[Stoves] Stove race between CONTEXTERS & CERTIFIERS-response to Nikhil, Ron, Crispin, Xavier, Dean, GACC, EPA

[Cecil Cook]

Dear Ron (AKA Sir Galihad or Sir Lancelot?) and stovers of the world,

Is it not time for us to unite, because we have nothing to loose but our
many cited "absurdities". From the periphery - where I am right now with
terrible internet connectivity problems - in woebegone Transkei this battle
of stove testers and stove standards wonks  - seems downright tragic.

With a tip of my hat to Arnold Tyonbee, the food fight taking place on the
stove discussion list over how best to test stove performance is a
microcosm of why American "civilization" is in deep trouble. Let me try to
explain my personal take how we have gotten into this pathetic battle
royal. And yes the fault lies on all sides. Our predicament in the
household stove community is that we appear to be trapped in the same
destructive dynamics of insiders and outsiders which has already wrecked
the ANC

It all starts back in 1984 when Crispin and I and a Mrs Cina (C is it
sucking dental click sound in the Xhosa language spoken in the Transkei
region of South Africa) dutifully followed the instructions in a book by
Ianto Evans from the pre Dean Stills APROVECHO INSTITUTE about the Lorena
Stove.  I think this may have been CPP's first foray into stove making. He
may correct me on this point ....he often does that!

For the record we mixed sand and clay and learned how to cast and carve
many different shapes and sizes of Lorena stoves, fire boxes, pot holes,
tunnels between pot holes, chimneys, and all to no avail because it took
such a long time to heat up the mass of sand/clay. Time to boil was often
half an hour or even longer. The fire boxes were too small and necessitated
extra work splitting tree limbs into kindling.

The Lorena stove was a non starter in the Bantustan of Transkei. As the
director of the Transkei AT Unit I was interested in the L stove because
many babies get badly burned from falling into open cooking and heating
fires located in the center of typical round mud brick houses with thatched
grass rooves. The smoke filters out thru a space between the top of the
wall and the pole roof trusses. Since people sit on low stools their heads
are below the level where smoke is thick. Corn is tied in bunches and hung
to dry over the roof timber trusses or on the walls. The smoke discourages
flying insects in the summer months and limits the build up of roaches and
terminates in the thatching grass.

Most cooking is done with large three legged cast iron pots with heavy lids
of many sizes from 10 to 100 litres or bigger. Pots are often raised with
bricks so big limbs or split logs up to 150mm can be fed into the fire
under the 3 legged pots.

Most cooking is done by boiling in these pots...even steamed bread is made
in pots by boiling using a second pot. Cooking is also done outside in the
hot months. A windbreak of clay bricks is constructed outside away from the
house with 4 cooking bays created by two intersectiong walls high enough to
shelter big pots (mid thigh).  Coals from a fire are often  placed on top
of the lids and around the back of the pot to create a simple oven or
accelerate boiling.

Women can spend several hours two to three times a week gathering 35 to
45kg head loads of dead limbs for their households....more in winter. In
savannah areas with very few trees or wood lots women collect dried cow
pies in feed bags in place of firewood.

I have taken time to sketch the stove/fuel/pot/cuisine/kitchen elements
that together consttute the cultural and e environmental context of
cooking, heating, and the other vital functions performed by fire, perhaps
humankind most important technology.  Please remember that
fire qua technology is itself is a culturally produced and managed process.
Stove use is a complex cultural process integrating many inputs and
producing multiple outputs. It needs to be remembered that fire belongs to
all of us. There are as many versions of fire and origin of fire myths as
there are societies and professions.

Now to my point: there has been a call for a drawdow of two fisted stove
making expertise. It is put up or shut up time...High Noon and stove
armgeddon is upon us stoveres. I am personally challenging the GACC
globalists,
the APROVECHO gang, the Berkeley Air boys, the EPA-WHO-GSF bunch, and the
Ron Larson brigade to a STOVE RACE in the  Transkei region of the Eastern
Cape province of the Republic of South Africa.

The other batallion will be the DISSENTING OTHERS, namely Crispin, Nikhil,
Xavier, me, and anybody else who perceives the enormous gaps separating the
hyper-modelers and
quantifiers AKA the SCIENCE CERTIFIERS from the other team known as the
RADICAL CONTEXTERS.

The essence of the proposed shoot out at the OK Corral to take place with
the assistance of the
Eastern Cape AT Unit in Mthatha would be to give each team $500 000 to
research, design,  develop, produce & deploy the best performing and also
the best accepted biomass stove. The two teams will specify the performance
paramenters and testing equipment to be used and where questions emerge
then both testing protocols will be used to test the lab and field
performance of competing stoves.

However, a mutually agreed upon represtentative cross section of diverse
stove users from the test area will constitute a de facto STOVE JURY that
will vote for what they perceive to be the best stove for a well
characterized target community of stove users. They will arrive at their
judgment by applying their own folk values. They serve as a stove selection
jury.
It makes sense to give the stove testing jurors an opportunity to purchase
a subsidized test stove produced by the SCIENCE CERTIFIERS or a stove
produced by the the RADICAL CONTEXTERS.  The willingness of the stove
buying public to purchase a well CERTIFIED versus a well  CONTEXTUALIZED
stove becomes the ultimate STOVE SHOW DOWN. The value of building this
final stage into a stove science and stove user assessment process combines
these two distinct dimensions of stove performance.

We get this ultimate judgment of stove performance from the willingness of
stove buyers to spend their own money together with the public subsidies on
their PREFERRED STOVE. I am suggesting the inclusion of stove subsidies of
no more than 50% to be paid on behalf of +/- 50 targeted households. The
adding of a stove purchase option helps to measure the strength of the
value proposition represented by the competing stoves developed and locally
fabricated by the CERTIFIED and CONTEXTUALIZED stove development.

This test of household stoves developed by the CERTIFIED vs the
CONTEXTUALIZED process of appropriate stove innovation will surely expose
any short comings in either approach.

This proposed challenge to the dominant stove science and development
paradigm will ground all the intellectual HP now wasted on scientific
politics. Where will we find the $1 000 000 to host a stove shoot out in
Eastern Cape region of South Africa where 35 years ago the Approvecho
Institute's "hippie" Lorena stove failed to displace the pre-existing fire
technologies. The China fabricated StoveTec rocket stove failed utterly to
establish itself in any South Africa market areas over the last 10 years
because it failed the value proposition test.

So as a 80 year old hippie (I am actually an On the Road Beatnic) l am
calling out the apparently incompetent citation happy American hippie
stovers where ever you are to have a face down in a Xhosa Kraal. Are there
any hippie stove scientist who are ready to prove that your certified stove
science can actually innovate and fabricate one or more stoves which South
African consumers judge to be appropriate for rural, peri-rural, and
township markets??

Sir Stills can your gang of stove certifiers innovate household  stoves for
the Xhosa region of SA that offers stove users & buyers in Xhosa-landia a
robust "Value Proposition" strong enough to gradually gain and hold a
significant market share in the Eastern Cape household stove market without
external subsidies?

My claim is that the Southern Africa appropriate stove  community has
already out performed the global stove community which is preoccupied or
perhaps even fixated on the certification of household stove performance
and depends on aid politics and colonial hegemonies  to subsidize
outrageously overpriced "inappropriate" global stove technologies made half
way round the planet..

in search & service,
Cecil E Cook
Techno Share Associates &
Eastern Cape Appropriate Technology
Mthatha, RSA





On Aug 30, 2017 10:34 PM, "Ronal W. Larson" <rongretlarson at comcast.net>
wrote:
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.bioenergylists.org/pipermail/stoves_lists.bioenergylists.org/attachments/20170903/853e5caf/attachment.html>