[Stoves] What is poor ?

[Crispin Pemberton-Pigott]

Dear Richard

I always appreciate your descriptions of how your initiative is spreading
like a disease - infecting everyone with newly evolved strains and coming
round again for second kick.

In order to inoculate people against it one would need a pretty big subsidy.

Just having fun...
Press on
Crispin
++++++

Mwalimu Paul et al: 

If one defines poverty as not only on the simple basis of cash income, fine
but if one really wants to dive in, then one has to define it as a condition
of hopelessness and lack of opportunity or will to participate in life. But
therin lies the quandry: Then those of us in the "west" may need a big
mirror: Then maybe we all better look a lot more closely at industrialized
society, not just the third world .

Our own two cents  on it over the past few decades,  is that everyone has
something unique to contribute. No one is an object to be pitied  and
"helped" unless the situation is sudden and catastrophic. It is not the
material sign of wealth but that needs to be "targeted" first, as much as it
is a more fundamental issue: The capacity for solutions often very unique
ones, is usually there is you dig deep enough. It is the setting for the
unleashing of natural human tendency for survival in just social
circumstances that needs to be most addressed. it is as much or more of
problem in the US part of the Ameicas today as it is in the third world. 

You don't  want to approach it as working with someone as a potential
recipient of your benifiscence, but as a potential participant  in a process
of shared discovery and contribution. This is not Mother Theresa stuff but
rather jut plain pracitcal common sense: You do nto want to create a trail
of dependence upon your efforts : Rather youd like to see it all take off on
its own two feet eh ?  If that all sounds a bit vacuous,  then heres
somethign more specific: Last week up in the Usambaras, or Tanzania, we
reconnected with some core producer-trainer teams from amongst the Mkombozi,
Likozi and Wema groups whom we have been in contact with since 2007. They
all would nicely qualify as "poor". They make briquettes presses and provide
training. Thye do all of these things bette than we can and differently than
we originally taught them. 
They had devised   new blends and strategies for disrtibution of briquettes
and application in stoves, a novel divider to double the produciton in  the
new ratchet press we are developing with Steve Kitutu up in Arusha,  etc
etc. What a kick to learn what the fellow citisens have to contribute. No
aid has given these groups beyond initial training and funds to construct
their own building (It rains alot there).

One can find similar innovation in the slums of Kangemi Kenya with such as
the $5 buck press of Francis Oloo, or the "chewey" briquette of Zaugia and
Marietta in Lushoto, or George Owino's clever adaptation of the side fed
stove in rural Uganda. I come along with a bright idea about making sausage
briquettes with the conventional mini- Bryant press and I will soon be back
in contact with Mzee Senkenge  in Doche village to see how he and the
production team there has adapted  the idea, to make it work better--or for
that matter, rejected it as impractical.

The next step is to find a way to insure that ideas like this get
communicated fairly, with due reference to the sources-- something that
needs to be taught to us back home as much as here it seems.

Who is poor? 

Pressing on,

Richard Stanley