EdgeChain Insights #6: The Helicopter That Zimbabwe Laughed At

Originally published: October 16, 2025

How a floppy-disk router, a ridiculed helicopter, and a cartoon about failure taught me the real rhythm of innovation.

It was a battered helicopter rusting within the University of Zimbabwe that students and staff used to mock—including my own makers from the Mbare Makerspace!

Until I made them touch it and go inside it.

When I look back at my community innovation journey, I see a pattern, a rhythm I never consciously designed—one that connects a floppy-disk router, that ridiculed helicopter, and a Disney film about beautiful failures.

1. My Prototype Reflex

I've named this pattern The Prototype Reflex, that instinctive loop of:

Learn → Philosophize → Build → Take It to the Community → Face Reality → Reflect → Rebuild.

No strategy decks. No committee approvals. Just curiosity in motion, guided by faith that something useful will emerge.

The year was 2010. I was IT Projects Manager at Ansted School of Technology (later rebranded to University of Zimbabwe School of Technology) when my boss, Andrew Nyakudya, challenged our team to take part in the Zimbabwe International Trade Fair (ZITF).

We prepared two projects:

1. A PC Recycling Project, and
2. A Linux Router, born from my weekend Linux Administration classes, where I often philosophized to my students that Linux's modular design could transform ordinary computers into specialized devices.

That's when I discovered FREESCO (Free Cisco), a small open-source marvel that could turn an old PC into a fully functional router running entirely from a floppy disk. It was everything I loved about open tech: minimalism, modularity, and collective intelligence.

I reached out to my former Catholic University lecturer Dr. Engelbert Kapuya, then a director at the Scientific and Industrial Research and Development Centre (SIRDC), who connected me to a local fabricator in the Graniteside area to help design a casing.

I insisted the router must use the floppy disk, to run FREESCO as a network router. I wanted people to see that freedom and function could coexist inside simplicity.

When the fabricated unit arrived, it wasn't pretty. When I plugged it in for the first time, the drive whirred—that ancient mechanical sound that seemed to say, "I shouldn't work, but I do."

The casing was uneven, the drive awkwardly protruding. Even Dr. Kapuya's silence said, "SolKem… is this what you want?"

But at ZITF, when that homemade box of scrap metal and conviction powered up, something magical happened—it quietly connected the entire network of the booth!

Visitors who'd first passed by disinterested began to crowd around. Even one official from POTRAZ, the telecom regulator, invited us to his office to discuss the idea further.

That day, the pattern revealed itself in full:

Innovation doesn't start with perfection—it starts with Action.

2. The Helicopter That Zimbabwe Laughed At

Twelve years later, in 2022, that same lesson found me again—this time through someone else's story.

Chingoma's helicopter may have been mocked, but it represented something profoundly Zimbabwean: resourceful defiance, resilient imagination. He used scrap metal, basic tools, and relentless vision to attempt what others only theorized about. Yet ridicule drowned what should have been celebrated: the courage to begin.

Who Was Daniel Chingoma?

Daniel Chingoma (1968 – 2024), also known as "Mhondoro ye Mvura" for his Taisek Engineering company, was a self-taught Zimbabwean inventor and mechanical engineer who, in the early 2000s, built a home-made helicopter in his backyard in Harare.

Constructed largely from scrap materials, his creation was grounded by authorities before it could fly. Though laughed at by many, Chingoma's helicopter was an act of radical creativity—a declaration that innovation belongs to those willing to try visibly and fail publicly.

His helicopter was eventually moved to the University of Zimbabwe, where it became both monument and cautionary tale—until a new generation learned to see it differently. He remains an unsung pioneer of Zimbabwe's maker spirit.

3. Lunch, Laughter, and "Meet the Robinsons"

In September 2022, together with my fellow instructor at the Mbare Makerspace Patience Mudjgiwa, I was having a farewell lunch with a few of my Mbare Makerspace students—Marlvern, Tadiwa, and Fiona—when one of them joked about Daniel Chingoma's helicopter, the hand-built aircraft that had been left to rust at the University of Zimbabwe.

To many, it was a symbol of failure, something to laugh at. To me, it was sacred—the physical embodiment of Prototype Reflex in its rawest form.

I told them:

"The reason I started the Makerspace was not for technical reasons; it was to teach the moral lesson that beautiful products have their birth as ugly prototypes."

Back at the Mbare Makerspace, I used to "force" my makers to watch "Meet the Robinsons" movie.

It's a film overflowing with malfunctioning prototypes, collapsing time machines, exploding gadgets, a PBJ maker gone rogue—and yet, it ends with a single powerful mantra:

"Keep Moving Forward."

The film's genius isn't just in celebrating failure—it's in showing that failure is data. Every collapsed invention teaches the Robinsons something. Every malfunction refines the next iteration. It's not blind optimism; it's disciplined learning through doing.

That, and Moore's Law, became our Makerspace creed.

After one of the makers laughed at Chingoma's helicopter, as UZ staff and students often did, I then took them to the helicopter.

They stepped inside. The laughter stopped.

Marlvern touched the control panel first, his fingers tracing where Chingoma's hands had welded switches into place. Tadiwa crouched to examine the landing gear, recognizing the interweaving parts. Fiona just stood there, quiet, looking at the cockpit.

In that moment, they weren't looking at failure anymore. They were looking at someone who had turned imagination into steel.

Their eyes softened—what once seemed grotesque now looked ingenious. In that silence, I saw it happen again: the Prototype Reflex awakening in others.

They'd moved from mockery → curiosity → reverence.

I blurted:

Every innovator has their helicopter—the world just sees it too early.

4. Keep Moving Forward: The Real Spirit of Making

My FREESCO router and Chingoma's helicopter were separated by decades, yet both were fueled by the same impulse—the Prototype Reflex. That instinct to start anyway, fail visibly, learn loudly, and rebuild quietly.

Every ugly prototype hides a beautiful intention. Every rough beginning carries the DNA of mastery.

(I'd promised this sixth article to focus on Midnight's privacy architecture, but this story just couldn't wait. We'll visit Midnight later.)

But the real story isn't just about elegant systems. It's about the messy, human courage to build them.

This is the ethos behind EdgeChain—a living system built on learning through imperfection. The Prototype Reflex is embedded in the architecture itself:

• Farmers deploy sensors knowing the first data will be messy.
• AI models train locally, failing small before succeeding big.
• Communities iterate on shared learnings without waiting for perfection.
• Every farm is both a test site and a classroom.

EdgeChain doesn't punish ugly prototypes—it rewards Proof of Attempt.

When I now see a farmer's first IoT setup, a student's tangled breadboard, or a community's early data model, I don't see failure—I see Proof of Attempt.

Because the Prototype Reflex is not about perfection. It's about movement—the audacity to take an idea from imagination to embodiment.

So to every dreamer, maker, or community innovator reading this:

Keep Moving Forward. The world may laugh at your prototype today, but tomorrow, it might just call it progress.

And somewhere in Zimbabwe, there's still a helicopter that couldn't fly. But it taught a generation of makers something more important than flight—

The courage to begin anyway.