Friday

Friday
On Friday of the workshop the plan was to set up the solar stoves the participants had made and cook a meal for everyone. One of the staff loves to cook and she was very excited about trying out both the solar and the rocket stoves. She was going to cook hard boiled eggs and beans and other things to demonstrate their versatility.
We woke up that morning to a torrential downpour. The streets were flooded and the wind was blowing. The climate here is very wet , it's cool and misty much of the year and the tops of the local mountains are usually in the clouds. That's why I wanted to demonstrate the rocket stove as an alternative cooking and water pasteurization method, but I wasn't counting on it being so dramatic a presentation. People here cook over open fires and I also was going to talk about a smokeless stove with a chimney, a cocina mejorada.
We got to the workshop and luckily were able to pull in under an awning to unload our stuff. It was raining so hard that we had to shout over the noise of the wind and rain on the roof, not a good sign for my talk. My original plan was to review the material from Thursday and then examine everyone's water tests. I had a few slides to show about that, then we were going to try out the stoves. It looked like I could set up the rocket stove under the eave of the building and try it without setting the place on fire so that part would still work and I then would have more time to talk about other things.
It's fun to look at the water samples with the participants, usually it's their own local water and so they are very interested in the results. Last year I was a little disorganized about the interpretation of results and people needed reassurance that they were interpreting their results correctly. This time I had everyone line up and one by one we looked at their slides and tubes. I asked each person to interpret their results and explain why they thought the samples were positive or negative, then we discussed them. It's difficult to correctly see the fluorescence of positive colilert tubes in bright light so we sort of crawled under a counter in a dark area to compare their tubes to positive and negative ones.
I was very pleased with how the class was able to correctly interpret their results, which meant that they had been listening yesterday and that they would be able to accurately test water themselves. After they had looked at their samples with me, I had them share their results with Susan and she made a table of results on the white board. About half of the samples were at least moderate disease risk, which is average for me in the testing I have done. Many of the people at the workshop drank bottled water, which is very expensive, but I emphasized how they could save money by just Pasteurizing local water. It also makes a better demonstration to others if you are drinking the same water you are advocating for someone else.
Then it was time for the rocket stove. I asked Stan to set it up for me under the eave and get it ready to light. Like most people he split up some wood which was way larger than necessary for the stove, tiny twigs and sticks work best at first to get the fire started. We lit it and after some huffing and puffing we got it going good. After a little while the flame gets so hot there is very little smoke and it shoots out the top of the stove. Sometimes the air intake makes a whistling sound, so it's interesting to see it work. The lady doing the cooking demonstration put on a pot with cold water and eggs to cook and the large pot began to boil within a few minutes. She also cooked a dish of refried beans and one other dish within a few minutes. One point of the rocket stove is that it cooks very quickly and is very hot and so the women are not exposed to smoke as much as in an open fire.
Everyone was very impressed with the stoves and asked a lot of questions about how to make them. There is some information available about them, but mostly in English. I'm going to try and write something in Spanish with some pictures and make it available to everyone. They are simple to build and not very expensive. I'm hoping someone in the community would be interested in making them and selling them locally which would be a good way to make them more available.
There is also a commercial model available called an “ecostove” that is made from cement. I just became aware of it the day of the workshop and wasn't able to find one to demonstrate, but I'll try to get the local staff of Food for the Hungry to buy one and see how it works. If they are not too expensive they may also be an alternative.
Things moved slowly here and it was then time for a break. I still wanted to talk about other topics like SODIS solar disinfection using UV rays, water filters and “cocinas mejoradas”, but time was running out. The hosts of the workshop scheduled some other activities and when I finally got to speak again I only had about a half hour to cover the rest of the material. I really galloped through it, and promised to send them some material later and then was done.
In summary, I think the workshop was a success. I put a lot of emphasis on accurate water testing and I think the participants understood that. I told them that the health and perhaps lives of people now depended on them to do their jobs well. I said that I was always available to help them and gave them all my email address, and I'll also write them with materials so we can keep in touch. I think follow up with them is very important as well and to encourage them to use the new knowledge they have.
Then I went back to the hotel and took a long nap!