One of the New Castle Presbytery projects, in combination with CEDEPCA (our Guatemalan partner), is providing more fuel-efficient stoves for people. These cost $250 each, with $200 contributed by churches/individuals and $50 paid for by the recipient. It’s a lot of money for these people, but having ‘skin in the game’ is quite important.
About 10 years ago, I traveled to Guatemala with others from Concord Church to help build a stove in a Mayan house. Their cooking/heating was done with an open fire on the dirt floor of their house, with nowhere for the smoke to go. The stove we built, made from cinderblocks, sand, and other items, is much more fuel efficient than the open fire and has chimney to ventilate smoke outside.
Since then, the stoves have become more and more efficient. Below, you can see a large stove built into the house which was an upgrade from the cinderblock stoves, and a new stove that uses 1/3 the wood of the other stove and can be moved. It takes a week for the artisans to make one of these stoves. If well cleaned and taken care of, these new stoves can last 20-22 years, saving money and time that can be used for income-earning projects.
The younger woman in the photo below, owns the shop that makes 100% cacao chocolate. I’ve seen 70% or 80% cacao chocolate, but never 100%. Her sister’s mother-in-law (the older woman in the photo) makes the chocolate. They dry the beans for a week and then roast them twice. By hand, they crack open the beans and pull out the nubs which are taken to a grinder. The older woman used to leave at 6:00 in the morning to take the beans to the grinder in a nearby town and wouldn’t return until about 6:00 at night as so many people also needed that service. Then a grinder opened in her town, so it now just takes her about 3 hours to get this done. They’ll make the chocolate paste from this, adding sugar.
The young woman’s sister owns the bakery we visited and both of her sons work there. It was incredible how quickly they created the 12 different kinds of bakery items sold in the store. They are incredibly hard workers! The bakery is at maximum production, but the sister does not want have current plans for expansion. That said, one of her sons who works in the bakery wants to create his own business and build a larger facility. He is willing to take the risk.
~ Nancy Tucker