It has been more than a year since Haiti was hit by a devestating earthquake that basically demolished the capital. As if an earthquake isn't hard enough to recover from, it came at a point when Haiti was finally getting some economical footing and hope. But now....it is beyond tragic.
For some reason(s) the billions of dollars are not getting to the relief efforts. From all the stories I have read and heard, it seems that it is very hard to get past customs and crucial materials are stuck in customs, sitting on the ground in Haiti (!), waiting for things like a seal or stamp or in many cases people don't even know what is holding up the process. In the meanwhile, Haitian people are existing in conditions beyond words.
As many predicted, the deplorable conditions and lack of sanitation became a major problem once the rain season started. In November Cholera broke out in massive numbers. This "poor man's decease" is purely from lack of clean water and contaminated foods. The simple process of boiling the water could greatly improve the odds against attrackting this deadly decease. But how do you do that when you have no house, no stove, no electricity and the price of wood is astronomical? Solar ovens!
As part of a service learning opportunity at South Dakota State University we were able to volunteer at Haiti Solar Oven Partners lead by Rick Jost in Volga, SD. He has been working in Haiti since 1990s building schools. On one of his many trips to Haiti, he brought along a solar oven, just to see if that would be of interest. And it was! He spearheaded a program to build solar ovens for Haiti not knowing how crucial they would become.
The solar ovens not only offer a way to safely prepare foods without having to spend money on expensive fuel, but can purify drinking water. With the use of a simple (but ingenius) little and reusable device called a WAPI (Water Pasteurization Indicator) people can see when the water has reached high enough temperatures to kill bacteria. The WAPI contains a little plug of wax which will melt and drop when the temperatures have reached 160F. After removing the WAPI from the water, the wax will solidify again and you can flip the tube around and use it again.
The project takes place in two places, in South Dakota and in Haiti. In South Dakota, Rick orders materials and with the help of volunteers, prepares complete kits that are shipped to Haiti. There his team, he and volunteers from the US, assemble the kits and teach the recipients how to use the ovens. There are at this point too few ovens to meet the demand so he asks a $20 for each over. This is an affordable fee and it allows the serious users to get them first instead of finding them somewhere in a corner and not used. It also is a way of creating a sense of ownership which tends to result in better care of a product.
The tasks are organized and divided in such a manner that it requires very little instruction to get volunteers started. Rick has three stations: one for tracing the pattern, one for folding the outer liners, and one for counting screws and putting them in zip lock bags. Here, Kayla is tracing the pattern unto the insolation.
The outer black lining is already shaped and somewhat folded, but it helps to have some of the folds creased a little more. Here Rick is showing us how to crease the folds without bending the liner.
There can be two people tracing and two people creasing. Jenn is carefully tracing the pattern unto the insolation.
Dr. Enz, our French professor, arranged the service learning opportunity.
We were able to choose from two dates so our class went in two groups over two days. Here she is creasing the outer linings.
Jaycee at the creasing table.
Jenn tracing the pattern. We were the second group to go volunteer and Kayla and her were determined to beat the previous group's efforts. :-)
Jaycee was creasing the outer linings while Rick was packaging the kits.
