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

[alex english]

Dear Cecil,
You have force drafted your oxygenarian wizdom and wittles into this
combustible stove community with a call for a million dollar olympic
competition. Please elaborate on your last paragraph. What did the SA
appropriate stove community come up with for the Xhosa region?
Any online documents? Where is the bar set to begin? How high must Sir
Stills, Lord Pemberton-Pigott and the rest-less jump.
I have a few bucks for the crowdfun campaign.
Alex

On Sun, Sep 3, 2017 at 7:34 AM, Cecil Cook <cec1863 at gmail.com> wrote:

> 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:
>
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