(Justin) Back in early 2010, I was watching PBS NewsHour when a story came on about a man named Ralph Hotchkiss at San Francisco State University who was designing sturdy, low-cost wheelchairs for the developing world. I noted the story because Hotchkiss' non-profit, Whirlwind International, was helping people in those countries build those chairs with local materials. I sent the story to a friend of mine who shared an interest in international development. Here is the video:
Here's a PBS Frontline story focusing on a Vietnamese distributor of the chair:
I did not know that two years later I would be working for Kifas, a licensed distributor of Whirlwind products, and that the friend I sent the story to would be one of our biggest cheerleaders. Kifas has received large orders for the RoughRider over the last couple years. It manufactures most of the component parts in-house.
Kifas is now diversifying away from Whirlwind for a few reasons, among them that the RoughRider is not adequate for children who need more dynamic support and cannot propel themselves. This is why Kifas is eager to promote its new partnership with XPlore Mobility of Bozeman, MT. Kifas will soon be manufacturing these sporty new chairs:
There is a lot of sound orthopedic engineering in the Dyno chair above. But you can see that the chair looks almost like a stroller that you'd see a jogger pushing her kids in. This has great appeal in societies where there is a stigma attached to being handicapped.
Have an interest in pediatric orthopedics? Do you have an interest in industrial engineering and manufacturing processes? If so, contact us for more information.
(Justin) I've committed to work with a company here, Kifas Ortopedik (here is their Facebook page). They make affordable, high-quality wheelchairs for use in third world countries where handicap access is a rarity. Kifas was founded in 1993 by Ken Erickson and has developed a reputation for quality and integrity.
I'll be posting more information about Kifas as I work. I will be overseeing the launch of a new product line, developed in Bozeman, Montana, for children with cerebral palsy, spina bifida, or other disabilities. The success of Kifas hinges on its ability to successfully manufacture and sell this new chair this year.
Kifas is re-booting itself after some recent struggles. In the coming months you'll see a new webpage, a new marketing strategy, and a high quality wheelchair at a lower price than the competition. Behind the scenes there will be a newly cleaned and organized manufacturing facility with 12-15 Turkish employees.
This is a major transition in our lives that will require a lot of faith. Bare with us as we make those changes.
If you have any web design expertise, an interest in international marketing, know a student looking for a summer or semester internship, have connections to the physically handicapped community in the U.S. or abroad, or would be interested in learning about how you can invest in Kifas, please let us know.
So far Elias hasn't had much exposure to Turkish language and culture. We long for the snow to melt so we can use the nice playgrounds around us and make friends. We intentionally named him Elias as the English derivative of the Turkish "İlyas", which means "Elijah," because we thought we might live in Central Asia one day. But people love it when we tell them his name is "İlyas," and he's slowly starting to get it.
He has also taken a liking to a couple of Turkish children's television shows, and is always asking us "How do you say _____ in Turkish?" This started when I was teaching him some basic words, like body parts. He's picking up some new vocab from the television shows which he often repeats. One Turkish show, Pepee, has some simple songs that teach the meaning of words, which Elias loves to listen to over and over. (Cartoons are great language learning for adults, too.) Below you can watch one of our favorite songs, teaching the difference between cold "soğuk" and hot "sıcak":
Elias' favorite Turkish word right now is "bacak," which means "leg." So, when he hears someone speaking Turkish at the grocery or in a taxi he will often enthusiastically contribute by yelling "Bacak!!"(This is always funny but usually awkward.)
We brought with us some copies of Highlights High Five Magazine which have some short stories that introduce kids to simple Spanish phrases. When reading it, we'll sometimes replace the Spanish phrases with Turkish. Our pronunciation obviously isn't native, but I don't worry about that. Since he's watching the children's TV shows there are many words that he's hearing pronounced by natives, and he's quickly able to identify them. When he hears a word on TV that he knows, he immediately says "That means ______" in English.
We bought him a Mickey Mouse Clubhouse DVD in Turkish and he seems amused by hearing some phrases he knows well in English translated into Turkish. As we were leaving the mall yesterday, he happily yelled "Çok güzel!" which he picked up from watching Mickey Mouse and means "very beautiful" or in most circumstances simply "great!" That brings a smile to a lot of faces, particularly ours.
For the third and final installment of our "how we're having fun in the winter" series, I thought I'd just post about some of the fun things we do at home! As you may recall, we are renting a furnished apartment, which has been really really great! One of the especially neat things about it is that it was already "furnished" with some toys for Elias too! One of the biggest hits so far has been a little three-wheeled scooter.
Elias loves tooling around on that thing, and it's pretty awesome because it doesn't make much noise either.
He actually prefers being pushed on it, but that's easier for the pushee than the pusher!
Another fun toy that was already here was the little basketball goal you can see behind Elias in the second picture. We bought the little plush ball at Ikea, and he loves playing with it! (The only downside is that now he knows who Spongebob is... Ha!)
I mentioned another fun toy we just purchased in my last post - a little toy piano. Elias has always loved playing the piano, but what's really special about this one is that it has a microphone he can sing into! He was leery of it at first, but quickly embraced the joy of hearing his own voice amplified. Here he is singing his own lyrics to "76 Trombones!"
And lest you think Elias is the only one having any fun, I'll point out in the third picture behind Justin you can see that we've bought an antenna for the TV that came with the apartment. Not only is watching Turkish TV good for our language, but some of it is really entertaining too! We've seen Turkish versions of Deal or No Deal, America's Got Talent, and Wheel of Fortune - all of which are highly entertaining!
So these are the solutions we've found so far for keeping ourselves sane while we wait for winter to finally end. We got even MORE snow today, but we're trying to hang in there!!!
Another thing we're doing to try to keep ourselves entertained in the wintertime is take excursions to various places about town. We've explored some new places and found some neat things, and it's always good to get a change of scenery. Using public transportation and taxis, it's really not hard to get anywhere we want to go, although we definitely need to allow plenty of time if we're riding a bus!
Last week we went back to the 365 mall, which is the "small" one in our neighborhood. We had errands to run there anyway, but we thought we'd make it fun by enjoying the train ride we had seen there! They were very kind to let Justin ride for free with Elias!
We also visited a bazaar-type building called Nişantaşı with lots of individual booths selling LOTS of various things! It was fun to wander and see what all was there, and we even found a couple things we wanted: a toy piano for Elias, electric hair clippers, and some homemade hazelnut fudge that is to DIE for! Yum!
Even just walking to the store around the corner helps when we all have cabin fever!
I have some videos of Elias playing in the snow, but it turns out there are some technical difficulties between YouTube and Turkey, so I couldn't get them uploaded earlier. I'm using a different site to host videos now, though, so hopefully this should work! Enjoy seeing our sweet boy play in the snow:
If you follow Justin or me on Twitter, you've seen us posting the past few days about our winter weather. Apparently, Turkey is having an unseasonably harsh winter (as opposed to the unusually mild winter in the US this year), so we've seen a LOT of snow and really cold temperatures. This has been a real challenge for us when combined with the adjustment to apartment living; in fact, I think I can say this has been the hardest part of moving here so far. We know that Ankara has a LOT of beautiful playgrounds and plenty of open spaces, parks, and trails for outdoor activity. However, with the harsh winter weather, we are unable to take advantage of any of that, and for the most part we're stuck in our apartment where noise is a factor to how rowdy our play can get! However, we're finding ways to keep ourselves (and our extremely energetic 3-year-old!) entertained, so this is the first in a small series on how we're having fun in the city this winter.
The obvious answer to that is, of course, going out and playing in the
snow! We had a HUGE snowfall yesterday - my estimate is about 15
inches. Definitely over a foot! So today we bundled up and went out to
play in it for a little while!
This is a small flat area next to our building. I think it's a parking lot, but with all the snow, no cars could possibly get in or out of it. So we play in it instead!
We were disappointed to discover that the snow was too powdery to pack, so we couldn't make a snowman. We still had fun throwing it, and Elias loved flopping down in it!
(See the next post for some videos of Elias playing in the snow.)
Then when we came in, we pulled out the white Play-Doh and made snowmen. There's more than one way to skin a cat! :)
Please do not ask what is up with the face he is making. I have no idea. Also, please don't ask what is wrong with his hair. For some reason, he wakes up looking like this. Every. Morning. Could it be the down pillow?!
Then Elias gleefully enjoyed smooshing him flat. Over and over and over.
Check back tomorrow for our next installment of Fun in the Winter!
