Cycling for Change

A hundred wooden bicycles clattered across Rwanda's rocky hillsides in September, racing toward Karongi's soccer stadium. Rolling to the finish line, the competitors were greeted by 3,000 cheering fans and speakers blaring the '80s anthem 'Flashdance . . . What a Feeling.' It was a scene unimaginable 12 years ago, when screams and gunfire echoed across the town's arena as thousands were slaughtered in the genocidal fervor that eventually claimed 800,000 Rwandans' lives.

The race 'was a celebration, wiping away the memory of what happened in the stadium,' said Benjo Clark, a volunteer with Project Rwanda, a U.S. nonprofit promoting the bike 'as a tool and symbol of hope' by organizing events like the first Wooden Bike Classic, which included the country's first mountain bike race.

Founded in early 2006, the Rwanda- and California-based group hopes to boost the country's image and economy by showing outsiders-especially mountain bikers-that the country is an attractive place to visit and do business. The group isn't just touting a destination, however. Volunteers like Clark are also working on building a bicycle repair network to support Rwandans, particularly farmers, who rely on decrepit bikes to haul their harvests to market.

Back at his community bike repair shop in Minneapolis, Clark flips open his laptop and pulls up a picture of a typical Rwandan bike shop. It's the antithesis of the high-ceilinged, brick-floored building we're sitting in, where a dozen bike frames and wheels hang neatly from the ceiling. The four-by-six-foot shop on the screen is stocked to the roof with beat-up components-hubs, spokes, tubes, bike locks, and pedals. The dirt floor is buried in supplies.