by John Greenfield<\/p>\n
\u201cParts of Windhoek, Namibia\u2019s capital city, and the South Side of Chicago are actually eerily similar,\u201d says Dustin Gourdin\u00a0\u201910, a Ph.D. student in the University of Chicago\u2019s sociology department. \u201cYou see a lot of the same issues, in terms of transportation challenges and youth opportunities. Hopefully we can figure out ways to make things better in both places.\u201d<\/p>\n
Since 2009 Gourdin, 25, has made three research trips to Namibia, a nation of 2.1 million people just northwest of South Africa. He\u2019s been studying the Bicycling Empowerment Network (BEN) Namibia, a nonprofit that provides disadvantaged local people with efficient transportation and job opportunities, as well as other non-governmental organizations.<\/p>\n
Since gaining independence in 1990, the country, with an economy based on mining, agriculture and tourism, has become an upper-middle-income nation. Gourdin is exploring the connection between U.S.-sponsored empowerment programs and Namibia\u2019s recent macro-level growth. Meanwhile, back in Chicago, he\u2019s involved with several groups that encourage cycling in low-income neighborhoods and communities of color.<\/p>\n
Born in South Carolina, Gourdin first got passionate about bikes as a freshman at Furman. After the brake cables on his Walmart beater snapped, he Googled \u201cbrakeless bicycle\u201d for repair instructions and stumbled upon a YouTube video called \u201cMash SF\u201d of guys riding fixed-gears around San Francisco.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt had an edge to it, like a skateboard video,\u201d he recalls. \u201cI adopted that philosophy: ride a bike the way you want to ride.\u201d He converted his mom\u2019s old road bike into a single-speed and eventually saved enough money for an IRO Cycle fixie. He and his buddies formed a bicycle crew called the Rolling Riot, cruising the streets of Greenville and its Swamp Rabbit Trail.<\/p>\n
A rap fan, Gourdin became aware of the African \u201cblood diamond\u201d phenomenon, where sales of diamonds mined in war zones bankroll bloodshed, through the track \u201cDiamonds Are Forever (Diamonds From Sierra Leone)\u201d by Kanye West, as well as the movies \u201cBlood Diamond\u201d and \u201cThe Last King of Scotland.\u201d He soon joined the student group Africa Rising, which promoted social justice on the continent, and then got the idea to study abroad in Namibia.<\/p>\n
\u201cI was looking for a way to bind my passions for biking and social justice,\u201d Gourdin says. He focused his research on BEN Namibia, which receives shipments of bicycles donated from abroad and distributes them to low-income people via community bike shops housed in converted shipping containers.<\/p>\n
Despite the country\u2019s strong national economy, roughly half of the population lives in poverty. \u201cYou see a lot of growth that benefits small pockets of the population that doesn\u2019t necessarily translate into opportunities for people at ground level, especially urban youth,\u201d he says. BEN\u2019s shops teach mechanic skills to these young people and help them develop bike-powered businesses.<\/p>\n
One of BEN\u2019s most successful programs provides bicycles to the mostly female healthcare workers who tend to Namibia\u2019s large HIV-positive population. Largely desert, the country has the world\u2019s second-lowest population density after Mongolia. Bikes make it much easier for the caregivers to serve their clients in remote villages.<\/p>\n
BEN accepts shipments of cycles from sister organizations all over the world, including Working Bikes Cooperative in the Little Village area of Chicago, where Gourdin currently volunteers, sorting spare parts and loading shipping containers. \u201cIt\u2019s been really interesting to watch the process play out in Chicago and then see how it turns into results in Namibia,\u201d he says. \u201cI got to see firsthand the people who get employed by these projects and programs and how it changes their lives.\u201d<\/p>\n
Gourdin has witnessed the power of bicycles to transform lives through his work at Blackstone Bicycle Works, a community bike shop and youth education program on Chicago\u2019s South Side. \u201cIt gives a lot of neighborhood kids an opportunity to learn about bicycles and transportation,\u201d he says. \u201cThey gain some independence and autonomy from their ability to travel on their own, and it gives them something positive to do after school.\u201d<\/p>\n
He also rides with Red Bike and Green, a group that promotes cycling to African Americans as a path to health, wealth and environmental sustainability. \u201cThey\u2019re a really neat organization,\u201d he says. \u201cFor me, coming from South Carolina, seeing a contingent of black urban cyclists was something new.\u201d<\/p>\n
Gourdin sees many parallels between the economic, health, education and transportation challenges facing low-income folks in the Namibian capital and their counterparts on the South Side of Chicago. \u201cWindhoek has a lot of infrastructure issues,\u201d he says. \u201cThere are enough roads but there\u2019s just not a great public transit system and there are virtually no bicycle lanes \u2014 that\u2019s been something that the people at BEN have been pushing for.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s similar on the South Side,\u201d he says. \u201cWe could use more consistent public transit here, and people could really benefit from using a bike as a form of transportation. You need to take a balanced approach to community development, including things like after-school programming and access to healthcare, which should be a basic human right. But providing good transportation options is really in that holy grail of what needs to be done to build a community.\u201d<\/p>\n
Gourdin recently received grant money from the University of Chicago\u2019s Council on Advanced Studies and hopes to return to Namibia this summer to continue his research. \u201cEvery time I go I think it\u2019s going to be my last,\u201d he says. \u201cBut you end up building a relationship with people and organizations, and you start to get a vested interest in seeing them succeed.\u201d<\/p>\n
Reprinted with permission from the February 19 issue of newcity.com. Photo by John Greenfield.<\/em><\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" by John Greenfield \u201cParts of Windhoek, Namibia\u2019s capital city, and the South Side of Chicago are actually eerily similar,\u201d says Dustin Gourdin\u00a0\u201910, a Ph.D. student in the University of Chicago\u2019s […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":265,"featured_media":2639,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[15,3,22],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2638","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-academic-department-page","category-alumni","category-sociology"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2638","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/265"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2638"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2638\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2639"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2638"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2638"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2638"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}