Daune Fraser’s story is as fine an example of ambition and enterprise as any that you are likely to find among young women anywhere in Guyana. Each week, from Monday to Friday, the lithe, engaging 26 year-old pedals her bicycle through the streets of Georgetown and its environs for as many as 8 hours a day, delivering mail and packages for the bicycle courier service which she has owned and operated since April last year.
Two years ago Daune started to work as a bicycle courier for Pedal Foot Bicycle Courier Service. Last year, when the founder of the business migrated she bought the company.
It is, she says, a challenging niche in a market that still relies mostly on conventional delivery services. However, as the increasing number of motor vehicles impede each other’s progress on the city streets, the demand for the speed and efficiency of the Pedal Foot Courier Service grows.
Daune is a former student of Stella Maris and Alleyne’s High School. She learnt to ride a bicycle in the United States where she spent some time with a now deceased adopted mother.
You would think that Daune would prefer to manage her business from the relative comfort of a small office, monitoring a team of riders charged with the physically and mentally demanding task of delivering the packages. Not so. For her, riding is a passion and the fact that she can make a living pursuing that passion is a bonus.
The system that Daune employs to run her courier service is virtually identical to that employed by taxi services. You call her business number, provide the details of the delivery you require and she picks up and delivers your package. The boundaries of the service are Turkeyen on the East Coast and Houston on the East Bank and she will carry any package weighing up to one hundred pounds. It is, she says, a job that requires mental discipline, physical stamina and cycling skills that take account of the not infrequent indiscretions of some road users.
Thin as a rake, bespectacled and attractively articulate, Daune exudes the persona of a studious university undergraduate. Her familiarity with the University of Guyana, however, derives from her frequent deliveries to the campus – twice on the day that this interview was done.
Understandably, she is tired at the end of a working day. Still, she pushes herself further, doing an evening job as a waitress at the Dutch Bottle Caf
