History

Scallywags was birthed in the summer of 2001 in a garage in South Minneapolis, as a small group of friends experimented with some fabrication and almost burned down said garage (twice). The majority of our projects were bikes in some form, like the penny farthing made from scratch and a three-person bike, somewhere between pirate ship and Dr. Seuss, though we also pulled out some musical instruments made of bike parts and slung some ink on "Tattoo Sundays" just to keep things interesting. Bike commuting through Minnesota winters toughened our hides and our willpower, and as we thawed our beardsicles over the warm glow of the welder, we began to think more creatively about how to use all this stuff to help someone else.

And then came Rwanda. We had never been to Africa before...what business did we have going there? The Scallywags were presented with an exciting opportunity to support Project Rwanda's Coffee Bike project by sending our

bike shop's mechanics to help assemble and distribute the first shipment of utility bicycles to coffee farmers and their families in the southern part of the country, and to train Rwandan mechanics to maintain those bikes.

On those trips we saw the country of Rwanda from north to south, east to west, from the presidential palace swimming pool to the backyard buckets of sludgy banana beer on hillside plantations, out where there is still no electricity or running water. We got our butts kicked by the locals in some bike races, were offered jobs at a welding shop in the town market, and were mobbed by curious children on a regular basis. We got our hands dirty (er, actually our feet) trampling coffee cherries with the farmers, slept under mosquito netting, visited memorial sites and talked with people about their life experiences there. Before long, we discovered that Rwanda had found its way inside of us too.