Monsefú

A couple of months ago a television crew came to Callanca to film and interview residents of Monsefú, that’s the District that includes Callanca. The segment they were filming was for a Sunday-morning program called “Domingo al Día” on América TV. It’s sort of a Charles Kuralt type program but more hip and upbeat with fewer long drawnout nature segments with cranes plucking shiny minnows out of silent, pristine marshes. The segment was really a plug for another of América TV’s programs, the famous “Al Fondo Hay Sitio”, a comedy telenovela that’s watched nightly by almost all of Perú.

On “Al Fondo Hay Sitio” one of the characters, Lucho, has been doing a lot of traveling from Lima to Monsefú and there’s some suspicion, especially on the part of his wife, Reina, that he has a girlfriend in Monsefú. The América TV crew came to Monsefú in order to film a segment that showed viewers what Monsefú is really like. There were many questions to interviewees about the romantic lives of Monsefuanos and many remarks from interviewees about how all Monsefuanos have at least two women. This is true, by the way. Many men not only have girlfriends but have families with more than one woman. This practice is common among men 40 years of age and older, much less commom among younger men, though many of them also have girlfriends on the side, but they’ve figured out birth control and are (somewhat) less likely to father children with their illicit girlfriends.

In the video below, Samuel, the interviewer, interviews me, some employees in a restaurant in Callanca and Eusebio, one of the owners of our duck-raising business “Patos Callancanos, Tradición Peruana”. He also interviews the mayor, some artisans and a chichera (brewer of a homemade corn-based alcoholic drink) in the city of Monsefú, the Municipality of the District of Monefú. You likely won’t understand what anyone’s saying but at least you’ll get a glimpse of Callanca and Monsefú, see what our duck farm looks like, etc.

The segment turned out to be terrific free publicity for the duck farm; a week after the interviews aired people were showing up from all over to buy ducks and debate the finer points of marital fidelity.

(By the way, I added two posts today so you may not have seen the previous.)

Here’s the link for the video:

http://youtu.be/UBqoocMoeBs

Feliz Cumpleaños

Here’s my host family singing happy birthday to Judith.

She turned _______ (less than 100 more than 50) on March 9.

Happy birthday, Judith!

In case your Spanish is rusty they’re singing “Happy Birthday”:

Cumpleaños feliz!

te deseamos a ti,

cumpleaños felices

te deseamos a ti!

Muchas felicidades!

Muchas felicidades!

De mi corazón,

de mi corazón!

Feliz cumpleaños, Judita!

A Bullet List Through the Head

A water project sponsored by the NGO FONCODES—a well, tanks and water lines for 47 families—was completed in November of 2011 in Rama Guzmán, a caserío of Callanca. Unfortunately, the engineer in charge of the project did not seem to view as a significant problem the fact that there was no electricity to run the pump, which requires 220 volts while due to the poor quality of the electric service in the area only 140 volts were arriving to the site of the well.

That’s just one of the problems that the water project faced. Here’s a bullet list through the head of some of the irregularities:

• Likely substitution of inferior materials for materials listed in the specifications on the part of the head engineer and the president and treasurer of the citizens’ committee in charge of the project (this is soon to be verified or refuted by an investigation to be carried out by the NGO that funded the project)

• Likely theft of the difference in cost of materials by the head engineer, president and treasurer (ditto as regards the investigation)

• Collection of fraudulent signatures on the part of the engineer’s assistant and use of those signatures to validate documents stating that the engineer had provided training to citizens in how to operate and maintain the well and its electric pump

• Subsequent flight of head engineer to the jungles of the Amazon (after first refusing to answer his phone and finally changing his cell-phone number)

• The aforementioned low voltage at the site of the well (located more than a kilometer from the nearest transformer)

• Subsequent petitions to ElectroNorte (the electric company) to install a new transformer nearer the well and provide new posts and cable for the entire caserío of Rama Guzmán at a cost of 150,000 soles ($55,000)

• Refusal on the part of the president of the citizens’ committee in charge of the project to donate the land on which the well is located after having publicly vowed to do so in public meetings held prior to the inception of the project

• Unexplained disappearance of all the materials left over after the “completion” of the project

• Failure to in fact complete the project; because there was no electricity the well produced no water for over a year after its supposed completion

• Refusal on the part of the president of the citizens’ committee to hand over the key to the well hut so that the electric pump could be tested; refusal of the president to hand over his copy of the specifications so that it could be determined if the specified materials had or had not been purchased and installed

• Refusal of the president and treasurer to attend any public meetings of the committee once word got out about possible irregularities

If you’ve ever had a fishing reel backlash on you then you can appreciate the complex nature of the untangling that each and every one of the elements in this list required.

I won’t attempt to detail how we solved each of these problems; instead let’s take one example, the electricity issue.

The problem was this: not only was the well too far from the transformer but the “grid” in Rama Guzmán was hopelessly outdated and overburdened, implemented twenty years ago for use by fewer than thirty families and now being used by 80-100 families, many of which had simply spliced into a neighbor or relative’s line and were sharing a meter. People had extended the grid by erecting skinny wooden posts or tree trunks and stringing low-tension wire from post to post in order to reach their houses. Where the cable was adequate, trees had grown up and into the wiring, their limbs in contact with the cable, drawing off current. As a result, instead of the required 220 volts, the previously mentioned 110-140 volts were reaching the well site.

ElectroNorte doesn’t hand out projects worth 150,000 soles out of the goodness of its own heart. Many people and a few kindly coincidences contributed to the eventual implementation of the project. Years ago Feliciano Mendoza had rallied the population to petition a plan from ENSA. Each family contributed 15 soles and ElectroNorte technicians came to Callanca, surveyed and measured, determined the number of posts and the amount of cable required, and drew up a plan illustrating the location of each electrical pole, the transformer, etc. The problem was, there was no well project at that point and so the plan didn’t include the well.

 

It would require a novel to recount all that we’ve been through in the pursuit of 80 or so missing volts. First, in November, the JAS (Junta de Agua y Saneamiento or Water and Sewage Committee) in Rama Guzmán solicited a solution to the problem. ElectroNorte proposed a project that would have included posts, cable and a meter so that they could charge Rama Guzmán for the electricity consumed by the use of the pump. ElectroNorte’s solution was that Rama Guzmán should pay the 2,500 soles that the project would’ve cost. This would not have solved the problem, however; without a transformer (15,000 soles) nearer the well to generate the power to deliver 220 volts the pump would not have operated or would have soon burned out due to the low voltage.

I’ll mention only briefly what happened during the following months (bullet list number two):

• First a meeting at ENSA with an enginner named César Manayay about the possibility of implementing Felix Mendoza’s ambitious electrification project for all of Rama Guzmán. He first said the project would be implemented in early 2012; later the date slipped to “sometime in 2012.”

• A trip to Chiclayo with the Alcaldesa of Mosefú, Rita Ayasta, and Victorio, the President of Rama Guzmán’s JAS to speak with the General Manager of ElectroNorte and request implementation of the aforementioned project or an immediate provisional solution to the problem of low voltage at the well site.

• A follow-up meeting with the General Manager in the office of the Alcaldesa in Monsefú. The Gerente suggested a probable solution in “about a month-and-a-half.”

• Following these meetings Engineer Manayay came to Rama Guzmán and made measurements for posts and cable and asked us specific questions about the electric pump and the energy requirements for the well. We asked how long it would take to schedule the installation of the required components; “about a month-and-a-half,” he said.

• A trip to Ocinerg, the oversight agency for public utilities, to discuss the possibility of filing a complaint against ENSA for poor-quality service (insufficeint voltage) in Rama Guzmán. The Ocinerg lawyers encouraged us not to file a complaint immediately but instead to try to work out an amiable solution with ENSA.

• On Ocinerg’s suggestion a trip to the ElectroNorte maintenance facility in Chiclayo. The engineers there have direct control over resources and after consulting Engineer Manayay they promised to look into the matter and give us an answer in a week.

• A week later I called Maintenance. They said that they could not proceed without a formal complaint filed with Ocinerg! If we filed a complaint how long would it take to schedule the installation of the required components? “About a month-and-a-half.”

• Since two weeks of Engineer Manayay’s month-and-a-half had already passed I returned to him for a solution. He said he thought I’d filed a complaint with Ocinerg. When I said I hadn’t, not yet, he promised to coordinate with the General Manager of ENSA and attempt to get the project back on track. I called three more times  during the following weeks. The third time Manayay told me that the problem had now been passed along to another engineer, Enrique Llontop, who was responsible for projects in the Monsefú area.

• I spoke with Llontop; he and Manayay came to Rama Guzmán to investigate the situation. By now I was speaking of the project with such familiarity and confidence that Llontop mistook me for the engineer who had drilled the well and overseen the water project. It turned out that Llontop’s family was from Callanca. Finally, we’d encountered a friendly face at ElectroNorte.

Does this look to you like a setup that would deliver 220 volts?

“About a month and a half” turned into about four months but Llontop came through for us. He secured a transformer worth 15,000 soles from his bosses at ElectroNorte. He put the project up for bids from outside vendors whose work it would be actually to execute the project. That company arrived and began to dig holes for posts and trim trees so that they wouldn’t interfere with the new lines. From that point on only the normal number of screw-ups occurred. For instance a dispute occurred because the road to the well is a private right of way owned by two persons; the property line runs down the middle of the road.  When ElectroNorte installed the posts leading to the well on one side of the road the owner of that half of the road demanded that they be removed and installed in the middle of the road so that they’d prejudice neither party. Everyone managed to shine on in the face of such idiocies and the electric project was finished by November of 2012, exactly one year after it was first proposed.

 

That’s how one and only one problem was resolved. If you multiply the number of bullets in the second bullet list above by the number of bullets in the first bullet list above you get the number of bullets we’ve pumped into our brains over the course of the past year trying to solve all the problems.

But none of that mattered so much on Saturday, January 12, 2013 when Miguel, a handyman from the Municipalidad, arrived at 7:00 o’clock in the morning to drive the golden spike that would connect the two wayward projects; that is, connect the well and its electric pump to the newly completed electrical grid in Rama Guzmán. Was the connection a streamlined, quick, efficient, high-tech procedure?  I’ll let you be the judge:

We’d scavenged about 50 meters of still-usable cable from the 20-year-old cable that comprised the wiring replaced by that of the recently completed electricity project. We carried a roll of this cable, a rickety ladder made out of crooked tree limbs, a length of rope, a wire cutter, a shovel and a machete with us to the well site. We used the ladder to access the electric pole nearest the well. By tying the rope to the end of the heavy electric cable and climbing high enough to attach the cable to the previously erected wooden post and threading the length of rope (followed by the cable) between tree limbs we were able to pass the cable from the first pole to the second, attach the cable, and thread the rope between tree limbs to the next post. In order to accomplish this one person stood on the ladder, another climbed a tree and hauled the cable between mangos and through openings in the foliage. When we got to the final post where the electric company´s cable ended, we pulled the cable taut from below while Miguel affixed it to the post and connected our cable to ENSA’s cable, standing not on the topmost rung of the ladder but in fact on the tops of the two rails of the ladder in order to reach the cable delivering the electric company’s 220 volts.

Digging up one of the electric poles from the obsolete project to use in an expansion of the new project.

At the well site, when we opened the door to inspect the well itself, a few bats flew out of the well hut—a little brick casette housing the well—that hadn’t been opened for a year. Everything seemed still to be in place, nobody had stolen anything nor by the looks of things had there been any serious deterioration of the components. Somebody climbed down into the well on a metal ladder affixed to the concrete casing of the well. He called for us to lower a rope; he tied something onto his end. We hauled up a 1.5 liter plastic bottle half-filled with what had once been Inca Kola and that been floating in the well water for a year.

A few meters from the well hut we dug a “pozo a tierra” about a meter-and-a-half deep, a hole where we could drive a length of rebar into the earth as a ground. We connected a length of copper wire to the rebar and connected the ground to the the wiring that would eventually connect to the control box for the pump. When the hole was dug and the ground installed, we refilled the hole, shoveling in dirt, then pouring in buckets of water mixed with mineral salts, then shoveling in more dirt.

We called Yesenia, a friend who was shopping in Chiclayo, and asked her to buy us a thermo switch to act as a breaker for the system in case of overloads or shorts. Miguel chiseled a few holes in the brick wall of the well hut so that we could insert the ground wire and the wiring that descended from the electrical pole nearest the well. He asked someone to bring him a lightbulb from a house nearby so that he could verify that current was reaching us. The lightbulb lit on the first try! He then chiseled a hole in the concrete apron of the well hut so that we could bring the ground wire up to the height of the switch, tested with the lightbulb again, and connected all the wires to the switch inside the well hut, using a butter knife he’d borrowed from a neighbor as a screwdriver.

We all watched anxiously while he tripped the switch, now connected to the pump. The submersible pump hummed happily twenty feet below us. Next we opened the lever that controlled the flow of water and my friend Victorio climbed a metal ladder on the face of the well tower and looked into one of the tanks. It was beginning to fill with water! It took the 1-horsepower pump about 50 minutes to fill three 2,500-liter tanks.

Finally, we opened the valve that connected the tanks to the community water system. Victorio ran to the nearest house and opened the valve controlling the household’s water and connected a length of hose to the open end of the pipe whose flow was controlled by the valve. I was watching from about 50 meters away. I saw a jet of water shoot out of the end of the hose! Everybody cheered.

I jumped on my bike and pedaled to the houses nearest the well, then to a dirt lane that is the main thoroughfare of Rama Guzmán, shouting, “Hay agua! Hay agua!” (Not “The British are Coming!” but “There’s water!”) I stopped occasionally to watch a family test their connection and confirm the arrival of the water and the force of the water pressure. Later in the day we found and sealed a few leaks in the system but as of Sunday, the following day, every family had its water.

It’s been said many times that water is life; that water is the most basic element that sustains us; but let me say it one more time because on this day it was clear exactly how much truth that statement contains. And the element that sustains life is even sweeter when it’s been a little bit difficult to come by.

One last thought: to the people I’m living with it’s a very, very big deal, it’s a luxury and they’re delighted, when water comes out of a hydrant in their front yard and they no longer have to haul it fifty meters in buckets from the nearest hand-dug well. I don’t know if that thought embarrasses you a little but it definitely does embarrass me. Not that that will keep me from whining about important stuff like too much foam in my latte when I get back to the U.S., but it's worth mentioning.

Yesenia (left) and Victorio (right).

Water

I’ve been working on two well projects in Callanca, one of which has gone so unbelievably badly that I haven’t mentioned it up to now. The other well project went smoothly and we inaugurated the well last week.

These are “artesian” wells; that is, holes in the ground about 40 feet deep lined with cement. An electric pump draws water from the well into an elevated tank and from there the well resembles our water systems in the U.S.—the elevated tank provides water pressure, a system of PCV pipes connects the tank to individual homes.

The Mormons—The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, otherwise known as Mitt’s Church—provided the funds for the well we inaugurated last week. They furnished funds for the well itself, the elevated tank, and a “caseta,” a small building enclosing the well. The Municipalidad provided the “tubería”—the PCV pipe—and some haphazard oversight of the project. The people of Rama Guzmán did the heavy lifting, they dug the 40-foot-deep well with the spades they use for turning the earth in their fields and also dug the ditches in which the Municipality laid the pipe.

I was interested in working on water projects because in 2009 I’d briefly assisted in a well project in Puerto Indio, a jungle town in Panama. I learned quite a bit about improvised water systems and that’s basically what the water systems in Callanca are like. They sort of work unless somebody decides to steal half the materials from the project or substitute inferior materials and pocket the price difference or unless the engineer in charge is a dope, which frequently he is.

 Elevated tank of a well in Puerto Indio, 

Panamá, 2009.

In these projects it’s hard to tell if the Municipality is stingy and inept or if the people whom the project will serve are out of touch and don’t know what’s going on because they’re not paying attention. At any rate, none of the beneficiaries of the project realized that they were going to have to dig the well and dig the ditches for the pipe that the Municipality was providing. Nor did they know that they’d have to pay out-of-pocket for almost every item that didn’t have printed on some easily accesible surface: I am a pipe. They had to pay for the meter and connection provided by the electric company to measure the electricity used by the well’s pump; they had to pay for the paint to paint the caseta; they had to pay an employee of the health department to chlorinate the water; when the well started to fill up with sand they had to pay to have the sand pumped out. Finally, when the project was nearly fully implemented, the Municipality sent a truck to haul away all the materials left over from the project, pipe, connections, valves, etc.—items that the community would need for repairs and replacement parts to keep the water system functioning properly in the future. So this will cost the residents money eventually as well.

It’s pretty much every man for himself in public projects in these parts. Or in any project for that matter. When a family is building a house or adding on an addition, a knowledgeable family member must be present full-time to oversee the project and make sure that an adequate number of bags of cement are used to pour the floor, that the bricks, gesso or paint specified in the agreement with the contractor are in fact the bricks, gesso or paint that the contractor uses, etc. Otherwise the builder steals half the materials and charges the owner for them.

The other well that I mentioned, the one whose implementation didn’t go exactly as planned, could conceivably be in operation by February. I’ll have a considerably longer story to relate when and if that happens.

The Duck Business

The duck farm is still functioning. Depending on your point of view it’s either functioning twice as well as before or half as well as before. The two young owners of the business have split it in half and are operating their shares of the business in separate locations.

For those of you who are new to this discussion, this small business, “Patos Callancanos, Tradición Peruana” won a business-plan competition in Lima in August of 2010. The two participants in the competition, Jesús and Erick, received 5,500 soles ($2,000) with which to initiate their business, a duck farm. A duck farm makes a lot more sense here in Callanca than it might in your hometown because there are fifteen restaurants in Callanca and every weekend 2,000 or so visitors from the nearby city of Chiclayo come to eat lunch (and dance and drink a lot of beer) in the rural surroundings of Callanca. The dish they most frequently order is Arroz con Pato, duck with rice.

So why did Jesús and Erick split up the business?

Man, I could write you a novel on that subject. “War and Peace” would make a good title for that novel both as regards its content and its potential page count. But I could easily cut it in half and entitle it simply “War.” That’s because in Callanca people love to fight with each other. I’m not sure why that is, I got here way too late to share in any true understanding of the reasons behind their anger and suspicion the one toward the other. But the fact is that it’s virtually impossible to make any kind of committee, project, business or even meeting function for any length of time without people bickering, accusing, taking sides and eventually standing up and walking out in a self-righteous huff. You’d think you were in a session of the U.S. Congress or something.

This attitude might be a function of the independence of the average Callancano. They’re farmers here (that’s why the people of Chiclayo come here to eat lunch, we’re country folk and we know how to cook well and entertain well) and like farmers in the U.S., they’re very independent. Some people have told me that it could also be a result of many promises offered and many promises broken over the years on the part of various governments—local, state and national. (But if that were the case how cynical would we be in the U.S.?) My personal feeling is that it has to do with a community-wide inferiority complex brought about by the fact that Callanca, in spite of having more than 5,000 residents, is still a part of the Municipality of Monsefú, a nearby town of 30,000. Also the lack of formal education in Callanca gives rise to an inability to appreciate the fundamentals of longterm planning, the wisdom of cooperation, mutual benefit, and the concept of “a rising tides lifts all boats.” Instead of embracing these principles, people get mad at each other and at the first sign of conflict they quit and go home.

So what happened was this. The duck business was functioning well on the property of the Gonzales, the family of Jesús. The business was earning a 20-25% profit after eight months of operation. Jesús and his mother, Iris, each owned a share of the business and Erick owned a third share. The key thing to remember here is that Erick’s surname is Eneque not Gonzales. The fact that there were two Gonzales and one Eneque running the business, coupled with the fact that the business was being operated on the land of the Gonzales, threw the balance of power way out of whack. Whenever there was a difference of opinion the vote went down two for the Gonzales point of view, one for the Eneque point of view. Whenever something went wrong it was always Erick’s fault. Erick wasn’t totally without blame, either. He’s an ex-soldier, very demanding both of himself and others (but mainly of others) and not very easy to get along with in many respects.

The way the breakup went down was something out of a bad “Hogan’s Heroes” episode. The night before they were to divide up the property belonging to the business (200 ducks, corrals, drinking troughs, feeding bins, cash, etc.), Erick was in nearby Lambayeque applying for a university program of study in which he’d been wanting to enroll. As an ex-military man, Erick had taken on the job of security for the business. This job is a serious one in Callanca; because it’s an isolated, rural area, there are many robberies of livestock and other properties. Erick’s job was to stay awake all night guarding the duck farm. He didn’t always do a perfect job of this, many nights the Gonzales had found him sound asleep and snoring, z-ed out on sacks of duck feed. But this night he did a particularly bad job, he didn’t show up at all.

By some incredible coincidence, a robbery occurred that night. Someone stole 33 ducks. Thirty-three just happened to be the number of ducks owed to Erick in the division of the business’s property from one of two flocks of 100 birds.

I can’t really offer any more insight into this strange turn of events than you can. Was it a real robbery and just a fantastic coincidence? Did the Gonzales steal the ducks in order to deprive Erick of his share and show him up as a lousy security specialist? If so why did they steal 33 out of one flock of 100 while leaving the other flock of 100 (older, bigger birds worth more money) intact? When they were going to receive 66 ducks out of that flock, robbery or no robbery, why would they stage a robbery so that they’d end up with the same 66 ducks? True, the ducks that went missing were worth maybe 300 soles ($100) but that’s not much compared to the total worth of the business, some 7,500 soles ($2,750). Certainly not worth the risk of being discovered stealing their own property.

At any rate, now we have two duck farms instead of one. This could mean that there’s twice the chance that the business in some form will survive. Or it could mean that because the business, by dividing intself in two, has essentially doubled its infrastructure costs and cut its inventory in half, it has much less chance of surviving than previously.

Only time will tell. And time isn’t talking, at least not yet….

Cocinas Mejoradas II

We finished our cocinas mejoradas project, twelve cookstoves for twelve families, 61 beneficiaries in all. My community counterpart Aldo Rodríguez and I funded this project with money left over from our renovation of a kindergarten six months ago.

Because our funds were limited ($750.00) we chose low-income families, families headed by single mothers or families that include women or children with respiratory or vision problems exacerbated by cooking over open fires. As you can see from the photos, the cocinas mejoradas contain the heat source and also divert smoke away from the kitchen area and expel that smoke and other contaminants via a metal chimeney similar to that of a woodstove used for home heating in the U.S.

The 12 families have been uniformly grateful for the stoves and satisfied with their operation. We installed the first stoves in July and have returned to visit the families and to monitor the use of the stoves and seek comments from the señoras.

We installed stoves in various sectors of Callanca so that neighbors of the families who benefited from the project would see the stoves in operation; we’ve received many requests for stoves, which could indicate that the families with stoves are very pleased with them or could also mean that pretty much anybody will react with enthusiasm when you’re giving something away. All we asked from the families was a contribution of 60 adobes (at a value of a grand total of 6 soles, two bucks) and some mud from which to make mortar.

We’re calling this a pilot project in hopes that we can use the positive results to generate funding for a more extensive—and expensive—project. We would like to construct 50 more stoves, which would cost some 10,000 soles ($3,700.00) or in other words about one quarter of one second of air time from an Obama or Romney campaign ad.

Cocinas Mejoradas

In June my friend Aldo and I attended a training: how to construct “cocinas mejoradas” (better or imporoved stoves) in La Libertad, the departamento next to Lambayeque, where we live. “Improved stoves” is really a misnomer, what cocinas mejoradas do is replace no stove at all, they’re for people who cook in their houses over open flames from fires fueled by wood. That practice is indeed as bad as it sounds, the walls of their kitchens are black with soot and you can deduce from that what the lungs of the poor women who cook over those fires must look like. They also get cataracts from years and years of exposing their eyes to the heat and smoke.

A cocina mejorada is essentially a very efficient pot-bellied stove. A chimney provides draft, the fire burns hot in a very confined space and uses much less wood than an open fire or “fogón.” The health incentive probably wouldn’t be enough to convince many families to use a cocina mejorada but that, paired with the economic benefit, is often enough to change their minds.

Aldo is an “albañil”—a bricklayer—so he was the right man for the job. We finished our stove in about eight hours spread over two days. Here’s how the work proceeds:

First you pour the “losa,” a slab of concrete that forms the stovetop and burners. It’s made of concrete so as to be resistent to heat. You trowel the concrete over wire mesh and rebar, which provide internal reinforcement. The preparation time is about two hours, more when there’s competition for materials and tools from 15 other Peace Corps volunteers and their community partners.

 

While the losa is drying you construct the base of the stove, made of adobe bricks held together with mud. Because the dimensions of the base and all the parts of the stove are standard and—due to engineering tolernces—unalterable, you have to hack up adobes with a machete to make them fit. Here’s Aldo constructing the base:

 

Next you construct the most important part of the stove, the “cámara” or combustion chamber. It’s made of fabricated clay bricks, seventeen of them, in order to be more resistent to the intense heat generated inside the stove. The interior of the cámara is 14.5 cm square, it’s height is 38 cm. These measurements evidently are ideal for the efficient generation and conduction of heat.

 

After you construct the cámara you basically bury everything in mud. You encase the cámara en adobes, then fill in all the gaps. Next you construct a low rim around the “mesa”—the upper surface of the stove—using chopped-up adobes. Into the exposed part of the mesa you shovel “barro mejorado” (better or improved mud), which is mud mixed with straw, goat shit and ashes to ensure better cohesion and better resistence to heat. You trowel the imporoved goat shit onto the mesa, using the same two pots you used when you poured the losa to define the positions of the two burners. You cut out a bit of extra space to allow heat to flow up and around the pots while food is cooking and a tunnel that allows heat to flow from one burner to the next and finally to the chimney.

Next you construct the chimney, which needs to measure exactly two meters, say the engineers. These two meters can be pure metal (more expensive) or adobe and metal as was the case with our chimney.

Finally, you install the concrete losa, seal it in place with mud, and attempt to light the stove. In order to better accommodate a fire, you need to rub down the still wet interior of the stove with ashes, then you plug one burner, drop a wad of paper and some splinters of wood down the other, then drop a lighted wad of paper into the hole and, if your lucky, the draft created by the combustion chamber sucks a pillar of flame up and out of the burner and you’re in business.

The owner of the new stove is very happy. Ideally, she’ll paint the walls of her kitchen, maybe the stove, too, and neither she nor anyone else in her family will die of or fall ill from a respiratory infection. Since the stove will burn 60% less wood than did her open fire, the stove and stoves like it will help slow global warming and deforestation. Not bad for 150 soles, fifty bucks.

Aldo and I plan to build ten in the next two months in Callanca and, if the owners seem happy with the results, fifty more in the next year.