7.7.10 or “The day in which we buy a rooster “

(the Kalinzi crew)

We woke up with the roosters before sunrise, our first day in the village. There isn’t as much commotion without the fishermen as there is in Mwamgongo, but village life starts early. Our group, Kevin, Parker , and Ryan is here mainly to work of the Coffee Stove in finishing the design and working on local manufacturing. There is a man who has been making things out of metal, including stoves, since 1984 who lives real close to the Field Station. We left right after breakfast with the intention of catching the metal worker before he headed out for the day. Turns out he had left, so we called some of the 6 woman who the spring group contacted to start talking to them. We spent a lot of the morning at Hafsa’s house talking with her and her husband and did some testing emissions and efficiency of her three stone stove.

Hafsa uses Mkaa (charcoal) and a mafiga matatu (traditional 3-stone stove) to cook all of her meals. She likes the three stone better because it is hotter and it is harder to get charcoal, because you have to buy it and it is expensive. We had a little trouble explaining this, but if charcoal weren’t so expensive, she still would prefer a 3-stone stove because it burns so strongly. She doesn’t like that the 3-stone produces so much smoke. She always cooks inside. When she starts cooking she says her kids start running because of the smoke. We did a simple efficiency (water boiling test) with her three stone stove, getting an efficiency of 10.5% (which is on the high end of that for 3-stone, but reasonable).

We swung by the Stove Maker’s house a couple of times, but he was off working at his farm all day. We fired up our stove on the front stoop of the field station, with much curiosity from people passing by. We swung by our neighbor’s house (another one of the women who is going to be testing our stove) and talked to her briefly about what we are going to be doing and what stoves she currently uses.

Over dinner with Rita and Tuma, who by the way are absolutely hilarious, we decided that we are going to buy chickens. It all started because the chicken that we were eating was just about to lay an egg before Tuma slaughtered it, plus eggs are good and have protein. Our decision was also helped because the man that sold Tuma the chicken came by with another one and eventually a rooster and we decided to raise chickens. Basically it costs the same as to eat them, and they will give us eggs (which are actually kind of expensive). So we bought our rooster, with the hens coming in the morning. There are already tons walking around, so it’s not like our rooster is really going to add to the noise, plus he has a nice strong crow. He is currently in the closet, because apparently if you keep a chicken locked up for 3 days it forgets where lives and just takes up residence (according to Tuma, our chicken raising master).

After all of this, we still dragged ourselves to the cinema to watch the Germany/Spain game. We all very tired, but the game was exciting and the locals were a lot more excited about it. The place was packed, we better get there early to get seats for the final.