Working with the Tabitha Group

(Composed on Friday 14th, posted on Saturday 15th)

Yesterday, Thursday, was the second of two days with a group of women from the Friends Church in Kagarama. This is where the friendly FolkDancers stayed in Feb 08. It's the place I've worked most often, with church or school personnel.

Their name is the Tabitha group. I suppose I should have looked up the New Testament reference but I won't spend time doing that now. (With my wonderful unlimited internet access this time, I could.) Their purpose is to support other women in the church with friendship and good advice.

When I saw the list of participants' names, and then the much revised list of names two days later after the workshop had almost folded, I was faced with a teaching challenge. A couple have worked with me 4 times, several twice, and 4 never. So instead of trying to find enough material that would be new to everybody but comprehensible to 'beginners', I had to find a different approach.

Wednesday
I asked them to discuss among themselves what they hoped to achieve in two days together, using me as a resource person. I suggested they begin by brainstorming their vision for 5 years from now. Not altogether successful, as the concept of throwing out crazy hopes without immediately smothering them in ifs and buts was hard for my translator to convey or the group to understand. (My translator was doing the job for the first time. I found I needed simple syntax and vocabulary. Sometimes either a group member or I would use French for a bit, quite comfortably.) However we generated 4 goals – all church women to have kitchen gardens, all church women to understand nutrition and feed their families accordingly, all women outside the church to get to that same point, and all cooking to be by other means than wood and charcoal by 2015 – this last being a government target.

We talked through the reason for sacks and other intensively cultivated small spaces, and those who were new to the idea could see photos of the projects of other group member and other people from my workshops. Challenged to plan some first steps towards their goal, they appointed the two most experienced members (and the ones with most church responsibilities already) to be the leaders. Having a group without a responsable is unheard of. With some diversions into compost and manure, that took the whole morning session. Goal one was addressed.

Lunch was takeaway in foil boxes, since the woman who would have cooked was in the group. It was the worst kind of Rwandan meal: rice with a little gravy, two vegetable bananas, a lot of potato, some spaghetti, two nuggets of beef and a teaspoonful of warm coleslaw.

That set us up for the afternoon. My chief new material for this visit is Rachel's translation of my notes on vitamins and minerals for Rwandans, with examples of available foods including African vegetables. We worked through the notes, with lots of time for them to discuss in Kinyarwanda. I have brought with me this time an excellent textbook written 20 years ago for health workers in developing countries, and could look up answers to questions such as how long you need to spend in the sun to make enough vitamin D. We laughed at the timely example in our lunch boxes of the adequate quantity but deficient quality which is the norm here even for people who are not poor.

It was time to stop, before any planning on how to approach this goal had been done. So we would start there on day two, and then go on to cooking devices.

Thursday 13th
In the event, the planning was postponed to the regular group meeting on Monday. I'm very happy to be surplus to requirements as people take what they want from my teaching and make it their own. The second goal was to be addressed. The third may follow from the first two.

So we were quickly on to cooking methods. (I say quickly, glossing over the usual delayed start as people turn up mostly between 20 and 40 minutes after the agreed time. I continue to find this frustrating. Perhaps I should start delaying the end of the day's work by an equal amount of time.)

I asked the group what they knew of the proposal to stop cooking with wood and charcoal. The plan, it seems, is to give a cow to every family outside town centres, then to install the necessary gadgetry for the manure to yield enough biogas for the family's needs. I didn't dwell on the possibility that the scheme may not reach every household, or that some will be unwilling or incapable of taking responsibility for a cow. In town centres electricity will be the only option. I didn't get the sense that they think this is a realistic goal, though it isn't done to criticise government plans in such a setting.

My friend Anne during the summer in suburban London had constructed a simple solar panel cooker, with foil stuck on cardboard, supported by straightened wire coathangers and focussing heat on a black cooking pot. But I can't erect it for a photo now (Friday), and we couldn't try heating water in it yesterday, because there has been little but rain for two days. I did unfold it and show how it could be turned to the sun. We also had the two pieces of kit constructed by the small group of women in March: the tire/tyre cooker made from an inflated inner tube and a sheet of glass, and the insulating basket – also known as a haybox or a peacemaker – for heat retention cooking. Now with internet access I can look things up in class. So I showed the best site I have yet found for such a device, at http://solarcooking.wikia.com/wiki/Retained-heat_cooking.

With no sun, there was little enthusiasm in the group for solar cooking as a concept. Evidently Rwanda can't depend on solar devices. The women do know, however, that solar generation contributes to the national grid. Anne had also given me two types of solar lamp, which were passed round and admired. Nobody had seen such a thing. I mentioned that there would be a business opportunity for an importer or distributor on the off chance that somebody might respond, but no.

We also looked at a leaflet about the evaporative cooler made from two concentric pots with wet sand between, and at a schematic design for using a variety of materials following the same principle. One woman had used such a cooler, but she didn't know how to get hold of the pots now marriage had brought her to the city.

Was I wasting their time on such oddities? I hope not. There were good questions as well as some lively conversation I couldn't follow. The heat retention cooking seemed to me to be the likeliest idea to be acted upon. We had at least begun conversation on their fourth goal.

Lunch arrived, from the same outlet as yesterday and at the same price, but as good as could be, with a generous portion of beans and some cooked carrot and dodo (amaranth) supplementing the rice, fried potato and one vegetable banana, with goat meat.

As usual, I ended by giving some seeds from my garden, from English shops, and from a Kigali seed merchant. As usual, they tore eagerly into the packets, separating seeds from printed information. In a few months I shall be back to hear how their plans have been put into action and to see some gardens. I wonder what they will be harvesting.


PS: This morning I bought a glass bowl to make the solar cooker more effective. By the time I got it home it was raining again. But I'll assemble and test the cooker as soon as I can.