This slideshow requires JavaScript.
I realized the other day that I just jumped into blogging without really giving an introduction to what it is I am doing here. So I hope this answers some questions you may have.
Like I said in the About Me section, I am here because of a wheelchair my group designed and built in one of my classes last semester. We were told that here in Arusha, people who need wheelchairs often cannot find work because they are limited to jobs very close to where they live. This is due to the fact that their chairs often take up too much space in the daladala, taking away room for additional customers, and so they get charged a lot more for the extra space they take up. Many times when the daladalas are full (and I have twice waited over an hour for my return trip back from the shop at night), they dont even think about picking up people in wheelchairs, so they may sit there for multiple hours. If were were able to figure out a way to easily, and greatly reduce the size of the wheelchair, so that the owner could have it sit in their lap, they would not have to pay this extra fee and get passed by by so many buses.
While working on the project, we realized the wheelchair was built in a way that it could sustain constant abuse from the terrain it would travel across. We had initially thought the problem would be solved by folding it like we are used to seeing hospital chairs fold. But then we realized this would greatly reduce the stability of the chair, make it constantly rattle and annoy the rider, and run the risk of breaking easily. We then decided that if we folded the back rest and armrests down somehow, we could get rid of a lot of bulkiness of the chair and make it slimmer to fit on the bus. Tish Scolnik (’08), had brought her solution of folding the front caster wheel into the frame of the chair a few years ago, but this was not great enough of a reduction for Daniel Namkessa, the owner of Mobility Care, to put the project into his chairs. When we finished with our part of the chair, combined with Tish’s, we believed this would be something Daniel could work with. It easily fits into the lap of someone sitting down, can fold in very few steps, and does not compromise the stability of the chair.
So while I am here, I am building the chair from scratch to make sure doing so is feasible in their shop, to get customer feedback from their experiences with our chair, and then hopefully create jigs and other systems to streamline the process by which Daniel and his shop can build this modification into their chairs. After doing this, I will be helping solve some other problems they have, such as a good device to hold a table on a wheelchair, and whatever else they would like me to do. I am also thinking about visiting a wheelchair shop in Moshi, which is an hour away, where I will encourage them to work our design into their chairs.
I hope you enjoy reading my blog, as I am trying to keep it as detailed as I can. Let me know if there is anything you are ever confused about, or would like to know more about how our mechanism works.
-Matt
