BELLINGHAM — Western Washington University assistant professor Jason Morris knew he could help Ugandan pedicab drivers after he saw his mother’s photos of them hauling people around on the fenders of their rickety bicycles.

“When she showed me the pictures, I thought, ‘What are they riding around? They’re ancient!’” Morris said of the 1970’s-era road bikes the pedicab drivers use. “They just fall apart … and they got so used to it, they expect them to fall apart.”

FOR BODA BODAS

Morris, an assistant professor of industrial design, decided to design a bike for the pedicab drivers, better known as boda bodas. He wanted the design to be like a “pickup truck” with a long platform for passengers or hauling gear.

With the help of his mother, an Anglican minister doing mission work in the African country, Morris got input from a group of boda bodas she knew.

Morris spent the spring and summer designing and building a prototype, with some financial help from Western. He then enlisted the help of Meridian High School senior Mark Hardin for a three-week trip to Uganda to test the prototype and bring bike maintenance supplies to the pedicab drivers.

When the pair arrived in Hoima, Uganda, with the bike, the group of boda bodas, called the “boda board,” was thrilled with most of the design. Using the boda board’s suggestions, Morris had replaced the thin road bike tires with knobby mountain bike tires, which are more suitable for the dirt roads most boda bodas ride on. He also elongated the frame by about a foot, which better distributes the weight across both wheels and allows for a sitting platform large enough for three grown men.

The only aspect the boda bodas didn’t like was the smaller back wheel Morris put in the design for easier loading. The boda board pointed out that it required them to have two sizes of wheel parts for repairs.

During their visit, Morris and Hardin also pitched the design to Kyambogo University, which is starting the country’s first product design certificate program.

LAUGHED AT IDEA

“They actually laughed at our idea,” said Hardin, pointing out that the boda bodas are considered low-class citizens in Uganda. “They couldn’t understand why we were trying to help a whole caste of people with this idea.”

Armed with revisions from the boda board, Morris hopes to alter the design and get it patented and manufactured. Despite the negative comments from the Ugandan university, Morris would like to find a company in Africa willing to build it.

By keeping production local to the boda bodas, Morris hopes the bike can be sold for about $70, which is about what the boda bodas pay for their old-model bicycles and what U.S. residents pay for a generic department-store bike.

“Even a department store bike is going to be better than what they have,” Morris said. “If they made it there, they could serve all of east and central Africa.”