Bicycles for Afghanistan

by John Whiteley, President 1995-1996

October 2001

This is going to be a difficult column to write.  All our lives have been altered by the horrible events of September 11th   The cowardly acts of those godless murderers are particularly poignant to me.   You see, before moving to Tennessee I lived in New York, and I worked in the financial district. I even met my ex-wife Helene there. Although my office was in Battery Park Building, right on the southern tip of Manhattan, the courtroom that we used (I was an investigating officer for the Coast Guard) was in World Trade Center Building 6. I was probably in that building two or three times a week. And when Helene first came to New York, her first job was with Leaman Brothers, on the 103rd floor. We both know that we have lost friends and acquaintances. We just won’t know who until the list of dead come out.

However, I would like to make a proposal. I think that we should head up a drive to collect bicycles to send to Afghanistan. You see, Afghanistan is a very backwards country, probably the most backwards country in the world. When you see photos, all the people in the photos are walking. There are almost no automobiles, and you seldom see a bicycle.

Bicycles would fit the Afghani lifestyle so well!  As we all know, bicycles are a simple yet effective form of transportation.  Bicycles don’t require a source of fuel (except for food for the “engine”) and they last almost forever.  When I was in Indonesia I saw bicycles all over the place, being used for everything from taxis to trucks.   Someplace in my collection I have a photo of a man in Borneo pushing his bicycle with a load of bamboo about eight feet high towering over him.  And when I was in Japan the bicycle was the favored means of transportation.  Have you ever seen a school yard with about 500 or so bicycles parked there?

So what we could do is collect old bicycles and fix them up, like the Chattanooga Fire Department does every Christmas.  Then we could get a shipping company to donate space and we would have the bicycles shipped to Kabul for distribution to the people.  We could stencil the bicycles “A Gift from the USA” so the people of Afghanistan would know that we’re not all the Great Satan.  And the Afghanis would have an efficient means of getting around.

Of course, they’ll have to dig roads out from under the rubble that used to be their towns and cities first.

Have fun, don’t fall

John