Proper Stoves Mean Better Health

Zach Withers, an American volunteer, helps repair Grandma's kitchen, a smoky enclosed building, that is the cause of eye and respiratory problems. But this new year will see new properly ventilated stoves being installed in homes in Wongonyi Village, Kenya.

In much of the developing world, improper equipment is the leading cause of health issues. We saw this first hand in 2008 in Wongonyi Village where women cook in separate kitchen building that have no ventilation or over outdoor wood fires, where windy conditions cause the smoke to chase one around the fire. The women who are responsible for most of the meal preparations complain routinely about their stinging eyes or their respiratory problems. Sitting in the smoky kitchen with Getrude and the girls each night, I truly wondered how they could stand it each and every meal they had to cook. Here in the developed world, we don't even think about such issues for when we cook a meal we simply turn on an electric or gas range or oven that is powered by a clean fuel source and we have no thoughts of how our dinner preparations might impact our health, not to mention that we don't have to go out daily and find firewood to fuel our stoves.

But 2010 is a new year, full of new promise and a better quality of life for those in Wongonyi Village, Kenya. We, along with Zach Withers of Kosmos Solutions, have been researching the construction of new stoves that will drastically improve the quality of life for women in this rural village in Kenya. New stoves will have proper ventilation and will allow the women to cook more than one item at a time in safety. One of the concepts are stoves that are currently being made in rural villages in Guatemala through the Guatemala Stove Project. The only challenge will be in educating the women on the benefits of these new stoves. It is sometimes hard to implement change when people have been conducting tasks in a certain way all their life and have known no other method. Change has to be done in a respectful manner by teaching and training the women on the benefits these new implements will have on their health, the health of their families and the quality of their lives. In the Guatemala project, they give a stove for one family, show them the benefits and then have them show it off to the rest of the community which results in buy-in when others see the benefits it provides. In this way change develops within the community, not as a result of being imposed by someone with greater knowledge (the outsider).

As 2010 begins to kick into high gear, we look forward to helping to be the change agents in Wongonyi Village, making a difference to others lives in a positive and respectful manner.