Johannah Murphy offers context for the work that connected the women of her African village to students at Nashoba Brooks. In addition to this project, she has other Nashoba connections. She is the daughter of Latin teacher Patti Murphy, and following her graduation from Wellesley in 2009, she worked in the apple orchard of technology teacher Pam Lawson. She joined the Peace Corps in February 2010, and she now lives in the village of Kawaza, with the nearest Peace Corps volunteer an hour and a half away by bicycle. She carries water on her head, reads by candlelight, and makes change happen.
Describe the village where you live and work.
Situated in the North of Malawi, Kawaza is a small village roughly 5 km from the nearest trading center with electricity. The surrounding mountains, lacking trees from burning and cutting, look somewhat scarred and in the dry months are brown and barren. Though the mountains lack foliage, there are many more trees in my village than there are in other places of Malawi, many of which line the dirt road that my house sits on. Mud huts with grass roofs are built fairly close together, mixed with other houses made of brick, cement, and metal roofs. People keep their sandy yards swept, though some do have lawns, and a few are spotted with a banana or papaya tree. Maize and tobacco fields grow on either side of the road where there are no houses or trees and stretch towards the mountains, often making walls of tobacco and maize stalks for me to pass through along the way home.
And the people?
Most people in Kawaza are farmers, farming tobacco and maize. There are, on the whole, concrete gender roles with women taking charge of the cooking, fetching water, caring for the children, cleaning, often running a small business, and farming as well. The men are assigned to bring in money, though in my village many men spend this money on drinking . . . . Most children go to primary school, which is roughly up to 5th grade. There is no secondary school in my village, so fewer students attend secondary school from Kawaza than in some places.
For most Malawian villages there is one Principal Chief and then a lot of other chiefs, or village headmen. All speak Tumbuka and some have basic English skills, but most have a pretty limited understanding. The people I work with, however, have a good handle on English. There are tons of children, as having children is another job for women, and often relatives live with many children abandoned by parents who cannot afford to feed them. During raining season most people in my village fare well enough, but there is always a need for money, and I have many people asking me for small jobs to complete.
What were the steps in the initiation and growth of the Rocket Stove Project?
I am a Community Natural Based Resource Volunteer for Peace Corps so I deal in environment projects and was interested in doing something around deforestation. In terms of climate change in Malawi, cutting down trees and using them inefficiently in cooking is one of the leading causes of polluting the air with carbon dioxide and increasing the greenhouse effect; therefore I was interested in looking into alternatives. I had a friend, another Peace Corps volunteer, who had been in contact with the organization Hestian, so I became involved through him and have been working with this company. Their urban stoves reduce smoke and emissions by up to 70 percent. They are affordable and attractive, and ideal for cooking local foods.
I introduced the use of the stoves to a group of women in my village, who do their cooking either indoors, or under a structure outside the house with a roof and an open door. Either way, they had been using the three-stone technique for cooking their food, burning a large amount of firewood. The trees beyond and around the mountains are cut down to fuel millions of these open-cooking fires that voraciously eat the wood and spew smoke into the lungs of the women and children who tend them.
The rocket stove [so named because it draws the fire straight up, fast] has an air inlet below the wood, resulting in more efficient combustion that provides large amounts of heat while also containing the heat. Also, there is more contact between the pot and the heat, which translates into faster cooking.
Because Nashoba Brooks raised the money to purchase the stoves, I was able to give them out to ten women with the proviso that they would not only use them, but each would teach five other women about them, how to operate them and why they are important. The first training for the stoves prompted the “Reforestation Remix,” an event during which the stoves were introduced to a larger audience. The event was a success so I decided to get more to a group of women outside my village who work as a women’s forum. I have yet to distribute the last ten stoves, but the goal is to have thirty stoves across the Bolero area that are fulfilling the goals of environmental change with the use of less firewood, environmental awareness as women show off their stoves and their purpose, and with the reduction of smoke, improved health for these women. A final benefit is financial—they save by spending less on firewood.
The work with the stoves led to the formation of the Rocket Tea Room, which has the goal of “empowering women through environmentally conscious business.” The Tea Room just had its grand opening, with everything revolving around the industrial version of the rocket stove to cook its food: tea, pastry, capatis, eggs, rice, greens, and meats.
We are planning a climate change series and a business training there in the coming weeks. The women are cooking away, and I am trying to figure out how to run a business that, to be sustained, must allow the women there to take it over.
A video of one of the events you’ve mentioned, “Restoration Remix,” was made to celebrate the 50th anniversary celebration of the Peace Corps. Click here to watch the Rocket Store video on Facebook. It offers a vibrant sense of one day in the life of this project, and it also makes obvious the effective way you’ve connected with these women. Can you say something about your relationship with them?
I love them.
And this project?
About so many educational events I host here in my village and the surrounding areas I feel that people show up to take up time, to see what the white person has to say, and they don’t see where they can go from here, so they go right back home to their habits. Habits that are often harmful to the health of both the environment and themselves. I will run a workshop on making jam and the women will be so excited and maybe a few will retain the information and I hear them talking about it, but they don’t have the capital to sell jam, so it won’t make them money. It’s not a part of their routine of what to cook, so they won’t cook it, and the jam training becomes “a training that happened” versus a training that propelled a change. With this project I felt there were so many ways we could go in terms of promoting the stoves, learning how to make them, and combating the issue of deforestation and climate change they addressed.
What else are you doing to make the project sustainable once you leave?
Along with my efforts with these stoves, there is another volunteer near my village who is working with a Dutch health center on a different model of the stove and has taken many at-risk youth from communities in the area and are training them. This volunteer and I have been working together, presenting lectures on the stoves, and connecting the people to this organization that will exist beyond my departure. I am always trying to locate leaders and potential leaders and giving them the tools or helping them to realize they have the tools so that they can sustain projects they think they need and are relevant. I think that a big part of development is igniting pride in communities. Along with this pride comes the desire for change, a realization that change can come and will come with commitment, creativity, and collaboration.
Are the women involved in the Rocket Stove project aware of the support they’ve received from Nashoba Brooks girls?
Yup! I often mention it, and they sing songs about the girls and ask me to tell them thanks. Oh, and thank-you dances are always around… [The following letter from Jo to Nashoba Brooks students is another version of those “dances”:]
To the Lovely Ladies of Nashoba Brooks School, Concord, MA:
As the school year is rapidly coming to a close for you, I wanted to extend a most heartfelt thanks for all the work you have done in raising money for the projects I have undertaken here in Malawi. I have yet to order the third round of stoves with the money you last sent me, but you have assisted me in buying 30 stoves, an oil press for pressing oils sch as groundnut, soya, etc. You have bought spray paint in the decorating of the art room at the Kawaza primary school, you have sent art supplies that were used in several art classes and art sessions on my front porch, you have bought food for the Reforestation remix, fences for sustainable gardens, and even paid for labor charges for digging of the gardens and setting them up so that they may be used for food as well as education, nutrition demonstrations, sustainable farming demonstrations, and whatnot. You have also funded many trees to be planted both at my trading center and in nearby villages as well as my own. The next round of money will be used for the furthering of the Rocket Tea Room. Your money will help provide an oven for baking and more supplies for experimenting in this income generating activity. This might include cakes, scones, custard creams perhaps? Eclairs? Who knows what the women will want to bake in their environmentally friendly stove!
All of these funds have helped to contribute to environmental education, direct environmental action, cleaner air with the planting of trees and using of stoves, the advancement of both actual sustainable gardens and sustainable farming education, business trainings and education through the establishment and furthering of the Rocket Tea Room, expansion and growth of creativity with the development of the art room and art classes, and in general you have assisted with overall development in the Rumphi District of Bolero. While I believe that not all development can come from funds from outsiders, there does need to be a balance of outside help coupled with education both in more impoverished nations and in more wealthy ones. I feel that all of you have not only been assisting with funding but have been also learning more about Malawi and the problems that exist here. I thank you so much for working on both of these aspects in such a successful way.
Again, thank you for all your hard work that has let me do mine more successfully.
As they say in Tumbuka, the local language, yewo chomene, tawonga.
(Thank you very much, thank you.)
Peace out and rock on!
Jo