Bulyowa Village celebrates as the community constructs its first stoves

The people of Bulyowa Village work together diligently to build the first two demonstration stoves in their village. Stoves dramatically improve health and safety, especially for women and children.

The people of Bulyowa grinned last week as they chopped grass, mixed mud and shaped the stoves aimed at improving their daily lives and the health of the community. The work was strenuous but joyful. The community members sang and laughed because they knew that these stoves were an alternative to the hardships of smoke-filled and inefficient cooking huts.

Open cooking fires pose many problems in households across the Busoga region in Uganda: The wood burns quickly, causing women to spend hours each day collecting firewood; children can easily trip on the exposed wood, causing hot food or liquid to spill on them; the smoke does not ventilate, causing respiratory problems for women and children who spend long hours in the dark huts. 

Stoves — constructed from materials found freely around the village — can change all of that.

With the help of Kibo staff members Harriet, Jeska and Tape, village community members gathered on Wednesday to build the first two demonstration stoves in Bulyowa. Together, they wheeled dirt from termite mounds, gathered grass from across the village and carried water from the local well. They mixed the materials in the correct proportions and carried the clay-like mixture into the huts to be shaped into stoves.

Step 1: Collect Materials

The two main resources necessary to make a stove are grass and dirt. The dirt comes from termite mounds, since termite saliva acts as an adhesive.

Step 2: Chop the Grass

The grass must be chopped finely. Like the dirt, the grass used to make stoves is found across the Busoga region, so it is freely accessible to anyone who wishes to build a stove.

Training in Progress

The Kibo staff walks the community members through making the stoves. Every time Kibo returns to the village to help build stoves, the staff does less and empowers the village to do more.

Step 3: Mix It All Together

The dirt and grass are combined in the correct proportions — two parts dirt to one part grass.

A Community Effort

Everyone must work together to help build the stoves. Even with all hands on deck, the process takes several hours.

Step 4: Just Add Water

Water is sprinkled over the dirt and grass to help the materials stick together.

Step 5: Dance It Off

Bulyowa Village danced and sang as they stomped on the dirt-grass-water mixture until it formed a clay-like substance.

A Family Affair

Because women do most of the cooking in villages, men sometimes do not recognize how stoves will improve the health and lives of the entire family. However, in Bulyoma, the men are just as excited about and involved in the stove-making process. Dads and husbands were eager to learn how to make the stoves alongside the women, and many of them watched the kids while their wives worked.

Step 6: Peel Banana-Tree Trunks

The trunks of banana trees must be chopped and peeled. The smooth insides are later used to shape the stove.

Intergenerational Empowerment

Kibo involves the entire community at every step in the process of every project. These kids were excited to help their parents and grandparents make the village’s first stoves. As they grow up, they will know the value of safe, healthy, fuel-efficient stoves and pass on how to build them to others.

Step 7: Shape the Clay

Once the clay-like mixture is brought into the cooking hut, the community works together to pack it into balls that are then piled together to build a solid, compact stove. Meanwhile, a hole is carved into the wall so that smoke will ventilate out of the room.

Step 8: Shape and Wait

The stove is shaped for efficiency, safety, and ease-of-use. It takes one month to dry before it can be used.

As the community witnessed their first stoves coming together, they laughed, danced and clapped as they chanted their thanks to Kibo for training them to create such a useful and sustainable tool with their own hands: "Long live Kibo, for all the good things it has done!" Jeska and Tape launched the bowling-ball-sized hunks of earth onto the site of the new stove to be shaped with a machete and smoothed with the innermost ring of a banana tree. Body heat radiated from the huts, which were filled to the brim with hopeful men and women of all ages, observing the work that they would be charged with completing themselves. Community members cheered as Jeska and Tape carved a hole in the brick wall to ventilate smoke.

This was a community event. Despite the fact that improved cooking facilities affect women more often, men participated in the construction and held the children as their wives sang and danced while building a better future.

After the stoves finish drying in one month, the community will be able to try their safe and fuel-efficient stoves for the first time. In the meantime, Harriet, Jeska and Tape will continue to visit the village weekly to help build stoves until they are confident the community members can make the stoves on their own. Bulyowa is so committed to the stove-building process that it won't be long until the community knows how to build stoves properly and efficiently.

Harriet herself could not answer how many stoves Kibo has helped build. Once an individual or a village learns to build a stove using locally sourced materials and the sweat of a community, new stoves pop up in neighboring villages and towns. People in cooking huts across Busoga hear about Kibo's stoves and ask their neighbors to teach them how to build their own. As with all development work, Kibo's sincere hope is that communities will continue to improve their lives long after Kibo programs are finished.