"It all seemed like a good idea at the time, why not use the sun as the source for preparing the food instead of walking for miles with 20-40kg of firewood on your back..."
I just found two wonderful articles on third-world technologies that I wanted to share:
"DEVELOPMENT AND TESTING OF A REGENERATIVE RECHARGEABLE SOLAR STOVE SYSTEM".
From what I understand it was developed at a Univeristy in Ethiopia.
[
www.esmeet.org]
I especially love the part where they mention that solar cookers in their original form, apart from being unpractical and dangerous, created a sense of "apathy" around the whole meal :-)
I would love to test this during the summer months but the thought of five kilos of CaO (quicklime) in a box kinda scares me off :-E
Maybe I'll try gypsum instead!
And another one which it references, its from 1984.
Fuel-Saving Cookstoves, Aprovecho Institute
[
www.gate-international.org]
I especially like chapter 1. "How not to develop a stove"
The kind of cultural problems you can bang your head into with something as seemingly simple as a stove :-)
