I see these wooden transport items (“chikadus” sp?) all over Goma. Sometimes, they’re piled with what must be a couple hundred kilos of cargo and pushed around town to make deliveries. I’ve seen similar contraptions in Southeast Asia, based on bicycle frames, but there are a few interesting differences:

• These chikadus are made from almost all locally-available materials. The axles may have to be imported, but the rest is wood and scrap rubber.
• They keep their cargo at a much lower center of gravity than a bicycle would, which would seem to increase capacity.
• They have a robust suspension system (those innertubes lashed to the steering fork) for the terrible roads here in Goma.

The photo, above, was taken from really far away. If I have time to find someone who makes these, I’ll take much better ones for a potential Instructable.

Related Posts:

• More Violence, Country Club Walls Doing Fine (September, 2007)
• Congo line! (August, 2007)
• Goma Security Alerts (December, 2007)
• Congolese Plane Crashes (April, 2008)
• Plug it in, Plug it in (July, 2007)

This entry was posted on Saturday, September 1st, 2007 at 2:57 am and is filed under goma, instructables. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.