This, she explains, is the result of education.
Every month in the camps near El Fasher town, a team of health workers—elected by their community and trained by Oxfam—fans out to bring messages about health and hygiene to thousands of residents. The workers go house to house, teaching newcomers about disease vectors, hand washing, and the use of latrines, and they organize community-wide campaigns to clean everything from streets to latrines to household water cans.
You might think people would resent unsolicited advice about their personal habits, but the health workers generally get a warm welcome. Women, who have the primary responsibility for the care of children and homes, are happy to receive this information, say the workers. And for the most part they take the advice.
"If they don’t want to accept what we are saying, we don't go harsh on them," says health worker Halima Nasur "We just communicate the information peacefully." But the cost of not heeding hygiene messages could be outbreaks of deadly disease, so the health workers sometimes ask community leaders to intervene. "They nicely teach a woman the importance of our work to her family. Then she listens."
For the health workers, their job is a labor of love. "I believe that all the people in the camp are my sisters and brothers," says Nasur. "We are never going to let our people down."
When it came to guarding the health of her family and community, Gado needed no coaxing. "From the public health women, I learned to cover food to keep away flies because they transmit diseases. I also learned about keeping things clean—our jerry cans, kitchen utensils, latrines, and my children's hands," she says. "Previously, my children didn’t wash their hands before they ate. They were often weak and not healthy. Now, they wash their hands before eating. They don't suffer from diarrhea, and if they happen to get sick, it isn't something serious."
Once learned, it is hard to forget the life-and-death importance of good hygiene practices, and according to Gado, the work of Oxfam and the community health workers is likely to have a lasting impact. "I learned these values, and I'm going to apply them throughout my life," she says. "I would like to thank all of the people who have supported us," says Gado, "and I wish them good health."
]]>Over time, that will mean one third of the dangerous fuel-gathering trips to the countryside, one third the loss of trees, one third the smoke inhaled by Dawelbiat and her young ones, one third the air emissions. And now that she is buying her fuel in the marketplace, she’s spending a third of what she used to and has more money to feed and clothe and educate her children.
Her stove—known as the Berkeley-Darfur Stove—is the brainchild of the Darfur Stoves Project (DSP), a US-based Oxfam partner organization that draws on the work of engineers at the Lawrence-Berkeley National Laboratory in California. DSP worked with women in Darfur to develop a stove suited to their needs that would use less than half the fuel of a traditional three-stone fireplace and significantly less than other stove models that are available locally. The result is a portable 12-sided metal stove - around 12” in every dimension - that is as advanced in its design as it is simple in its construction. And whose frugal output is a match for the scarce resources of the Darfur camps.
On a day in December, while her daughter and a friend play on a mat behind her and a neighbor holds her ten-month-old baby, Dawelbiat sits down on a low stool next to her stove and begins to cook her family’s mid-morning meal. The kitchen is a low mud-brick building, shadowy but brightly lit where the sun slips in through the doorway.
She places a pot of water on the stove, adds a few pieces of wood to the firebox, and sets the fire going with a match. When the water boils, she sprinkles ground millet into the pot and stirs it with a long, carved wooden stick until she’s created a thick porridge—known as asida—which she sets aside in a bowl. The next course is mullah, a soup made of onions fried in oil with dried meat, crushed tomato, okra, and spices. And finally, tea. In the space of an hour, Dawelbiat and her fistful of kindling have produced a meal for six.
At the compound of Oxfam partner SAG (Sustainable Action Group) in nearby El Fasher, the usual sounds of a Darfur town—the roar of vehicles, the clatter of grain mills, and the bleats and brays of animals—is replaced with the banging of metal on metal. Here in a building sided and thatched with sorghum stalks, eight men from the Al Salaam camp work at tables assembling Berkeley-Darfur stoves. They smile at visitors and get back to work, bending and hammering metal into its designated size and shape. To the list of benefits of the stoves can be added one more: employing survivors of the conflict, who—uprooted from their homes and farms—struggle to find any work at all.
So far, SAG and the workers from the camps have produced and distributed around 9,000 stoves. With enough funds, they’ll create 15,000 stoves in 2011. Some will go to the camps, others to rural areas hard up against the deadly combination of deforestation and armed conflict.
Dawelbiat is shy with strangers, but her praise for the stove is effusive all the same. “The stove is good because it’s efficient and saves fuel and cooks faster. It’s better at keeping the kitchen clean, and there is less smoke. You can easily cook with it and easily move it around. Even a small portion of fuel can make your food.”
“More people should have these stoves,” she concludes.
It is a point that no one argues.
]]>Many women in Darfur no longer have homes. They are living in crowded camps for displaced people where the simple stoves on which they cook define their days—days filled with treks for firewood that expose them to attacks and sexual assault, with dangerous hunts for work to earn money for stove fuel, with painful decisions about selling some of the food donors give their families so they can use the cash to buy fuel to cook the rest.
All of these choices are grim. But in Darfur, where more than six years of conflict have set 2.8 million people adrift, this is the reality. And that's why Oxfam America is launching an initiative, together with the Darfur Stoves Project and an in-country organization called Sustainable Action Group, to bring a new kind of wood-burning stove into the camps, a stove designed to reduce dramatically the amount of firewood families need each day.
The initiative is the latest step in Oxfam's ongoing program to help women in Darfur find cheaper and more efficient ways to cook. The goal is not only to keep them safer by cutting the amount of time they spend searching for wood beyond the safety of the camps, but to reduce the demand for the resource which is leading to severe deforestation in some areas.
"A huge issue for Darfur is its fragile environment," says Emily Farr, Oxfam's humanitarian livelihoods specialist who is overseeing the stove project. "Firewood is becoming more and more scarce, and large tracts of land—especially around some of the camps—have lost all their trees."
Called the Berkeley-Darfur stove, this new device could go a long way toward addressing that problem.
Made from sheets of metal, the new stove incorporates ideas provided by women themselves in the camps. Its design looks deceptively simple. A small opening for the firebox prevents too much fuel from being stuffed inside. The stove has tabs that can hold a plate for baking bread. And vents have been designed to limit the amount of air rushing in on gusty days.
Many women still cook on traditional stoves: three stones lodged into the ground with a chunk of firewood or charcoal burning in the center and a pot resting on top. The Berkeley-Darfur stove is 75 percent more efficient than the traditional stove and 50 percent more efficient than the clay models some families use. The metal stoves, which cost $20 each to make, last about five years—a good deal longer than the clay versions which can collapse after just four months.
Oxfam's plan calls for the distribution of 9,120 of the new stoves. Kits with all the parts are being manufactured in India, but the stoves themselves will be assembled in Darfur—with the help of local hands. That's one of the key objectives of the program: to offer displaced people training and a chance to earn a little income. Expectations are that each worker will be able to build about six stoves a day.
In a place that gets so much sun so much of the year why not provide people with solar cookers?
"In each of the camps where we work we have to consider what suits the situation best," says Farr. "Solar stoves can't be the only kind people have because there are many foods that can't be easily cooked using the existing affordable solar technology. If people can't cook their normal foods, they won't use the stove."
Likewise, in regions where there is a reliable supply of gas, it makes sense to equip people with gas stoves because they can be a lot cheaper for a family to operate than a traditional wood stove. In camps near urban areas, families can spend between $55 and $95 a month on wood for their traditional stoves. It's their second biggest expense after food. Refilling a gas cylinder costs $18, and the gas can last between one to two months. Gas stoves are also cleaner than wood—and women appreciate not having their clothes and bodies shrouded in smoke.
Oxfam and the Sudan Action Group also provided gas stoves to some of the families in Al Salaam and Abu Shouk camps outside El Fasher, the capital of North Darfur.
"People loved the gas stoves because the fuel is cheap, it burns clean, and food cooks very quickly," says Farr. "However, there are challenges with the supply chain: gas stoves are only an option where gas is readily available, such as in more urban areas." She notes that one local entrepreneur started a business ferrying empty canisters from a camp into El Fasher where he would have them filled and then return them to the camp –for a fee of 45 cents per canister.
While the majority of people who tried the stoves could afford them, some families found the monthly cost of the gas at $18 a canister too steep.
The cost of fuel—whether it's gas or wood—and its availability are things all stove projects have to take into account. If gas is available, will people have the money to purchase it? If not, then a smart stove project will include a way for people to earn an income, says Farr.
"In a place where we're using a model that burns wood and people are collecting it, we need to integrate peace-building and protection. Even if a stove uses less wood, women still have to go out and collect it—and they need protection," says Farr.
And so does the environment, she adds. Good stove projects, like Oxfam's, include public education about the environment and steps to protect it such as asking community members to plant and nurture tree seedlings.
]]>With some champions in Congress and support from the White House, we're hoping to see domestic legislation that not only fines companies who pollute, but also uses some of these funds to help affected communities build their resilience. If we are successful domestically, we can lay the groundwork for a global deal at the UN Climate Change Conference this December—an agreement that will create a more hospitable climate for us all.
Also in this issue: A force of peace in Peru; Rebuilding in Bangladesh; Oxfam America's new role in Darfur.
]]>So, three times a week, and sometimes more, women from the Abu Shouk and Al Salaam camps head out on four-hour treks to scavenge for fuel. If they don't come upon any trees, the women resort to clawing through the hard-packed earth to reach bits of root that they can burn instead.
But hard work is only part of their problem. Looming larger for these women is the constant threat to their safety: By venturing even a short distance outside of the camps they could face harassment, sexual assault, or even death. Since early 2003, conflict has wracked this region, forcing more than 2 million people from their homes. Many of them have sought shelter in camps like Abu Shouk and Al Salaam. But the demands of daily living—the need for wood, for jobs, for food—often require them to leave the safety of those camps.
Now, Oxfam America, together with the Sudanese Agency for Environment and Development Service (SAEDS), has launched a $132,000 program that will help thousands of displaced women stay safer in this volatile place. The agency is providing 4, 200 households with fuel-efficient stoves that, in many cases, will completely remove the need for women to hunt for wood. Two thousand of the stoves are kerosene-fueled; another 2,000 are efficient wood-burning stoves; and 200 of them use gas. The project will benefit about 25,200 people.
Women were excited about getting the stoves, said Sahar Ali, an Oxfam America program officer, who paid a monitoring visit to Abu Shouk in late January.
"Traditionally, the provision of firewood and fuel for cooking has been the responsibility of women," said Ali, in a report she filed after the visit. "There are few other sources of cooking fuel available to them."
But with the introduction of kerosene and gas, they now have other options. And the small round stoves that burn wood efficiently—as opposed to open fires—means women will need to make fewer of the dangerous scavenging trips.
Still, convincing women that gas is a smart way to cook has taken some doing, said Ali. They worried about its hazards.
"This is the first time for them using gas, and most of the houses are made from wood," said Ali. "If it burns, it burns all the camp. They said we prefer kerosene—not the gas."
The hesitancy about gas notwithstanding, the new stoves are bringing another important benefit to the region, too: some relief for the environment.
"North Darfur is mostly desert, and the few trees that provided a nearby source of cooking fuel when the camps were first created more than two years ago are all gone," said Ali in her report.
It's a trend that Ibrahim Suliman, a program coordinator for SAEDS, has watched for the past four decades as it's crept across the region.
"When I was a child, most of Darfur was covered in forest—even North Darfur," said Suliman, a native of Dar el Salaam, a small village about 30 miles south of El Fasher. But in the last 30 years, those trees and grasses have given way to desert. Why?
"Because of overgrazing," said Suliman. "Because there is no planning for animal breeding. And the firewood for cooking. And for houses—people build their houses from wood. And charcoal traders."
But with the introduction of the stoves, some of that degradation can be slowed since less wood will be needed for cooking. Suliman has even convinced his mother to switch to kerosene.
"She's very happy. It's clean," he said.
SAEDS is taking its concern for the environment a step further: It has launched a replanting project in Dar es Salaam and plans to begin a similar effort around the camps.
"Our philosophy is to restock the forest and all these things will be improved," said Suliman. "If we try to stop cutting trees and every year we try to plant many new trees, within four to five years we will be able to restock a big amount of trees. And we'll be able to at least make the environment more attractive than before and people can find grasses for their animals and be able to cultivate again. It might take a long time, but we have to start."
In Dar el Salaam, thanks to SAEDS, about 4,500 new saplings are now growing.
"In five to 10 years, I'm sure it will be green," said Suliman.
Near El Fasher, trees might also grow again. Oxfam's project with SAEDS calls for the planting of 10,000 seedlings around the camps. Families who have recently received the fuel-efficient stoves will be mobilized to do the planting.
]]>If she does, there's a chance she will be beaten or raped. If she doesn't, she won't be able to cook breakfast for her children. Even the donkey might starve. Piles of rotting carcasses along one edge of the camp are a constant reminder that many other animals have perished.
Muna isn't her real name, but the difficult choices this mother of five has to make are very real. And so are the dangers she and countless other women face each day in Darfur. In some camps, women, children, and old men make up the majority of the population. Many of the younger men have been killed in attacks.
Not collecting firewood or fodder would have other consequences as well. The first provides cash to help Muna feed her family, and the second keeps her donkey healthy enough to haul water.
Muna and her children are among the hundreds of thousands of families in Darfur who receive monthly food distributions from the World Food Program. The staple grains, a protein-rich mix of corn and soy, and cooking oil are a welcome contribution, but Muna needs a few other ingredients to prepare even the most basic meal. She sells some of the firewood in the local market to earn a few extra dinars to buy onions, tomatoes, dried okra, or chilies to supplement her family's diet. Without the firewood, she would have to sell a portion of the food ration itself in order to buy the additional items. But the amount she receives each month is already barely enough to survive.
The donkey fodder is also very important, since Muna needs her donkey to carry water from the nearby well several times a day. When that well runs dry, as it often does this time of year, she must travel even farther to fetch water. This, too, can be a perilous journey that exposes her to potential violence.
But even the camp that Muna shares with 15,000 other displaced people isn't particularly safe. The straw walls of her small compound provide some privacy, but no real protection. Her "house" is just a shelter made of sticks and plastic sheeting. Sometimes armed men come into the camp at night. They shout and laugh and fire their guns into the air, terrorizing the population.
On the day an Oxfam team arrived for a field visit, the body of a camp resident had been found near the dry riverbed on one side of town. People said he had been beaten to death during the night. The previous week, a group of men from outside the camp visited a house not far from Muna's. They beat the man who lived in the house and raped his wife.
Beyond the perimeter of the camp where Muna lives, there are other groups of people who don't seem afraid at all. Nomadic tribes continue to roam freely in this area. Some of them ride horses and camels, and some of them carry guns. They keep watch over enormous herds of cattle, camels, sheep, and goats. Their animals graze peacefully among the charred ruins of mud-brick huts in the many abandoned villages that dot the landscape.
Of course, not all nomadic tribes are affiliated with the notorious Janjaweed militias that continue to terrorize civilians throughout Darfur. But the contrast is striking: Most of the nomads the Oxfam team met in the Wadi Salih area were confident, reasonably well-fed and secure, while Muna and her neighbors are often sick and hungry, and live in constant fear.
Although people in Muna's camp can see their destroyed village in the distance, they insist that it is too dangerous to return. The armed groups prowling the countryside have effectively imprisoned the displaced Sudanese in the camp.
Retrospective mortality studies have shown that violence has been the leading cause of death in Darfur since the region plunged into conflict in February 2003. It is difficult to calculate exactly how many people have died, but one thing is dreadfully clear: The violence continues.
Every morning, in hundreds of camps and towns across Darfur, mothers like Muna get up to face yet another day filled with threats of robbery, murder, and rape. The fear is debilitating, but the options are few. After agonizing over the alternatives, Muna will go out to collect firewood and fodder. She can't afford not to.
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