[Stoves] the role of motivation in efficient cooking

[rbtvl at aol.com]

Dear all,

In the Maasai Stoves and Solar project we were talking to women about 
how our stove is doing.   Was it saving them wood and labor?  To have 
efficient cooking, you do have to have a good stove design and I think 
we do.   We must have a chimney because of Maasai style houses and 
indoor cooking, but we do keep the burning gases and burning smoke 
circulating near the cook pot before they find their way to the chimney 
in the draft.   So we have designed for efficiency and not just smoke 
removal.

But it was interesting that more than  one woman said.  "I use one 
third as much wood, because when I cooked with three stones I stuck in 
three pieces, but with my ICSEE stove I only need to stick in one."     
She is getting a prompt from simple geometry to use one branch instead 
of three.   This would not work if one branch failed to cook her food.  
But there is something here beyond stove design.

It came to my mind that she could have probably cooked more efficiently 
with three stones if she had just had the mind to try.  But three 
stones and her habits probably kept her burning more wood than she 
needed, and maybe even as much as she had.

I mention all this to remind us to keep in mind it is a person doing 
the cooking, and not a measuring instrument, and we have to work with 
the people to maximize the good impact of all our engineering, fund 
raising, and distributing.   They have to become colleagues in 
efficiency engineering, since the final step in a cooker, the cook, is 
a part of the system.

bob lange, the ICSEE Maasai Stoves and Solar Project.     
www.maasaistovessolar.org