La Mazateca Cookstove Launch party

La Mazateca Gen 2.1 Cookstove Launch Party
in NE Seattle

Sunday, March 18^th 1-5 PM
13714 37^th Ave NE
Seattle, WA 98125

The new and improved La Mazateca Gen2.1 cookstove is ready for production. Current Gen1 stove builders in Southern Mexico are super excited about the upcoming workshops to learn how to build and maintain the new stoves.

Please join us for an open house event to celebrate this exciting news from 1-5 PM on Sunday, March 18^th. We will be cooking on the new stove, so you can see it in action and try it out! For tickets, click Hear:

Can't make it? How about supporting our launch and the first stove builds in Chiapas, Oaxaca & San Luis Potosi by making a donation.

 

The Cook Stove Workshop Ended Yesterday

Well, we are back in Mexico City, after four days in the Mazateca to finish the cook stove workshop. We arrived in San Jose Tenango the evening of July 24 and started the continuation of the workshop on the 25th. During the two and a half week break in the workshop, detailed lesson plans were made so that we had specific goals for each remaining day of the workshop. Each day was to end with a concrete, mortar or insulation (perlite) pour so that it could harden overnight.

For the most part, we achieved our goals each day. The exception was the final two days. On Saturday, the 27th, we wanted to complete the chimney, but we did not. The final smooth mortar for the stove top was, however, completed and there was plenty of time to install the chimney on the final day. On the last day, we ran out of sand and, therefore, could not do the final mortaring of the interior gas path (takes about one hour). The good news, though, is that Leo Dan who did this on one of the pilot stoves, lives close by and knows exactly what to do.

All in all, the workshop went well. Eighteen promoters (attendees) participated, asked a lot of questions, learned a lot, tried a lot of processes/procedures and are ready to make more stoves to really learn the process well. We are returning to Seattle tomorrow night (Tuesday, 7/30) and plan to come back in September to work with the promoters as they build eighty-eight more stoves. Meanwhile, THP and the communities have an enormous task ahead of them: to finish purchasing all the parts, transporting them to the area, distributing them properly so that each community gets the number needed for its planned stoves and manually moving the parts from the closest road to each community (up to a three hour hike).

On the bus to Haualta

We got the 8:45 bus to Haualta from the south bus station "TAPO". Axel's mom gave us a ride to the station. We drove around a few times as the main entrance was closed. The bummer of the day is we got seats with less leg room. Our knees will be bruised. The ride is a good 6+  hours. The bus stops now and then to pick a up food vendors.  For me bus & plane rides are a chance to do some fun reading. On this ride I am reading "Red' by Terry Tempest Williams. My head is deep in red rock country :)

After we leave Haualta, we will be off line as in Tenango there is only one Internet cafe, with limited hours. We have a satellite phone but it is$1.50 a minute to make a call.

Thus, wish us good luck with our stove building, and we hope to post an update when we have a good connection.

One more night in Mexico City

We finally got the go ahead to go back to San Jose Tenango, but like most things in Mexico we will travel a day later than we thought.  We will take the bus from Mexico City to Haualata a 6+ hour trip. where Roberto will pick us up and take us to San Jose Tenango.

Our plan is to finish the one stove we started before the elections.  If all goes well we will start work - workshop on Thursday morning and we should complete the stove - workshop and light a fire in it, on Sunday afternoon.  But you never know how things will go until it is complete.

We are happy to get back to what we came to do, however the full scale (building the 88 stoves) program will not resume late September.

We will be offline (satellite phone only) until we leave San Jose Tenango and get to Haualta (cell coverage starts- ends there), on our way back to Mexico City (hopefully on Monday morning).

Wish us luck and successful building - cooking.

Love and Hate Sketch-Up

Like it or not I have been using SketchUP for a few months trying to make reasonably good drawings of our latest stove.  SketchUp is a great "free" CAD drawing program. However, it is very much "a figure it out as you go" kind of process (IE 2 steps forward and 1 step backwards). I have had my moments of frustration trying to draw something I can visualize but can't figure out how to draw it in SketchUp. I did not start this process wanting to become a SketchUp "sort of expert" but this is what I have become, like it or not.  Below are a few examples of our new stove.

The second challenge is the design has changed significantly since we arrived in Mexico to accommodate some different internal materials.  And the difficulty - frustration is exacerbated by the fact that I am using my mini computer (10" screen and no mouse)!

I know a ProE  "Jockey" could make these drawings in no time, but I am no expert in this and I really don't want to be one.

This design is a small step improvement from our original design which is easier to build, but not the final  design which will be much easier to build and significantly cheaper.

Local elections have interrupted our workshop....

We went to San Jose Tenango on July 3rd and are back in Mexico City now because of political unrest in that area. We started the cook stove workshop on July 4th, working with the masons to build the foundation for the stove. July 5th turned out to be a long day because the masons built the stove walls. It was after dark before they finished, but the walls hardened overnight and everything was set and ready to go the next morning. July 6th we arrived ready to build the fire boxes. We got as far as cutting the cardboard forms, setting them in the brick enclosure, backfilling them to their proper heights and putting a layer of cement on top of the backfill. The next steps were to set the fireboxes (firebricks, insulated firebricks and a wooden firebox chimney form) & pot stands in place and filling the cardboard firebox forms with perlite for insulation. The plan was to do those next steps on Tuesday, July 9th, after taking a couple of days off for local elections. The afternoon of the 6th, The Hunger Project worked with the promoters (the workshop attendees) to coordinate their activities after the workshop. At that time, they passed out the list of families from each of the four communities who are on the cook stove list.

But, “the best laid schemes of mice and men go often awry.” Elections were held on Sunday, July 7th. The results came in and the final count had the top two vote getters within 400 votes of one another, out of 7,500 cast. Monday night the losing party decided to show their dissatisfaction with dynamite and gun play, which made the national news here. The Hunger Project decided to pull out of the area completely and to wait until the vote is certified and the local community has calmed down before resuming the cook stove project. We are now in Mexico City and will meet at The Hunger Project Headquarters tomorrow to determine our next steps.