[Stoves] Cleaning Dung

[Crispin Pemberton-Pigott]

Dear Richard

 

Could not agree more Crispin, the problem is to get lots more of us to see
that very point. 

 

I am probably not skilled a getting people to see a point of view. However I
have found that demonstration and example are pretty effective. Doing, not
talking, or doing and talking.

 

After bringing to market dozens of new technologies over the years it
becomes second nature to see how something might or might not work. I have a
non-stove example of a successful localisation of technology that I found
out about only 2 weeks ago involving one of my own products.

 

In 1983 Cecil Cook and I started the Transkei Appropriate Technology Unit
which was a parastatal corporation devoted to developing and popularising
labour-based technologies. We call the place TATU and one of the
technologies we want to introduce was the soil-cement brick. There were lots
of things we worked with including improved stoves, rammed earth, small
water schemes and agricultural innovations.  

 

S-C bricks as they are called, are formed under high pressure using a
mechanical device - a press no too much different in mechanism from a
briquette press with an over-centre clamp. There are lots around. The most
common perhaps is the CINVA Ram which was developed by the Ford Foundation
in South America in about 1957. Another machine that accomplished the same
thing with a very different mechanism was invented by Elise Liknaitsky in
Johannesburg about 1959. That is what someone told me. We bought these from
a foundry in JHB and promoted the bricks in Transkei. We produced a 75 page
book on how to build with them and another book on how to make the bricks.

 

In 1986 the business making the machines closed down for lack of turnover
and there was no supply. We had generated a small market for the machines
and in late 1986 I produced my own version, Terrabric Model 1. By then I was
in Swaziland. We sold a few machines to TATU which continued to promote the
technology especially for building school classrooms, clinics, houses and
toilets. The brick produced became known as the 'TATU Brick' though that was
not known to us for a long time. There are thousands of buildings made from
them. Some are really strong. One can build multi-story building with them.

 

TATU changed its name in 1994 to the Eastern Cape Appropriate Technology
Unit (ECATU) and TATU is long forgotten, except as the name of a brick.
Pretty funny. 

 

Time passed. Our sales dropped over the years, totalling perhaps 425
machines in 25 years. What we found out recently was that there are or were
something like 4000 copies of the Terrabric machine made and sold in the
area of our initial influence. Something like 75% of all the low income
housing in the area around Mthatha is made from 'TATU Bricks'. It has
completely displaced the hollow cement block (cinder block) as a building
material which is incredible. Most of the bricks are made by women's groups
- the same type of teams we formed to build clinics and schools. It is
likely that the reason for the gender dominance is the absence of men as
migrants in other parts of the country, and the fact that it uses soil.
Women traditionally work with soil and men with cement.

 

So there are something like 10 or 20 thousand people involved in one way or
another in the industry - who knows? It is far beyond the counting of them.
The technology is loose in the community. They control it, make the
equipment, train each other and earn a living. With an economic dependency
ratio of about 10:1 it means 100 or 200 thousand people are being taken care
of because of the introduction of the machine with its appropriate design
made from locally available materials. That it services a poor and perhaps
the poorest segment of the population is a cause of joy to me.

 

The locally made machines are not of the same quality or durability but they
work, and could be improved. I have offered to hold a training seminar for
the producers to see how they can improve their machines and the
manufacturing department of the University of Johannesburg has offered to
produce kits of parts if needed, to incorporate into newer, better models.
That could also be done by the present producer of my model.

 

This is an example of how to support a whole industry. Support capacity when
it is found, and create opportunities for people to generate their own
space. Remain in the market to set standards.  It is not about grabbing
every dollar or eating every slice of the pie. There is so much to go round.
We should not concentrate on fairly dividing smaller pies, we should be
teaching cooks to bake more and bigger ones.

 

Thanks for your vigorous support for the effort to 'send technologies into
the wild'.

 

Regards

Crispin

 

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