Stoves
and Trees
Background: Much of Central
America’s forest cover has been lost, devastating rural communities.
With few trees to hold the soil in place, erosion is a major problem:
valuable topsoil washes away and ends up clogging rivers and waterways
below barren hillsides. Many endemic forest species have virtually
disappeared. In addition, the burning of wood in inefficient stoves
contributes to global warming. In El Salvador, a principal cause
of deforestation is the use of firewood as the primary cooking
fuel in many households. A typical family spends 80 hours
a month collecting firewood, or up to a quarter of its income to
buy fuel. Many people cook indoors over open fires. Constant exposure
to wood smoke harms people, especially women and children, many
of whom have serious respiratory problems.
In
August 2006 a
group of four Bostonians - Avi, Claire, Donna, and
Joan - travelled to Suchitoto in El Salvador. There we were joined
by Rene and Roberto from El Salvador, and Austin from
Great Britain. We worked with REDES, a Salvadoran community
development organization, and women from cooperatives
in the villages of Los Almendros and Santa Anita to
build energy-efficient stoves in their homes and plant
trees in the villages.
Energy
efficient cooking and lighting are vital to the well-being
of the Salvadoran people, as they rely on wood as their
principal cooking fuel, and kerosene or gas lamps to
light their homes. The combination of the disasterous
civil war, the use of wood as the primary cooking fuel,
and a history of poor farming and forest managment strategies
has striped the lushness of this tropical country, leaving
it 96% deforested.
|
On
our first day in Los Almendros Claire teaches the women how to
lay out the bricks for the stove. |
Here
the second stove begins to take shape in the school at Los Almendros.
Marina (in blue) who learned to build the stove during the first
few days is now teaching the students how to lay out and level
the bricks.
|
The
mortar for the bricks is made of black earth, molasses, salt,
and water. The traditional method of mixing is to use both hands
and feet!
|
(Below)
Austin is preparing to drill the holes where the feet of the
plancha will sit. The plancha is used to cook tortillas.
|
|
Rebar
is cut into lengths to form a support for cooking pots over the
fire. Below: The rebar then needs to be carefully leveled so
that the pots will sit securely.
|
Below:
At the end of the first stage all of the brick is covered in
mud and allowed to dry for several days. The open spaces are
then filled with dirt and sealed with another mud layer, making
thick walls that retain the heat efficiently.
|
Below:
The chimney pipe is cut to size, and a slit is cut for a damper
so that the heat of the fire can be controlled. In traditional
stoves there are no chimneys, leaving the smoke inside the kitchen
- a leading cause of eye and lung disease in women and children.
The triangular design of the fire box in these stoves helps channel
the smoke to the chimney, and out of the kitchen.
|
|
Above:
Donna and the women are leveling and attaching the first pipe
for the chimney.
|
Above:
Avi is illustrating how to cut a pattern so that the correct
sized hole can be cut in the roof where the chimney will emerge.
|
Above:
Avi and Pedro, in Santa Anita, have just passed the chimney through
the roof.
|
Once
the chimney is in place a coat of cement is put on to cover all
of the mud and bricks and make the stove weather-proof. Above
one of the students applies the cement at the school at Los Almendros,
below Joan works on the stove at Santa Anita.
|
|
|
| Above:
A finished stove in use. It is estimated that these stoves burn
about 50% of the word burned in a traditional stove. |
| In
return for materials, instruction, and help in building the stoves
the women organized the planting of more than 700 trees in each
of the villages. The trees were provided by the Mayor of Suchitoto,
the municipality that includes Los Almendros. |
|
Planting
trees at Los Almendros. |
|
|
