March 13

We been busy. I’m ultra excited about recent developments cause now we’re able to see how the structure’s gonna look – we’ve got a strong enough foundation and now we’re building above ground. We’re seeing our earlier visions of business and space design come to pass. We’ve been organizing and reorganizing, renovating, breaking walls, welding, repatching, brainstorming, building, taking action, relaxing, enjoying work. The workers are taking more responsibility and holding each other accountable to the collective. The stores are gradually, physically, becoming our ideal. Project relationships seem to be coming into place.

The week after the January container was unloaded, my body proceeded to adopt a mild cold, a welcome rest, but we had a meeting with Augustina, the Koforidua Department of Cooperatives Field Worker! So I braved the day with Maud and Torsutsey and went to the Cooperative office, which with Maud was like a 30 minute walk in the hot sun, but we collected oranges along the way. We arrived and then climbed 3 flights of stairs in this crazy organic government building that looks like a habitation for bats, with lots of big-leafed vegetation surrounding it. This was our first meeting with Augustina, and she stood at the top of the stairs looking very empathetic toward Maud, who courageously climbed the steps – her message to the world that she can do things most people think she can’t. We arrive in the office sweating, are offered water, and then begin the discussions. We explained the mission and purpose of Ability Bikes and emphasized our commitment to worker ownership and equal power in decision-making. We were told that our bike shop does not match the common model of cooperatives in Ghana, and that there are certain requirements for cooperatives that we don’t meet (such as a ten member minimum), but were given the opportunity to further explain the nature of the business and the system of cooperative accounting we wish to employ. We were promised a visit by Augustina. About a week later, Augustina came to the shop and met with the workers for a few hours. She agreed to register Ability Bikes as a cooperative, but only after we complete the business and accounting training and work with her to establish our cooperative accounting system. Its exciting for all of us.

We have begun to act as a cooperative during meetings and daily operations, but there is so much more to be understood and accepted by some of the workers about cooperatives. One of the major proponents of the cooperative system among the workers is Sule. He seems to understand fully that worker ownership is freedom and also an extraordinary chance to generate member income. He is also such an outspoken advocate for equality that the cooperative system matches his ethics, which corresponds with him being a great leader at meetings and in daily work. Sule will grab the important issues, talk about them and make sure that people express their opinions and that progress is made toward a resolution before the issue is put down. Decision-making at recent meetings has been a great development. When the workers meet, they have been peaceful, efficient and effective, as compared to early meetings where a difference of opinion would pose a social challenge resulting in tension, I suppose based on the norm that a different opinion aims to dominate its opposition. Constructive criticism is occurring more often among the workers than ever before – they are becoming more comfortable as a group – like a family.

Regarding cooperative accounting… money is cash that can be seen and felt and not money amounts written on paper or computer screens – some workers have expressed their distrust of conceptual money. This is the next challenge. We’ve got to establish our accounting system and detail the member shares. All the workers need to be involved to check on their shares and to review the accounts. The business needs to be looked upon as a form of investment. The average market tomato seller needs to continually reinvest cash into tomatoes, which are as good as money until sold and turned into a cash return. In this same way, the workers will be reinvesting in the business that will transform operations into member shares, which are split into monthly personal income and reinvested income, which is the member’s share of the profit and belongs to the member but is governed by an established system of accounting requiring the reinvestment, which helps the business grow and generate more profit. It’s a matter of trust. Once we set up the accounting system it will be easier to have trust.

We recently had too much fun on our trip to Kokrobite, a hip beach place just west of Accra, an Ability Bikes workers retreat. We had a meeting and simply enjoyed being together – it was so awesome. It was Agyen’s first time seeing the ocean. At night, he went alone out by the docked fishing boats, sat on the sand and just looked out into it. We arrived on a Saturday, chopped food together, rested, I took a swim, then had our meeting where the objective was to detail the cooperative policy toward the workers. We discussed many points such as meeting schedule, decision-making processes, systems for dealing with wrongdoing such as theft, new worker membership, penalty for lateness, behavior expectations, as well as other issues such as signboards, customer relations, etc. It was a good and productive meeting, but everyone’s attention was soon turning to enjoyment. We had beers, and then the reggae band came on, and we danced-o. At first, we had our little circle outside Maud and Miriam’s room, where we all danced free. Everyone bringin their moves. Then Agyen and Miriam grabbed me to dance in the pit. We found our space and felt the positive vibrations for a while, synching the pulse of blood and music. So awesome to be with the workers in this way. A different context of enjoyment and not of task accomplishment. The night led me to crash hard and sandy. The next morning was a walk on the beach, collecting shells, visiting the fishermen and eyeing their catch. I went out with empty bottles into the ocean to collect water for each of the workers to bring back to Koforidua (I think for medicinal purposes). Then chop (eat) time (food has been and still is such an enjoyment in Ghana). There’s a bunch of local vendors set-up on the beach – I opted for banku and okra stew and I chatted in my old Peace Corps language with the seller, who then gave me free fish.

Agyen, Haruna (our physically challenged friend), and I rode our bikes from Koforidua to Kokrobite, about 120 km each way. The ride to Kokrobite was great, but crazy going through northern Accra. Theres a whole stretch of road in Achimota that is under construction, and is dust, rough roads, no lanes, and about a thousand cars and trucks all trying to get “there” before the other. Yikes, adrenaline, survival – we got through the gauntlet after being coated with dust and exhaust externally and internally. Then through La Paz which is a major commercial stretch of road, an obstacle course of steel, concrete, street venders and awareness. Then out of Accra, facing a strong headwind, we pushed toward our future, the ocean. That Sunday morning, while saddling up our bikes, I chatted with an excellent guy from Ireland, Julian, who is on an incredible trek from Ireland to South Africa on his bike, a Thorn with a 14 speed internally geared rear hub, front generator hub. He and a friend he met on the road have been riding together since Mali or so. According to him there is a whole culture of people touring the length of Africa on bikes, and meeting up randomly and repeatedly in different countries. I try to imagine moving through countries and cultures rapidly like that for such an extended period. An awesome meeting. I decided not to bathe cause I was going to get dirty again. We posed for pictures, and then north. After Accra there was one stretch of road that just felt like it went on forever, until we reached Suhum, a town about 25 km away from Koforidua, which is the common destination for our regular training rides, a familiar face. We rested small and felt a surge of accomplishment over our journey. Did I mention that Agyen and Haruna are both physically challenged? And that Haruna carries his walking stick between his right hand and his grip when he rides, shifts both right and left grip shift with his left hand, and has only one strong riding leg? Haruna definitely slowed us down, but that guy is slow and steady. He doesn’t quit. Just keeps going. Last Tuesday, he embarked on a solo journey to the Northern Region, which takes five days one way. Incredible. He is going there because he has a group of physically challenged friends there who want to start a riding club. Agyen and Haruna are great friends, and intend to establish disabled cycling as an official sport of Ghana Society of the Physically Disabled (GSPD) and to train disabled cyclists in all of the ten regions of Ghana. I love it. So Haruna is probably in the Northern Region as I write this, but we have no idea how he is faring cause he lost his phone a few weeks ago and hasn’t called us yet. When he returns he will be a superhero. In Suhum, after our basking in the energy of fitness, we raced to Koforidua chasing the remaining light from the setting sun.

Since the beginning of the project, its been the plan to make major renovations to the stores to support bike shop operations. There were just too many expenses that drew our income after the first container, and it was necessary to conserve what we had to complete the training and save money to clear the January container. We recently have been sitting on about two thousand cedis (revenue from the January container wholesale) and have been using this money to make all of the critical store developments. We recently constructed a superb wheel and tire hanging structure in the workshop, capable of holding 64 wheels and about 90 tires. We also put money into the plumbing (the shared church toilet), into the electric wiring of the workshop and the front store, and we are now working with a carpenter to build a desk for the front office and a large sales-counter with display. This is all so critical. The workers are doing their jobs, and they need the physical space to enable them to do so. We’ve also been preparing to make beautiful signboards – in the design stage. Once these developments are made, it will change the public face of Ability Bikes, that will no longer be the nondescript bike shop in the back lot that people know as the best place to get a bike “if you know about it,” but will become the established professional bike shop in Koforidua that is publicly and authoritatively the best place to buy or fix a bike. It was an early reservation of mine that the shop would out-compete the small bike sellers. I absolutely see this now in another light. Ability Bikes has become the hub of the bicycle community of Koforidua. Bike sellers receive much of their stock from the AB wholesales, and come to us for the wheel or cassette to complete a bike. Each day, we’ve got about 5 bike sellers visiting us, hanging out, helping sweep in the morning and unpack bikes, joking, being friendly. There is definitely a business motive in these visits, but it doesn’t boil down to that – the bike sellers love Ability Bikes. Even when established physically and publicly, Ability Bikes will draw lots of customers, but I’m confident that the demand for bicycles is ever-growing and that each bicycle seller operates in his or her (one female bike seller in the lot) domain, and since (it seems) that many Ghanaians shop locally and are loyal to local businesses, the bike sellers’ businesses will not suffer but will thrive in relationship with Ability Bikes. In time we’ll develop our customer base and person-to-person advertising network, and we’ll hopefully maintain a mutually beneficial bike market symbiosis with the bike sellers.

Scrap metal yards are cool. I’ve been into them lately. The #1 place for affordable wheel and tire-hanging structure materials. We bought the heavy metal brackets and the long lengths of angle iron from the official store, but we got the heavy metal bars and small rebar pieces for the remaining hooks from the scrap metal yard in Manpower’s neighborhood (Manpower is our fantastic welder). The scrap metal yard is located on the outskirts of the neighborhood next to a huge garbage dump that is also used as an early dawn toilet, so there’s a mild scent but manageable. On the ground outside the place is strewn metal, from pieces of dead cars to white-coated refrigerator shelves. Then there’s the fenced-in lot (fence and doors made from welded scraps) that has the slightly more valuable metals (unorganized and strewn), heavy metal plates, bicycle frames, rusted gates, and then the inner room (that leads into the living space of the scrap metal yard owner) that has the organized stock of rebar, brackets, sheet metal. Manpower and I first came into the inner room and got this 1 ¼ inch by 4 ft solid metal bar bent into hooks on either end (heavy metal), and the small rebar lengths. We later returned for a thick and heavy flat bar (some old industrial artifact) that we found bolted to these huge lengths of wood. It was perfect for our needs – got it for ten cedis but worth it. The operation: we break into the high corners of the walls as well as the high centers of each side wall, expose the rebar, weld the brackets and pieces of the heavy bar for added strength, repatch the walls with concrete. We measure, cut and weld the long lengths of angle iron, weld the hooks (thanks for making the hooks that distant container loading ago – they’re getting used now) – we chose 7 inches apart, about the length of a long rear axle to space the hooks (alternating one low one high), and burn holes in the ends of the angle iron to bolt them to the brackets. We weld the flat bars to the center of the angle iron, and burn holes in one end to bolt into the center brackets. We weld three 2 ½ ft lengths of angle iron each perpendicular to two longer lengths of angle iron, and weld these (stretching across the front and back walls) to the overall structure for tire hanging. The structure is complete and very strong. The only weakness though is that we couldn’t find the rebar in the high center of one of the side walls, so we just welded an anchor to the bracket and used concrete to hold it in. Its holding fine (just a relative weakness). That done, we had a workshop in major disorder, and have been working day after day to order it.

In another scrap metal yard, I found metal cabinets with drawers, and bought two, one for the front store files and one with eight subdivided drawers for the workshop to organize smaller parts such as bottom brackets, headsets, axles, etc. I see this as critical for accessibility. Its not easy to pick up a heavy bucket of bottom bracket spindles, dump em out, sort through em and find what you need, refill the bucket and replace it on the shelf. It is easy to open a drawer and sort through the five or ten 3T spindles categorized and labeled among the other sizes, find one that works for the bike and close the drawer. For convenience and space efficiency, we’ve been categorizing all of our parts large and small and sending the ones we don’t need to the front store for storage and eventual sale, the ones we can use we keep and have been systematically tediously arranging them in proper containers, with proper access. We’ve still got lots to go on the small parts, but this will have to be a gradual development cause it takes time. Today, we will put enough away that we can clean up the benches and get back to building bikes. We’ve been getting more repairs lately, and freely doing them cause it seems like we’ve got enough money, but the reality is that we’ve got to make the most money out of the remaining stock in order to make the final payment to the landlord (which is now only 1000 Ghana cedis) as well as have enough down to clear the next container from Working Bikes in Chicago coming in April.

Need for finances is definitely an issue, but Ability Bikes is gradually becoming less in debt, and this is a very liberating feeling. As soon as the business is capable financially though, it will be responsible for paying overseas shipping costs, which will replace enormous debt repayment with enormous expenses, but combined with the revenue from the containers will make for a sustainable business. There will be enough profit after the shipping expense to pay the workers, to operate the business, and to save money down for gradual expansion. If Ability Bikes can hire a few more mechanics, the pace of production will increase as will the pace of profit.

Our front store is also reaping the benefit of our renovation efforts. We have hired a carpenter to build an appropriate desk with drawers for Maud and Torsutsey to sit, meet, work, and a sales counter spanning the breadth of the front of the store with parts display shelves. I brainstormed with Torsutsey a couple days ago about building a wheel, tire and bike hanging structure for the back 2/3 of the store with parts storage shelving and some open space in the center for bike packing potential. The structure we are planning will not break into the walls, but will be supported at the four corners and at the left-side center by 1 ½ pipe. It will hang about 100 wheels around the high perimeter and 17-20 bikes along the left side at an accessible height (this can serve as a finished bike sales display along with the 10-15 bikes we can display street-side). Along the right side and the back wall we will build heavy wooden shelving to pack and store parts. We may be able to integrate tire storage into this structure (dependent on space) but the ceiling is so high it may be possible to have a row of wheels, then a row of tires, before reaching the shelving along the right and back walls… If not (or in addition), we will build another structure utilizing the high ceiling in the front 1/3 of the store for tire storage. Such an exciting time, building our workspace, our work environment.

Back to building-up the remaining bikes in storage, and letting the money flow. Maud, Torsutsey and I will attend the accounting training next week (its frustrating cause its systematically rescheduled by the trainer, but is so critical, and this guy knows his work, and holds a key to our future, so we need to be patient while pressuring him to make it happen – he’s a great and busy guy, but we’re determined). After this training, we will work with Augustina, establish our system of cooperative accounting and become a legal entity.

Ability Bikes Rules! – themselves –