Kathy Randall
From Solar Cooking
My name is Kathy Randall and I am a Peace Corps Volunteer living in Kenya, Africa. I live in a small town named Kajiado, in the middle of Masai land. The Masai are wonderful people, and I love living among them. Two hours south of Nairobi, Kajiado is cool-to-chilly at night and warm-to-hot during the day. I have electricity but no running water. I have no refrigerator, but I've learned which foods keep and which do not. And I have maps of the World, the US, and Kenya on my walls to help me keep my perspective.
Made famous by the Leakey family and Donald Johanson as the birthplace of humanity, Kajiado is in the Rift Valley. Unfortunately, it is an arid area, with sparse, erratic rainfall. Trees are few and far between. One of the direct consequences of this is that there little firewood is available, and it is becoming an expensive commodity. Many women will spend half the day foraging for firewood. That is why I am working with Solar Cookers International (SCI).
Based in Sacramento, Calif. SCI is bringing the good news of free, clean solar energy for cooking and pasteurizing water to East Africa.
The solar panel cooker cuts in half the amount of wood to be gathered, freeing up the women to search for water or do any of the hundreds of tasks that must be done each day. On a good solar cooking day, the food will take about twice as long to cook as traditional methods, but with a little planning, the food will cook, and there is no fire to attend or smoke to get into the eyes or lungs. With practice, there is even less oil needed.
Solar cooking preserves the fragile nutrients that are damaged at high heat. The materials for a panel cooker are locally available and easy to assemble so that the women can learn to make them and sell them as an income-generating activity.
[Text for this page was adapted from http://new.savannahnow.com/node/244698]
[edit] External links
- March 2007: A life in the Peace Corps: Public health volunteer in Kenya - Savannah Morning News
