Gettin' dirty

In Uganda, as in most developing countries, women cook indoors or semi-enclosed over an open fire. Obviously, this poses a great health threat to her, as well as the children she is likely caring for at the same time.

One solution that is spreading around the globe is called Adobe Stoves, or Lorena Stoves, or I'm sure there are other names for it. I helped build stoves in Guatemala as well and think it is one of my favorite projects because it is simple, cheap, can involve the recipient, and it has such a huge lasting impact on the entire family. Cooking over an indoor open fire is equivalent to smoking how many cigarettes a day? Anyone? (Click here to find out.)

Part of the stove project this year was actually doing assesments of the stoves built by volunteers last year. So far, we have seen fairly good results. Women are using less fuel, which saves money and time. The stoves are more efficient, which means they can cook more than one thing at once, so the meal is ready sooner. One local told me that one major problem is that meals take 2-3 hours to prepare over a fire, and many times children will fall asleep before they eat, thus contributing to the malnutrition problem that already exists. He also told me that women are more likely to boil their drinking water like they should now that they can have more than one pot going at a time. In our interviews, many mothers said they saw an immediate reduction in their children's health problems, saving them even more money on the costs of medicine - and can you imagine the long term effects! No wonder the life expectancy is so low if everyone is smoking before they can even talk.

So the day I was there, we worked on a couple different stoves that were at different stages. Each time you do a step, you have to let it dry for a few days, so it is a process. But it is so inexpensive. And the real plus is that they locals easily learn how to do it and can then in turn, teach their neighbors. We put a chimney on two of the stoves, which means they will be ready for use the next day. Exciting!

We also worked on a large stove that will be used to feed children at a boarding school. The volunteer women are literally cooking all day long to feed the 100+ children a little bit for each meal. This is where they currently do all the cooking.

It was a challenge to build a stove big enough for those huge pots, and I think this will be a first for us, so hopefully it works. (This is our volunteers showing how much room we need for the pots.)So the foundation had been built previously and the day I was there, we were working on filling and forming it with bricks and clay.

The good part about these stoves is that most of it is made with free or easily accessible materials - homemade bricks, banana stalks, dirt from ant hills (yes, they are huge), clay, etc. For this particular project, we had to collect the clay from a local stream bed, which was just a quick jaunt through this squishy, enchanted forest. A couple of men dug it out, put it in these difficult-to-manage bags and we assembly-lined it back to where we could put it in a wheel barrow to walk it over to where we could mix it. It was good to get my hands dirty, well and my feet, and clothes . . . It was good. I was glad I wore bugspray. And yes, in Uganda, the women wear skirts or dresses everyday, no matter what they are doing. Hence, we do too.