[Stoves] latest Maasai Stoves and Solar model

Lange rbtvl at aol.com
Wed Oct 3 21:16:28 CDT 2018




dear Nikhil

thanks for your comments,    Yes, we are very happy with the complete lack of abandonment.   the stoves are durable, and support the variety of ways the women need to cook.  For example they don't require much attention during long periods of simmering pots of corn and beans.   And the chimneys do make life in the home bearable during cooking.    Because of the chimney and brick foundation they are really a solid part of the house, and ,moved to the wall, they open nice floor space that the women surely don't want to go back and give up.

with regard to house choice.   We don't participate in academic research into what houses the women SHOULD  want.  We do recognize and even help them get the houses the DO want.

It is interesting that the Maasai from different regions not very far from one another have quite different houses.  The ones in Southern Kenya and in the logido district of Tanzania are much smaller and more smothering than the ones in Monduli district.  When women visit new areas in connection with doing the training that spreads our program they are sometimes surprised to see just how different their houses are, and how much worse some traditional houses are than others.

bob




-----Original Message-----
From: Nikhil Desai <pienergy2008 at gmail.com>
To: Discussion of biomass cooking stoves <stoves at lists.bioenergylists.org>
Cc: Crispin Pemberton-Pigott <crispinpigott at outlook.com>
Sent: Wed, Oct 3, 2018 4:11 pm
Subject: Re: [Stoves] latest Maasai Stoves and Solar model

Dr Lange: 

Thank you for this. Thrilled to read your words - " of course, when you get to know them, you find the Maasai women really don't like their houses.    they want three room rectangular houses with, heaven forbid, wall space for furniture. and metal roofs, and maybe a couple of windows. Up-keep of thatch is a real burden and there is no place for a comfortable bed in a little round house.        so if they get better housing as they want, stove needs will change.  We wish for their sake this would happen faster than it will. "  

This desire for different kind of housing may be the more important factor in changing stoves, fuels, and cooking patterns, than anything else in the last 40 years as new household formation in the population primarily using solid fuel for cooking and heating amounted to 1 billion (as couples, so a total of 2 billion people plus another billion or so children; about a billion people died, and another billion or so shifted to non-solid fuels.) 

On the other hand, so long as chilly environs of the hills of Malawi, Kenya, Uganda, Rwanda, Guatemala, Nepal are available for academic tourists, peer-reviewed papers and HAPIT consulting will continue to have a thriving market. 

Why are so many HAP studies done on homes with not enough ventilation and considerable heating demands, I could never tell. Except that such climates are more hospitable and it is easier to model air circulation in one room rather than three. 

That no stoves are abandoned out of 4,600 is a far better victory than any that could be certified by ISO TC-285. 

Nikhil


------------------------------------------------------------------------
Nikhil Desai
(US +1) 202 568 5831
Skype: nikhildesai888



On Tue, Oct 2, 2018 at 10:41 AM Lange <rbtvl at aol.com> wrote:
Hello from the Maasai project

we are pretty happy with our model 4 stove.     CO and Particulates are good if the cook uses the stove carefully,    (How a woman actually cooks can't be ignored.)     fuel is consumption good and burns are eliminated except for touching the hot cooking surface.

we have 4600 of our model 3 and model 4 stoves out in homes.   And there are none abandoned.  The stove continues to be what  women want in their little unventilated houses.

But, of course, when you get to know them, you find the Maasai women really don't like their houses.    they want three room rectangular houses with, heaven forbid, wall space for furniture. and metal roofs, and maybe a couple of windows. Up-keep of thatch is a real burden and there is no place for a comfortable bed in a little round house.        so if they get better housing as they want, stove needs will change.  We wish for their sake this would happen faster than it will.   The sooner our stove is obsolete the better, but that is a long time away I am afraid.

We have designed remarkable effective and inexpensive chlorination systems and are installing them at their polluted  ponds, and breeding a new better cow.  People are ready to work for all sort of lifts from poverty and we are working to make as many of these efforts self-supporting as we can.

the stove, if you are interested is at 

https://internationalcollaborative.org/our-work/stoves/

and our general website is     internationalcollaborative.org

yours

bob

Robert Lange
the ICSEE
Office of Programs and Development
705 Americana Drive Unit 5A
Annapolis MD 21403

ICSEE(Tanzania)
Monduli, Arusha, Tanzania



  
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