cooking fires

While I was ECHO I learned about the need for fuel-efficient stoves. When people cook over a fire it's bad for their health (breathing all the smoke) and bad for the environment (cutting down lots of trees). If a person uses a better designed stove, however, they can use less wood and produce less smoke.

I've noticed that this is a problem in Los Higos. Most people in LH do own gas stoves, but don't use them, because gas is expensive. Also, fires work better when cooking large amounts of food. Lots of women, especially those who make casabe, complain that their eyesight has been destroyed by years of getting smoke in them. A lot of women also complain of lung problems, although I don't know if that is at a higher level than among people who don't cook over fires.

So, I've been thinking about how we might be able to help women redesign their fire pits, so that their fire might burn cleaner, producing less smoke, or with a chimney, to divert the smoke. I'm still thinking about what the best way might be to go about this. I want this to be something that is owned by the women, not something I push onto them.

Any ideas?

(The photo above is of Mina and Iris in their kitchen. Mina invented this little buren, for cooking casabe, when her old one broke. This buren is made from the bottom of an old 55-gallon drum.)

Cecilia's baby

Here is a more recent picture of Cecilias baby, named Natanael. He is about 5 months old now and is quite the chunk! In this picture, Iris, is holding him. There is a picture of Natanael when he was first born back in the month of April's posts.

Back in Los Higos

I'm back in the DR and visited Los Higos for the first time today. A lot happened while I was gone and I think it will take a while for me to get really caught up.
One exciting thing- while I was gone they has a large evangelistic campaign in Los Higos and several people accepted Christ (about 50!). I know that Jose Quezada was included in those fifty, which is so exciting. He has a lot of influence in the community, so let's be praying that God would use him in positive ways. Another man, Augustin, was touched. He used to belong to a different church and actually tended to speak badly about us when we weren't around. Now, however, he is attending our church! I'm not excited that he switched churches necessarily, but rather that he had a change of heart. I'll post some pictures from the campaign if I can get some from Andre.
Because there are so many people becoming involved in the church, Andre decided to stop holding the Monday night Bible teaching (which I led) and replace it with five smaller cell groups. I'm really thankful for that. I've never felt that comfortable teaching the Monday night studies, so now we'll just meet with the cell-group leaders to prepare them for their cell group, which I think will be more comfortable for me.
On a sad note- a young man from Los Higos was murdered last week by a total stranger. He drives a motorcycle taxi and gave a girl home. It was a trap and he got beat up, stabbed, robbed, and thrown in a field. The community is really shook up about it. The funeral is tomorrow.
On Thursday the police were going to move the murder suspect to a different jail, so a mob from Los Higos and La Joya (the town the murderer is from) waited outside the police station with guns and baseball bats, waiting for the suspect to come out so they could kill him. The police protected him when they led him to the vehicle and the suspect was not harmed. The mob was saying that they don't trust that the justice system will actually punish the man, so they were going to do justice themselves. Meri was on TV, from what I hear, representing the Los Higos junta de vecinos at the mob.

good poem

I just read this poem, by Allen Harder, in a book called People in Rural Development by Peter Batchelor. It was originally printed in INTERCOM Vol. 14, no 11 (1974) which is a newsletter put out by the Mennonite Central Committee. It speaks well to the experience of a missionary working in development and it gives me hope:

A boy came to Zaire
brimming with courage.
Change the natives,
build new houses,
give them food.
They're bound to change for a peace-man.

Why, why won't they
build chicken houses
plant corn
breed rabbits?
Why! Why!
And he began to resent
his people,
then to hate them.

But the people still said
"Come, live with us,
learn our ways.
We like who you are."
And he sat with them, in front of the fire
a pot of manioc and a dish of
hot caterpillars between them.

Until
one day
an elder came to him and said,
"My children are weak.
They hunger for chickens corn and rabbits.
Can you help us?"

answers

I don't know how many people actually guessed on the little quiz, but here are the answers anyway:
1. This is bamboo. It's growing all over the place here at ECHO and they have all kinds of varieties- purple and yellow'ish and green. I really was shocked with it's semblance to asparagus.

2. this is a dry composting toilet. The idea is that the urine is separated from the solids. The urine goes to a tank with water in it and can be used to fertilize plants (it's basically urea, a Nitrogen source) or if you think that's nasty, it can go through a drain field of gravel that has bananas planted at the end of it and it ends up just fertilizing the bananas. The solids go to a holding area below, which is divided into two sections. Every year or so you move the toilet to the other side of the building so that the solids fall into the other side, leaving the first side to naturally compost. After several months, the solids are basically just compost and can be removed and used as fertilizer.

3. This is a pummelo. It's the largest citrus fruit there is.

4. This is a wheel chair! It's made by a group of farmers in Nebraska who will give them to anyone working in a developing country with someone who is in need of a wheel chair. They're great because they're pretty rugged, and are easy to maintain because it's basically made of tricycle parts. They also make higher versions, which I guess can go over rougher terrain.

ECHO

So, I'm at ECHO! ECHO is an organization that does technical support for people working in agricultural development. It's a Christian organization, and mostly works with missionaries, but also works with other development workers, like Peace Corp people or university researchers.

Anyway... I'm loving all there is to learn here and am going to give you all a little quiz about some of the things I've seen. Answers will be posted later. You can leave comments if you want to make any guesses.

The above plant is what:

a. Aspargusis grandis

b. Joint weedis grandis

c. bamboo

The apparatus shown above is a:

a. medical research collecting toilet

b. dry composting toilet

c. chair

The fruit shown above is:

a. Citrus grandis, pummelo

b. Cucumis melo, muskmelon

c. Lycopersicum esculentum, tomato

The above contraption is:

a. a primitive gator

b. a tricycle

c. a wheelchair