[Stoves] Cleaning Dung

[Richard Stanley]

Rolled along with you, right up to last paragraph...for us, its ...not about  teachin "them" how to improve the tech but networking between us all to utilize  all our experiences. The students  become participants in the process. Thats the fine point of it 
, to my own experience. 
Richard Stanley

Sent from my iPhone

On Mar 19, 2012, at 14:13, "Crispin Pemberton-Pigott" <crispinpigott at gmail.com> wrote:

> 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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