How are you Spending Christmas?

Hello blogging friends,

I am sending you Merry Christmas wishes and praying you are having a good time so far for the holidays. I myself am visiting with my family and will shortly begin to prepare our traditional breakfast waffles before putting in the bird for the dinner later in the day. We are not extravagant in our meal as we once were when my mother was well and able to prepare food. She was well known for hosting large dinners annually for the relatives. It was a bit of an open house at our home every year as children growing up. We always had many drop in guests on Thanksgiving Day, Easter, Christmas Day and New Year's Day.

Those days may be gone but mom still likes to host the gathering at her home with me doing the preparations and cooking. I am able to help her in this way to keep her connection as strong as she can as our family is no longer very large and we live far from most relatives.

I am grateful I can provide this support to my family at these special times of the year. This year will be somewhat poignant as mom is not well and she will go into a nursing home in order to get more daily support and overall help.

One of my own personal traditions is remembering those who are not able to have a Christmas full of food, gifts and goodies. I have several places where I like to help a bit and bring some cheer. Recently I took a visit to Kenya. There I distributed some small food items to widows in several villages. You would not believe how HAPPY they were. It warmed my heart so much. I wish I could have done a lot more for these precious people.

Here are a few photos of that special day.

Being led into one of the village homes by the ladies.

Greetings are being made as we settle into the cooking hut.

A widow leads us in prayer.

Waiting for the program to begin.  I don't have all my photos uploaded yet of all the day's activities.  I wish I had one for you now showing the actual food distribution. But I will add more photos later when I get back to  my own home.  These are some of the widows and orphans who were assembled.

The following photos were added December 28, 2010

The widows speak.

A local leader who supports the widows self-help group. He acted as my translator.

The chairwoman of the widow's group smiles broadly after receiving her gift of food.

The secretary of the women's group receives her food.

Widows and orphans gather around and sing a song of happiness during the food distribution.

See the smiles. I was told that they were singing about how God is good and had not forgotten the widows at this time of Christmas.

Here the widows pack up the food and children and head home. Some of them headed to the food that had been prepared for us.

It was a wonderful day there in the village near Kericho, Kenya. I would like to go back again and do more of this kind of work as God enables and blesses me. This distribution of food came about because of the Jiko Stove Project I was working on. You can read more about the project here.

  I'd love to know how you are spending your Christmas Day.

Merry Christmas to each of you. May you find a special day wherever you are. 

If you are alone, reach out to someone else or volunteer your time to help someone in need if you are able and help to spread the season's cheer. 
God bless you all.

Jiko Stove Project - Phase 2, Final Installment

The second phase of the Jiko Stove Project in Rift Valley Kenya is nearing completion.  We are making stoves in the villages of Chepkurbet, Anamoi, Kapcheptoror (5 miles from Kericho Town) and Kimilot which is inside the tea estate about 20 miles from Kericho Town.

As I mentioned in  my last post here, we have not had to supervise Emily and Regina who are making the stoves.  Yet these two women have gone beyond the call of duty, making beautiful stoves and even teaching the other women how to take care of their jikos.

Now the rest of these  photos below will show you the latter phases of the work.  Some of the pictures were taken at night so they are a bit dark but they will more than give you an idea about how well this project has gone.

This is a new stove that is in the process of curing (drying and being readied for baking).

Another angle of the stove.

The majority of stoves were made in Chepkurbet for the village women there and last time I checked in, Emily and Regina were on their third day of stove making for the widows in Anamoi. The balance of stoves will be made in the other villages and altogether this part of the project will see 35 stoves completed. In the first phase of the project which occurred about one and a half years ago, we were able to make 11 jiko stoves.  If you like, you can read more about that here.

A small child who will benefit from the reduced smoke emissions of this stove.

All the children in this household who will benefit from reduced smoke and reduced labour to collect firewood.

We are now able to get to more women and families with the jiko stoves. Not all of the women recipients of the stove are widows. Some of them have husbands. The thing they all have in common is that they need a new stove to help them with the environmental and health risks associated with the three stone fires they had been using. Read more about that here. For humble villagers like these to put in such a stove would be quite costly and also viewed as a luxury item.  While it might be financially doable for some it is likely at the expense or risk of not providing food and education for the children and other family members. Food is a necessity for people who often only get one meal a day and education would be considered far more valuable than a jiko stove.

Here is the mother. Just think how much better her daily cooking experience will be. Thank you God!

A fire is lit.

Another family benefits from the jiko.

A mother and her child with the new jiko.

This is an older type of jiko stove that at least one village woman had. You can see that it is an improvement over a stone fire but it is not energy efficient. Smoke and heat still escapes from the top. In a new jiko model the smoke is funnelled to the outside of the home and the stove would need less wood to keep a fire going due to energy efficiency.

I want to say one thing about the husbands also. Generally in Kenya, the men do not associate themselves so much with the concerns of the kitchen or the hardships of cooking. These areas of home life fall under the responsibility of women.  Consequently, I was very happy to hear how as a result of this project, some of the husbands are actively engaged and supportive of these new stoves and that they value them as an advantage for their wives and their households. You will see one of the husbands posing in the photos. You can see he is smiling and proud to have a new jiko stove.

One husband who so appreciates the stove for his family.

This concludes my series on Phase 2 of the Jiko Stove Project. Phase 3 will happen when I get to Kenya. You can read about that in the weeks to come.

Chepkurbet Jiko Stove Project Continues (Part 3)

Hello readers and friends,

I began telling you about the Jiko Stove Project awhile back. If you would like to read more please look here and here.

You will remember perhaps that my friend Pastor Jonah hired two local women, Emily and Regina to make the jiko stoves. These women are so passionate about making the stoves and they do it with a lot of joy and gusto. They have to be strong to make these stoves but they are also very creative and I am so pleased and happy that they have been able to help us out in making this project come to life. 

Emily and Regina are working very hard on behalf of all the women in the villages.  They have worked so tirelessly and they have worked with gusto despite not being supervised. They have also taken it upon themselves to teach the other women how to care for these stoves. It is a true pleasure to have them working on this project and to see them take on the making of the stoves as their own project. The widow woman in the top photo wearing the blue t-shirt is Mrs. Irene Songony, the recipient of this particular stove.

Here you see the two ladies pounding the soil that will ultimately become the new stove.

Here the ladies are smoothing out what will become the bottom end of the new stove.

Here is a look at one of the new stoves. See how the ladies have made some decorative edges all around. they have also created shelves at the back of the stove.

A clearer view of the stove.

Here is a close up of the stove. You can see the spaces for the firewood and also see that the stove top has two holes for cooking pots. Both holes need to be covered even if you are only using one. Chances are you need two pots to boil water. One for tea and one for cooking the food.

The Jiko Stove project continues. We have a few stoves to make in a handful of villages but most of them will be made in Chepkurbet. I pray these stoves would be a wonderful blessing to the women and their families.  I praise God we can help widows through this project. May God abundantly bless them and help all the widows we are helping so that their life can be as God intended for them.  I hope to share some final pictures with you soon and a few words about the impact of this project on the husbands, in my next and final instalment in this series on the Jiko Stove Project.

I hope you are enjoying this project as much as I've enjoyed sharing about it. Please pray for these women who are building the stoves. Pray that they would be blessed beyond measure and that the recipients of the stoves will also feel a great blessing from God.

Pure religion and undefiled before God and the Father is this, To visit the fatherless and widows in their affliction, [and] to keep himself unspotted from the world. James 1:27

Chepkurbet Jiko Project Comes to Life - Pt. 2

(Continued from part 1 which you can read here).

I tried different ways to raise funds for the Jiko Stoves Project in Kenya. First, I tried selling photos taken in Kenya. I opened an Etsy shop. I only sold one photo but I will try again later as I feel this can still be successful. I also tried to sell home made crosses on commission. You can read here about that effort. The crosses were wonderful and I did sell some. However since they aren't mine I returned the remainder to the craftsman. I used the funds raised to pay for school needs instead of jiko stoves.

From time to time I thought of other alternatives for how to bring about energy efficiencies and I did find a fireless cooker. Read about it here.  I think fireless cookers are a good thing and they are much less expensive than putting in a full stove and jiko pot.  I considered going this route instead of putting into a full stove and buying jiko but 28 households in the village were waiting to have jiko stoves like the first set of 11 women.  I also felt that a proper stove and pot would be a better investment over the long term in helping improve the lives of these village women and children.

I scour the internet a lot.  One day through Simon, one of my blogging contacts, I was encouraged to have hope that I could  really find an answer to the dilemma of the jiko stove needs.  Simon suggested I could get a mold (cast) made and the villagers could build their own stoves.  Simon also kindly provided me some information as to where to get the building plans. The challenge then became how to find the carpenter, how much to pay him and how to get the actual stoves built in the village huts because this process requires taking the mold from house to house and the houses are rather far apart.

I discussed it with my Pastor friend, Pastor Jonah and he agreed to find a carpenter. After a few weeks of  communicating with my Kenyan friend about the various ins and outs of the project and working on and tweaking the budget, I gave the "green" light to Pastor Jonah to look for a carpenter.  This wasn't as simple as it sounds. Pastor Jonah had to speak to several carpenters and show them the building plans.  Some of them would not even consider trying to follow the plans for building the mold. I could in fact understand why.  When I look at the diagrams and instructions, they seem very complicated.  I imagine that some of the village carpenters might not read very well and so could not follow the instructions. I also concluded that some of them probably have a few projects they make and limit their work to those things which they know they can sell.  I am so glad we did find someone who would take on the challenge!  He is obviously someone who is a bit more adventurous and willing to take on new things.

The first attempt at building the mold was a little rusty in that the lines of the wood were crooked.

First attempt was a little crooked

After the carpenters adjustments, the mold looks beautiful!

Two days later we had this wonderfully finished mold to make the stoves.

The next step was to get someone to make the stoves. My friend went ahead and hired two enthusiastic women in the village who are passionate about making the stoves.

Come back again soon and see the work they have accomplished. ....to be continued

Chepkurbet Jiko Project Comes to Life

Hi friends and fellow bloggers,

I had to  come out from my blogging break for a short while to share some exciting and wonderful news with you. I've written before about my volunteer efforts in Kenya for the widows and orphans. One of the projects that has been on my mind for quite some time is providing all the village women in Chepkurbet with a jiko stove.  These women are from the Kalenjin tribe in the beautiful Rift Valley.  Read more about the Kalenjin people here.

This is a traditional Kalenjin hut. Usually there is a separate one for cooking.

These women and their children live in huts without running water or comforts that many women in the west have.  I wanted to help give them just a little more ease in their lives than what they have been accustomed to. It didn't seem right that I would have running water, electricity, washer and dryer and dishwasher and these woman don't have any of these things.  Beyond that I wanted to do something that would improve their quality of life in other ways.

I learned that the women traditionally make 3 stone fires. It is the cheapest stove to produce, requiring only three suitable stones of the same height on which the women can balance a cooking pot over the fire. However, this cooking method also has many problems.

Making these fires requires the women to travel far and spend hours out of each day to gather the twigs and firewood that they need.  For women alone and travelling far, there can be safety issues and threats to their security. Purchasing wood or charcoal to make the fire are options but these villagers have limited funds which must stretch to meet many other needs.

The energy use in a 3 stone fire is not very efficient as there is nothing to contain the fire.  This means more wood is burned and the women have to spend a lot more of their time to gather the wood. The more wood that is used, the worse it is for the environment because more trees are consumed and deforestation then occurs.

You can see from the photo below that the 3 stone fire is open on all sides. The cook must balance the pot on the stones and so cooking and stirring the contents of the pot can be precarious. This is very dangerous work for women and children alike and can lead to burns and scalding from both fires and hot water or hot food.

The 3 stone fires also create a lot of smoke.  The smoke creates lung and eye problems for the women and their children. The World Health Organization says that smoke that is vented into the home is responsible for the deaths of 1.6 million people worldwide every year. This is one death every 20 seconds. That is an astounding figure and a very sad situation indeed.

A 3 stone fire will only enable a woman to use one pot at a time. This means that it is inefficient for preparing tea and a meal of ugali (ugali is an East African dish made of maize flour). It will takes hours and hours as you must boil the water in separate pots for both of these things. This is also where I got the photo of the girl making ugali on a 3 stone fire in the photo above.  I could not locate my own photo.  Since my photos were taken in 2007, I went through many computer problems and virus attacks. The photo I was looking for is either damaged or on a disc somewhere in my files.

After I learned all about the cons of a 3 stone fire, I knew I had to do something for these women.  In 2008, I was helping the school children and farmers with educational and seed and fertilizer needs as well as harvesting needs. At the same time I was trying unsuccessfully to raise funds for these projects and to find safer and greener ways for the women to cook. Finally in the fall of 2008, I went ahead on my own to fund the construction of 11 new stoves/ovens for the village women. These stoves/ovens are called jiko ovens. First we build an oven like the one you see below. It is still a bit orangey in colour as it must cure (dry) before it is ready for use. Next we add a jiko pot made out of ceramic. You will see that in one of the photos below.

3 stone fire to the left of the post. new jiko stove on right

A Kenyan ceramic jiko pot is also needed.

Many organizations and individuals have been working on developing improved stoves to address the kind of issues raised in using a 3 stone fire. Of all the improved stoves, the Kenya Ceramic Jiko (KCJ) seems to be the most widely accepted and has become a standard item in many homes in Kenya and neighboring countries in East Africa.

Charcoal is the standard cooking fuel in East Africa if you have some funds to buy it or you can make it yourself. Otherwise women have to collect many twigs to start their fires.  Traditionally it was burned in a metal stove or “Jiko” as stoves are called in the Swahili language. The KCJ is simply the traditional Jiko mated to a ceramic liner, producing a stove that is at least one fourth (and up to 50%) more efficient than traditional all-metal alternative. You will often read that it only costs $2 to $5 US but I have yet to find them at that price. Although the exchange rate today is much better for the Canadian dollar than it was three years ago, Canadian money still doesn't go as far as American funds. Also, Kenya is a very expensive country with ever increasing prices.

The new stoves and jiko pots went over extremely well with the first 11 households. Over the next year and a half I received a half dozen requests as to when we were ready to continue building the stoves and ovens for the remaining village women. There are still 28 households to service.We also hope to build 5 stoves for widows in another village called Anamoi.

I racked my brain and reviewed my budget a thousand different ways to see what could be done. It was challenging due to the global recession to see how we might proceed.
 .....to be continued.

Summer?

So far my summer has been taken up with non summer activities. It seems I have been busy with all kinds of things related to the Type 2 diabetes diagnosis (pharmacist training on food guide and basic information, training on glucose meter, dietician's workshop on various rices and how to cook them, blood work and blood pressure testing, exercise class, swimming lessons).

At the same time, I have been negotiating a new mortgage and I'm happy to report I got a good deal on the interest rate. I have also been undertaking modest activities (knitting) and discussing plans with my Kenyan partners on the mission field. I am hoping by the late Fall to bring jiko stoves to more of the village women in Chepkerbet.  If any of you would like to know more,  please read here. If you would like to help please contact me.

On a personal front I have been busy as well. My cousin was here just over a week ago for weekend visit. It was also my niece's birthday and though I wasn't there for the party I did have to arrange for a small gift and a card to get to her on time.  I have also been travelling back and forth to visit and help my elderly mom. I will be leaving again in about 1 and half weeks to assist with financial activities like banking and bills, as well as do the shopping, cooking and cleaning. The annual Kamloops Pow-Wow is something we hope to get to for at least one day also if it isn't too hot for mom.  She enjoys this cultural event immensely and if it weren't for her I'd probably stay home with the comfort of the air conditioning as much as I do enjoy the cultural event.

I am also excited to finally get to Bard on the Beach. We will be seeing Much Ado About Nothing.

Celebrating its 21st Season in 2010, Bard on the Beach is one of Canada's largest not-for-profit, professional Shakespeare Festivals. Presented in a magnificent setting on the waterfront in Vancouver's Vanier Park, the Festival offers Shakespeare plays, related dramas, and several special events in two performance tents from June through September.

I'm looking forward to this because I've lived in Vancouver for many years and never have gone to this event though I do love plays. It is just the like amazing Folk Festival we have here every year in the 3rd week of July (just passed) which I never get to either and the growing Jazz Festival which I also miss each year, largely due to the fact that I am away up country.

My friend from Calgary is coming for her annual summer vacation to her childhood home and she arrives tomorrow. We have agreed to forego a "coffee date" on Saturday and instead have a play, dinner on the beach, concluded by fireworks which are part of the annual Celebration of Lights. How awesome is that?!! You can read all about the fireworks I was able to capture last year  here and here.

I feel blessed that this year I am able to squeeze in a few things to savour the summer. I am ENJOYING my summer as I've long wanted to take the swimming lessons, I am getting my diabetes under control and I'm taking an exercise class. I am also getting a chance to take in some the summer festivals which is for me a great summer activity though I don't always get to the ones I've been thinking I'd like to see. Too many logistical issues but in time it will happen. Yeah. I hope your summer is also going well too!

Dreaming of Africa

These days I am dreaming of Africa. Kenya in particular. I want to visit and see my friends in the flesh instead of just emailing. I also want to make some progress on a small project with the village women in Kericho, Kenya.

I've long had a desire to help the orphan girls and women to somehow make their lives easier with things like jiko stoves and fireless cookers, as well as menstrual pads.

A jiko stove would help the women in so many ways but they are somewhat expensive especially for the villagers and a recent cheaper alternative came available but it is still too much for a villager. Jikos can save the women from back breaking and time consuming work of collecting firewood. Because there are so many people collecting twigs to start the fires for daily cooking, it is harder and harder to find it nearby. Women and children can spend hours a day locating the wood and carrying it home on their backs. It is hard work and also dangerous to go so far where you can be accosted. Once you get it home and start the fire for cooking the smoke that is generated is also a health hazard for the women and children who often suffer from eye problems.

Here is a photo of  a woman collecting firewood. I was trying to take her photo discreetly so it turned out blurry.

My hope is that I can provide each household in the village near Kericho with a jiko stove or a fireless cooker. So far I've managed to pay for 11 jiko stoves and there are another 28 women waiting for one. A jiko uses less wood and uses it more efficiently. Also you do not get all the smoke you do with the traditional three stone fire. You can read more about the jiko stove project here. You can also READ here about people I am helping in the village with the jikos.

Because of the cost and the time it is taking me to get enough jiko stoves, I've recently been considering  fireless cookers instead. They look like this in the photo below and are less expensive than a jiko stove. The drawback is that they are not as versatile. This is not my photo but I've misplaced the one I was sent. 

[Photo credit: Solar Cookers International]

If I am fortunate I may get to visit my friend, Loice and her husband, Pastor Japheth in Nakuru. Here is Loice looking with interest at her digital photo. I say if I am fortunate because I may be rather busy when I visit and so we shall see how things go.

I leave you with ac photo of the majestic lion in the national park in Nakuru. They roam the park and you must stay in the car. No walking around here where the lions roam though there is a picnic area where the baboons are.

I simply love the majestic lion. But I wouldn't want to pet one!