[Stoves] Maasai and cultural nostalgia

[rbtvl at aol.com]

Dear Alex and all,

You ask if there is not nostalgia among the Maasai.  The Maasai, like all people, are diverse.  There are the cautious and the risk takers.  There are those with a high stake in how things are now, and those needing things to be different.   There are things that change easily and things that will change slowly if at all.  It is a complex culture like all cultures; complex like mine here in Cambridge Massachusetts.

Most of them, if they build a new house, even with very different rectangular walls and with a metal roof, still don't put in windows.  They are not going to be cooking outdoors even though often the weather is nice enough.   I carried some Envirofit rocket stoves to Tanzania and they tried them out and they weren't interested.  "We could make tea on this."   They want something strong and permanent for their five hours per day of indoor cooking.  Yes, something with some of the attributes of "three stones". 

The point is, though, that there is nothing about being a Maasai that requires that your little unventilated house be full of smoke, you walls sooty, your clothes smelly, your eyes running, and you and your kids coughing.    No nostalgia there.  And there is nothing that says you are not really a Maasai woman if you carry 65 pounds of wood a mile or two on your back only once a week instead of four times a week.  We interested in stoves are lucky here.  As long as we design the stove along with the women, try out the prototypes in their homes and are patient, we are bringing changes to which there is no resistance.

The very first time I met with the Maasai men and women, four years ago in the village of Eluwai, I introduced solar panels and lights, and I said "we are going to get the smoke out of your house."  (I had no idea yet how to design a stove, but I made the statement anyway.)   All the people there, men and women, broke into applause as soon as it was translated to them.

If I had said we were going to stop mutilating the genitals of your daughters I would maybe have received a few private looks of approval but no applause.  If I had said we are going to change all their taboos about gender and behavior, I would have been forgotten  immediately.   Lots of those things will change over the years and decades.  Young people are exposed to so much these days.   But change will not be because someone like me comes to town.

Saving menial labor for women and making their small, unventilated houses more pleasant and healthier are not controversial and undermine nothing of importance in the Maasai culture I have seen.  

Bob Lange   
Maasai Stoves and Solar Project




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