The stoves have arrived! |
Typical three-stone fire. The pot balances on these 3 stones. |
For a little background on cookstoves: a typical Ugandan household will cook on a three-stone fire (a pot balancing on 3 stones) or will have massive 300-liter stoves with the fire beneath and the pot that sits in a cement basin. These systems don't last for very long, as I'm sure you can imagine, with the aluminum pots needing repairs or replacement every 6 months. At my PTC (Primary Teachers' College), the kitchen staff is cooking for 500 people three times a day. That's a lot of people. They cook on giant stoves, mingling (mixing) posho (a cakey substance made from maize flour) and beans for every meal. They used spoons the size of oars to mix the sticky substance in giant vats. The stoves however are in terrible shape; many of them are either in disrepair or are completely out of use, with corrosion on all sides. The metal pipes build on the outside of the building are so corroded that they no longer function, and thick smoke clogs the kitchen all day. It's a pretty grim place to work. Not to mention that many of the staff have their kids around, young children who are breathing in smoke all day. Talk about asthmatics in the making.
The crew outside the kitchen. You can see the walls blackened with soot, the corroded pipes no longer ventilate properly |
That's where these new stoves come in. Max has designed them with one important feature: volcanic bricks. The inside of the stove is lined with volcanic bricks, mined around Kisoro and the volcanic Virunga range. The volcanic rock absorbs the heat, making the stove about 70% more efficient than your typical stove. This results in not only less firewood consumed, but no smoke. I learned this week that smoke is a sign of unused fuel, therefore inefficiency. No smoke means that the wood is being burned efficiently. Another advantage is that the school can now start savings millions of shillings every term by purchasing less firewood. The second phase of my project is to reinvest some of that money saved, and have the PTC host a number of workshops on HIV outreach.
My friend Amanda brought her headmaster from Kabale Primary School to see the process of installation since they are also interested in having some cookstoves installed at their school.
My friend Amanda brought her headmaster from Kabale Primary School to see the process of installation since they are also interested in having some cookstoves installed at their school.
On Thursday, the whole VEW crew showed up in their jumpsuits and orange hardhats with the two giant stoves strapped down in the lorry. It took ten (ten!) grown men to carry both the base and the top of the stove off the truck and into the kitchen. They took a few days to do some tests and assessments. They did one interesting test where they compared the efficiency of the new stove to the old one. They weighed two bundles of wood, 25 kg each, and put 40L of water in each pot to see which one would boil faster. Not only did the VEW stove finish 7 minutes faster, but consumed only 11.8kg of wood. The old stove consumed over 30kg of firewood alone.
It takes this many men to carry just the top part! |
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