Saturday, November 7, 2009

Estufas

A few weeks ago the director at my escuela mentioned to me that they're very interested in building heat efficient/wood saving stoves. I thought sweet, work opportunities. What this entails is soliciting help from a non-government agency called Cosecha Sostenible Internacional (Sustainable Harvest International). I found out they were actually started by a volunteer in the 90's from Coclé and are now all over Central America. The head of the group now in Penonomé is actually the brother of the director at my school, both of who are awesome and am finding out are pretty easy to work with.

Besides getting help from Cosecha, I will be applying for grants to get the funds for the project. Of course none of this is happening anytime too soon, especially because I'm sitting in a wireless cafe in America (Albrook mall) right now waiting for a bus to Costa Rica.

I had a chance to help out with the building of these same stoves at a neighbor volunteer's site. Here is a link to a bit of information from cosecha's site http://www.sustainableharvest.org/stoves.cfm although the model is a bit different than the one we worked on. To get 2 or 3 built, we'd only have to collect $100 to $150.. not a whole lot with how efficient the stoves are compared to the current methods. The school cooks a ton every day for all the kids, so they really do save a lot of wood (less work/less trees used)

Below are a few pictures of the work.. Maria got in there too. On that note, the cultural exchange with her around has been through the roof.. which is 2/3 of my job haha. We went to a baile in Penonomé on the 6th to celebrate.. I want to say the founding of the city. Two big names were playing, Alfredo y Nenito. She said dancing tipico is kinda boring but likes the music. Its true the dancing is pretty simple but hey, at least I can do it.



Alfredo on the left.. he killed a guy! machetazo
The wood is placed inside that elbow so the heat comes straight up onto the pot. Eventually ash surrounds the entire chimney so heat isn't lost.

Securing it with muddy paste

Filling the ash

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