Report on South African Solar Cooking Workshop

Posted by Craig Clarke

In late February, Patti Thornton and Wendi Hammond from the Rotary Club of Fresno travelled to South Africa to conduct a workshop on integrated solar cooking methods. Our club donated $100 through the Sustainability Trust in support of their travel to conduct the workshop.

The small Rotary Club of Grahamstown assembled various members of the community who are in touch through their work with people who could most benefit from Integrated Solar Cooking methods. Our training partner was GADRA (Grahamstown Area Disaster / Relief Association - http://nml.ru.ac.za/ngo/gadra/index.php) and their facility was our training site. This was a perfect match in all ways – facility, staff, and location. Director Carol Johnson and past director (and former Rotarian) Pauline Wilson were invaluable.

Trainees serve in the social services field. They and the clients they serve in the community have been using "hot boxes," their term for hay baskets, for some years. In fact, GADRA provides a facility for women in the community to make pillows that can be sold to provide income. This familiarity moved the integration of the solar cooking curriculum ahead of schedule allowing us accomplish the making of solar ovens for everyone in attendance by the end of our first day.

The second day we used their ovens to prepare the food most often cooked by the people of the townships in South Africa – Pap, samp and beans, cabbage, butternut squash and spinach. Pap is what we know as grits in the US and is the staple of their diet. Cooking it from cold water met with skepticism from all until it was successfully prepared in a solar oven and turned out exactly as it would have been had it been cooked over a fire for hours with constant stirring. All were surprised and especially pleased with this outcome. We served the food we had prepared for lunch and all of us proclaimed the food delicious and very nutritious. While food was cooking in the solar ovens we all assembled a 20 brick rocket stove together and used it for the preparation of the samp and beans.

Because we were demonstrating these alternative cooking methods to people who have used paraffin (or three stone fires) for food preparation, they were able to inform us of the savings this would be to their clients who are spending as much as R16 per day for paraffin. Calculating a conservative estimate of 100 days per year of full sun for successful solar cooking this would be an annual savings of R1600, enough, according to them, to pay school fees for several children!!

Additionally, we learned that although improvements have been made in townships since the end of Apartheid, many residents still lack access to safe drinking water, so the little WAPI was received with much enthusiasm. Because our students work directly with many who are receiving anti-retroviral treatment for HIV/AIDS, safe water and a regular, nutritious diet is extremely important. All were very enthused about the benefit of Integrated Solar Cooking for their work in the community.

This is condensed from the report which is available on the Rotarians for Sustainability web page: http://www.thesustainabilitytrust.org/pdf/solarcookingreport.pdf .