Two authors show South Africa’s cyclists finding their paths
When Mickey Mampe needs to charge her cellphone, she jumps on her
bicycle and rides 25 miles in the dry, shimmering heat from her
non-electrified home on a deserted farm road.
Mampe, whose children are grown, is a rare figure in the rural northern
Cape region, the only woman with a bike in her remote village. The men
in town tease her. But she ignores them and figures she has little
choice because she prefers cycling to riding in a bumpy horse cart.
"You don't struggle; you just get on," Mampe told a pair of authors. "You
just ride, and if it gets a puncture, you patch it and then you can
go."
The authors are animator Nic Grobler and photographer Stan Engelbrecht,
who wanted to find out why so few people ride bikes in a country that
has so much poverty, often unwalkable commuter distances, and poor
public transportation.
What they found, after about 4,000 miles of cycling, 500 interviews and
countless punctures, was that South African bicyclists are like those in
many nations without a strong bike commuting culture: fearless,
adventurous, thick-skinned and, often, more than a little eccentric.
Grobler and Engelbrecht also reaffirmed their belief that bicycles could
change the lives of threadbare South Africans like Mampe, especially in
rural areas. The cyclists they met often expressed a quiet joy that
they could go where they liked, whenever they wanted to, while others
were anchored in their villages and townships.
"We both believe that bicycles could really empower people in South
Africa, where so many people rely on poor public transport
infrastructure," Engelbrecht said. "People have to travel great
distances to work. People really struggle with movement here."
mms://203.69.69.81/studio/20130503adae9d704ac5414638ab2420a6b985c33c3.wma
No comments:
Post a Comment