First Few Days in Kigoma

After 28 hours on a bus, we were super excited to reach Kigoma. We traveled to Kigoma to review the progress of the rocket stove, an improved cook stove which uses less wood and burns more cleanly, developed and distributed during the past two years with the Jane Goodall Institute (JGI). Preliminary conversations with JGI officials suggested strong progress in the distribution of the stove. Staff members also described some challenges that needed to be addressed to further the distribution of the stove.

Grace, the staff member at JGI who has worked most closely with DHE in the past was away on leave, so we began to arrange conversations with other JGI workers. First, we spoke to Mr. Kashula who has been working with Grace on similar projects at JGI. He said the rocket stove has been distributed to many villages and was spreading well. Mr. Kashula was very excited about the project’s environmental and health benefits. He then introduced members to Sood Ndimuligo, who could further help DHE members answer some questions.

Sood was very well informed of the project and also confirmed that it was doing well. He then listed out a number of people we could talk to in order answer other questions. He suggested we speak to Mr. Mtiti, who would be coming back from Dar es Salaam the next day, to learn more about the distribution and challenges of the stove. He then said we should try to speak to Fish, a field worker currently working with a grad student who has worked with DHE members in the past on rocket stoves and briquetting. Fish has also done follow up monitoring on the rocket stove with Grace and other JGI workers. DHE members in the summer of 2011 left a briquette press with Fish, so we hope to be able to speak with him to see what progress Fish has made on the project. Sood also said that he will be in touch when Grace returns in one week from her leave to arrange a meeting. He said she will be best suited to arrange a meeting with Joram, who has a biogas digester that we would be interested to learn more about. He also said that there would be a worker who has worked closely with the JGI officer in Arusha who may be able to give more information on collaboration between DHE and JGI in Arusha. Sood concluded the discussion promising a meeting with Mr. Mtiti the following afternoon.

We met with Mr. Mtiti the next afternoon. Mr. Mtiti had much feedback about the rocket stove. He said that JGI has in total facilitated the construction of over 10,000 stoves, up from 6,800 last year. This number, he further explained, did not even account for stoves built a degree removed from JGI by community members who had learned from JGI. Mr. Mtiti acknowledged that JGI is continuing to mainstream an evaluation method which has been preliminarily developed. He said that there was no monitoring system in the beginning. Now that there is a need for monitoring, JGI has developed a monitoring method. He arranged a meeting for the following day with Elikana, one of the evaluation officers, who had some initial findings to share.

Mr. Mtiti then continued the conversation with some challenges to the stove. First, he brought up the issue of repairing the stoves. Villagers, he said, are not adequately able to fix their own stoves. The villagers are also not fond of having to pay a necessary service fee to have their stove repaired by knowledgeable community members. He said that the metal piece also needs a life span evaluation which is under development. Another factor related to repairs he mentioned was that in order to use the stove size given for larger families, some cooks would fill the pot up more so that the water spilled at times. The spilling, he said, would lead to cracking in the stove. The inefficiency of the stove for large family sizes was the root challenge he said. He stressed that the stove only worked at its peak for certain family sizes.

Overall though, Mr. Mtiti was very pleased with the stove and wanted to make sure the challenges would be addressed so that the distribution of the stove could be vastly expanded. Mr. Mtiti said that the region JGI is currently working with has roughly 45,000 households, 10,000 of which have the improved stove. His goals is for 50,000-60,000 households to eventually be using the rocket stove, the additional households would be from other villagers not in their region who would learn of the stove second hand.

We met with Elikana the following day. Elikana has been working with a team of workers at JGI including Grace and Fish to evaluate the distribution of the rocket stove. Elikana had a lot of feedback from users on the stove. He described a questionnaire study of 211 households across the villages JGI has been working with. He said that there has been a greater acceptance of the stove in the northern regions where wood is more scarce as opposed to the southern areas where wood is still plentiful.

Elikana gave a number of challenges to the rocket stove as well. He said that the stove is not well suited for making ugali, which requires aggressive stirring. He also repeated what Mr. Mtiti said about how the stove is not as well suited to large families. The pot cooks more quickly in the middle compared to the outside, he said, so either it has to be stirred more frequently or it does not cook well. One reason villagers prefer the three stone stove is that the fire is ready to go right away whereas the rocket stove needs a few minutes to heat up. Another large issue villagers have been experiencing is that the stove releases smoke into their homes. The stove works well if in a well ventilated area. Unfortunately, many village house styles are not well ventilated and the lack of a chimney causes the smoke to be inhaled. An additional challenge Elikana mentioned was that the stove is large and once made, it cannot be moved. Three stone users find this to be a benefit of their stove type. That the stove cannot be moved has additional issues for users as well. If built outside, the stove cannot be used well during the rainy season. Stuck outside, the stove can be ruined by the weather and free grazing animals if it is outside. The stove also cannot be built in the rainy season.

Elikana then described the stove repair process in place. He stated that there are people in place who know how to repair the stoves. These people however, require payment for their services. When they provide the service though, they show other villagers again how to build and fix their stoves again so that the villagers can maintain their stoves independently.

Elikana shared some of his thoughts on having other options for villagers. He said that giving villagers the options of a rocket stove, sawdust stove, coffee husk stove, or briquettes lets them choose which option is best for them. He was supportive of briquetting and was interested to learn about the progress DHE students have been making. He expressed concern about using paper in briquettes but was excited to learn that DHE students will be trying to create a 100 percent agro briquette mixture. Elikana suggested the use of palm press cake as a binder. He was very excited with the work JGI and DHE have done on alternative fuel technologies and is open to any ideas for expansion.