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Pedaling for Water in Kisumu: Beginning, By Abe McKay

Pedaling for Water in Kisumu: Beginning (1 of 3)
2017.08.20

Karibu - Swahili for “welcome”

Idea:
A low-cost irrigation pump for small-scale farmers that is powered by a bicycle.


Bike powered irrigation pump design reconstructed at UC Davis

Motivation:
“In the dry season, it’s bad. There is no food.” “Most people, we wait for the rain.”  -Jared, a Nairobi Uber Driver

During a layover in Nairobi, I talked with a driver, Jared, that summed up much of the motivation for this bike pump project. Jared wanted to buy a irrigation pump so that he and his family could have food and sell food during the dry season. Of the poor households in Africa, most (80%) are farmers, and very few irrigate their land (only 4% of sub-Saharan farmland). Gasoline and solar pumps are too expensive for most people, so Jared is saving up.
Other organizations successfully make irrigation pumps more accessible through a cheaper “treadle” design that works like stair-master exercise machines. My project is to take pumps a step farther using bicycles. By using a farmer’s existing bicycle as a base, we hope to make a pump more efficient, easier to transport, and lower cost than the treadle design.

Learning Lessons at the Beginning:
I heard about a group of students that designed a small wind turbine out of soda cans. They traveled to a town in Central America to teach their technique only to learn that all of the coke in the area was sold in glass bottles.

I’m trying to avoid a “glass bottle” situation, so instead of at the end, this trip to Kenya is near the beginning of my time working on the irrigation pump. I have recreated a bike-irrigation pump design to field-test, but the main goal of this trip is to learn context. What type of fasteners and hoses are available in the local Kenyan stores? Out on a farm, is it easier to find a welder or someone that can drill precise holes? And stay tuned for important questions that I don’t even know enough to ask yet.

Arrival:
I’m staying in a guest house that also is a hub for a bike touring group and occasionally a pasture for the guard’s cows. Turns out my host here also is working with a Kisumu-based solar pump company, Futurepump, to make their setup easier to carry on bicycles. Sounds like I’m in the right place.


Bikeventures Guesthouse


Tidits:
A rule of thumb I heard is venomous snakes have slit pupils, and non-venomous have round pupils. The black mamba I saw (in an exhibit, don’t worry) had round pupils and was not black.
Black Mamba is also the name of the low-cost bicycle that most people ride in Kisumu.


A tortoise and me during a layover in Nairobi




Black Mamba bicycles, recognizable by their double top-tube frames
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