our hope is the simplest and noblest vehicle can transform the world. If only it's given a chance to roll.

mark jenkins

(Photo by )

We're bicycling into the Botswana bush to visit a young woman with AIDS. It is a 12-mile ride out and back. This is how Thomas Nkele reaches all his clients, cutting across scorching desert, weaving around thornbushes, his appointment book bouncing in the front basket, his lean black body sweating through his clothes. He works for the Botswana Christian AIDS Intervention Programme (BOCAIP).

I follow him through the center of Francistown, a city of 85,000 in eastern Botswana, 20 miles from the border of Zimbabwe. We spin past two shopping malls--they could be malls anywhere, with upscale clothing stores and patio coffee shops, generic pizza joints, cybercafes, video outlets--then head south on Highway A1. Throngs of people are walking alongside the road, bound for work. Combis, the ubiquitous, banged-up Toyota vans used throughout Africa, grind past us. The two in conjunction--walking and combis--are the customary ways most Botswanans, indeed most Africans, get around. The bicycle, despite its extraordinary utility, is still an uncommon vehicle here.

Even on one-speeds, within minutes Thomas and I cruise beyond the overheated hoofers and overstuffed combis into the 'burbs of Francistown: squat mud or cinder-block homes with tin roofs and scrap-iron fences enclosing dirt plots with a few chickens or goats. Thomas, 42, is agile and comfortable on his bicycle, arcing around potholes, dodging broken glass. On the edge of town, he knows a shortcut, and we veer off into the bush.

The singletrack runs through a thicket of acacias and thorn bushes. I duck my head, slide my shoulders to avoid thorn-spiked limbs. It's like an obstacle course through giant porcupines--overcorrect and you'll impale yourself. I catch Thomas grinning at me over his shoulder.

We curl out of the bush into a collection of tiny cinder-block homes. Women are filling plastic buckets from a standpipe, a ribby dog is barking, three little girls are playing. When the children spot me, one begins to cry and waddles quickly toward her mother. The other two grin, but keep their distance.

We lean our bicycles against a two-room cinder-block shack. Grandma is in the backyard stirring a bubbling pot of sorghum with a large wooden spoon. The sick woman's sister lets us into a cavelike room. There is a bed, two plastic chairs and the smell of the stricken. The only light comes through a small window.

Amantle Jack, 25, lies on her side on the bed. She is long and lithe, with both the face and the body of a model, but she can barely hold her head up. Still, she is obviously excited to have visitors and pleased to see Thomas. He begins slowly, speaking in Setswana and translating for me.

How has she been feeling?

Weak, she says, so weak, her voice barely a whisper.

Thomas asks what she's been eating, and learns that it's mostly sorghum paste, called pheleche or papa, a staple in Botswana that is filling but lacking in nutrition.

"Amantle, you know you must have vegetables and meat to regain your strength," Thomas admonishes.

He asks if she's taking her ARVs--antiretroviral medicine--on schedule. Like most of us, when people ill with HIV/AIDS start feeling better, they can too easily stop taking their medicine. This not only sets them up for a potentially fatal relapse, but also encourages the AIDS virus to mutate into untreatable strains.

Amantle says she is maintaining her regimen, but the ARVs make her sick. Thomas explains that this is because she's not eating properly. He tells her of another client who has been HIV positive for 15 years but is healthy as a mule because he focuses on eating right. She nods exhaustedly.