Pikala is the Moroccan name for Bicycle. And it is an organisation located in the heart of Marrakech. Founded by Cantal Bakker, a woman from the Netherlands, it is not only a simple rent-a-bike shop. It is a social Company. They train young Moroccans to become mechanics, they import and restore bikes from Holland and sell them cheaply, organise tours, repair bikes, set up art projects and most important, Pikala is a meeting point for locals and tourists.
click on the logo for the website
It was founded in 2016 by Cantal Bakker, a young woman from Holland. She came up with the idea as she visited Marrakech for the first time. After a day roaming around in the medina and feeling bad about being treaten like a bag of money, she tried to find a bicycle to drive around the city in order to get easier around. But she couldn’t find any and when she finally found a bike things changed completely. Still looking like a tourist, with her blue eyes and blond hair, people started to greet her. Now they didn’t want to sell anything anymore, no, they wanted to buy the bike and wanted to know more about her. So the things changed.
Cantal fell in Love with the city but went home again. She started planning to set up a completely new idea. The bike shop should not only buy and sell bikes it should also become a cultural and educational hotspot in the city. With all her savings and help from crowdfunding, she was finally able to do the first steps and to establish the shop. But the import of the bikes was expensive and she needed support. Luckily there was the Cop22 peak in Marrakech, and this organisation was very keen on her project as it fit right in the concept of environmental and social development. So she got a lot of badly needed support and could bring the project to its final shape. Now they are doing courses and education and more than 1300 young people have already had the chance to profit from this project. But it is still a long way until they can run their project without any support from outside.
I had the chance to stay with Pikalabikes and I am really fond of this project and this is why I want to support them by telling my experience I had:
I am travelling with my bicycle through morocco and when I came there I was warmly welcomed. The atelier with its big sign “Holland Bicycle Atelier” looks a little chaotic on the first glimpse. Mountain bikes and tandems hanging from the walls, strange looking artistic bikes standing around, lot of rentable bikes, oh, and three dogs and a cat play around it all. They somehow seem to belong here. 
But it is all well organised on the second glimpse. The workshop in the back looks well organised and has everything a mechanic needs.
I then get invited to eat with the crew and we soon have a good talk.
I will sleep in the house of them the following nights, but as we will go there in the evening, I use the time and make some necessary maintenance on my bike. I meet many people, volunteers from the Netherlands, mechanics, tour guides, and people related to the organisation.
Whatever I need, the people help me immediately and I already make some connections. In the evening there is an art exhibition with the art-bikes and Music and so and the people are busy setting everything up.
The next days, I spend mostly in the city or at Pikala with the people. Most of them grew up in or around Marrakech and speak surprisingly good English. It is easy to make friendships with them and instead of roaming aimlessly through the city, they show me the city and places normal tourist wouldn’t even touch. We ride on our bikes around the streets at night, eat snails, go to a hill with an amazing view over the city, eat couscous and I even get invited to learn about Berber culture and language. They teach me how to make tea and what to use against snakes and scorpions once I am in the desert and so on.
I even take a tour with the bikes, together with 5 tourists from Holland. We drive through the city, see how a Hammam is heated, watch a traditional bakery and have a coffee in a fancy coffee shop.
The guides are all locals and as they grew up in this area, they can answer almost every questions we have. And it’s the best way to do sightseeing here. So we are all having a good time.
I am glad that I stayed with the people from Pikala. This way, I could see Marrakech as no normal “Hotel-Medina-Hotel” tourist would ever see it. And I made a lot of new friends and got all the stuff I needed for the desert.
Pikala is a really good spot if you want to see Marrakech as it is, to make friends and get connected to locals. And as it is a social company that gives back a lot to the community, and of many more reasons, it is really worth visiting them and I wish they will keep up the way that they are going.
