Monday, 7th of October 2019, 11:40 pm. The city sleeps. Yellow lamps light the backyard of Kevins house. It smells of wood, coffee and spray paint. We are waiting in silence, staring at the black paint covering paper and wood. Tired, excited, nervous. Unspoken questions are hanging in the air: Did it work? Was all the effort worth the result? Or was all for nothing? And how did we end up waiting unpatiently for spray paint to dry in the middle of the night?
It started four days earlier with the task of designing and building a new push cart for a waste picker from Walmer Township. His name is Khululekile Moko, known as Khusta or Wilson. After he lost his job he started collecting recyclable trash to make a living for himself and his wife.
We met him on Friday morning at the ReTrade project where he trades the collected trash for food, toiletries and clothes. His current cart was a flatbed made of wood, held together by ropes and wires. It had small wheels which makes it difficult to pull it across the uneven streets of the township. It was very heavy even without the collected trash. Another restriction we needed to be aware of was the width. To prevent the cart from being stolen (like one of his previous ones) Khusta has to take it inside his property. The narrow path leading to his front gate limits the width of the cart to a maximum of 1.10 meters. Customisation will add to the theft protection as well. Another one of Khustas former carts got hit by a truck so visibility and road safety were a big issue to think of.
After we met Khusta and got to know is daily life and work conditions we dived into the design and construction process. Apart from agreeing to the final design it turned out that finding suitable wheels is a bigger problem than everyone thought. The usual bike company did not have any in store so we started the ultimate wheel hunt through PE. With only partial success: one small bike had a wheel size just slightly bigger than we wanted. The problem was that we needed four wheels not just two... At least getting the number plates with Khustas name on them was easy and quick. First part of the customisation was done.
The search for the two bikes with right-sized tires continued on the weekend while the boys welded the frame, Kevin finalized the design and I worked on the branding and especially on the customisation part. The work continued straight through out the weekend until we called it a day on Sunday afternoon.
With final drawings and huge motivation we started into the Monday. Hours later the cart still did not look like the drawing. The motivation from the morning was gone especially after we got the message that we could not laser cut the branding. But giving up was no option. So instead of a nice, easy laser cut we got prints, sticked them onto the board of the cart and then cut it. And cut it… And cut it… .. . In between we had a quick sandwich lunch/dinner and then we cut again while the others worked around us attaching the wheels and marking the spots for the screws.
At 11:30 p.m. the last cut was made. 35 minutes late the moment of truth was there. We would finally see if our plan worked out, if the paper was thick enough to cope with the spray paint, if we won this game or if it was for nothing.
We won.
The final assembling of the cart took place early on Tuesday morning just before it was presented on a sponsoring event at the ReTrade project. Khusta got to see his new cart on the evening of the 10th of October.
We got to know him as a man who is not unwinding himself in front of anyone. He is hard- working, trying to make a living for himself and his wife. He is always carrying an almost melancholic expression on his face. But on this evening when he saw the cart, his face spray painted onto the loading area and the number plates with his name on them we got to know a different shade of his personality. His face brightened up, he was excited like a little boy who just got a new toy. He inspected the whole cart and explained what we should improve to make it more suitable. So the project is still to be completed. We created a decent prototype which needs further work, especially the wheels and the steering. But we are on it.