First VICOBA Demonstration

On Monday, we had our first demonstration of our briquette press to a VICOBA group. We arrived at their meeting and they were so intrigued that they stopped the meeting and wanted to go outside to see how the press worked.

Before heading outside though, we made sure to ask some questions about the feasibility of briquettes in the area. We found out that the average household spends about 2,000 tsh on a bundle of wood per day. They also told us that it is also somewhat difficult to collect their own wood since there are policies in place such as needing to plant one tree for every tree cut down, though these rules are loosely enforced or followed. The village this VICOBA serves is an agricultural region with plenty of waste plant materials although they don’t have access to much waste paper. We thought that their answers to our questions suggested that a briquetting program might be successful here.

The people in the VICOBA also thought that such a program might be a good alternative and took careful notes as we explained the benefits of briquetting and the process of briquetting. We passed around some partially dried briquettes and then made an example briquette with a paper, rice husk, saw dust mixture we brought with us. The VICOBA members were so excited to see how they were made that they lined up and made their own briquettes. Soon, they started a competition to see whose briquettes were most firmly pressed. There wasn’t a clear winner, but there was certainly a clear loser, us.

We left the VICOBA group anticipating how a briquetting program could work there. The group was already talking about composting its own materials and making its very own briquettes. They were hoping we would leave the press behind for them to practice as making one seemed to costly. Because we needed the press for visiting other groups, we had to say no. Their ask did make us wonder how we could cut down on the price of the press so that it could be more affordable.

We came back and researched some other press designs and settled to have another one made which would be easier to make and require half as much wood. On Tuesday, we met with Kalalu again and commissioned press number two. We are hoping to leave the presses with EARD-CI to distribute at some subsidized price to the most promising village groups.