Improved oven

February 8, we had life-skill course and I chose one to learn how to make an "improved oven" which is very popular now in Africa because...

- it's not too difficult to make it

- the oven is more convenient than old style one because people, mainly women (used to) make fire pile each time when they cook.

- as the oven enclose the fire place so the fire stays longer or with less woods.

something like this, I assume...

1. Make the frame of the oven with blocks (usually with wooden boards though)

2. Mix the sand and water to make mud

3．Cut straw (or hemp material) to "4.7cm" and put it in the sand to make the sand sticky

4.Make balls with the sticky sand/mud and throw them hard into the frame not to keep air between sand. (It's hard to see but we are making balls there.)

5．Basically it's done. But, then, we found out a problem, yea really basic one... the drum can was touched to the front so when we take out the blocks, it won't be any wall above of fireplace... but nothing we could do to fix it, so we gave up with laughing !

So now only thing we have to do is to wait till the mud dries. In fact, the mud was too watery, it is probably impossible to take the blocks away...

Oh well, we all agreed that anyway we learned how to make the oven, the process so it's all good ! But gradually the cold (O℃ or lower) started killing us...

Then we started making steamed sweet potatoes with an oven that old volunteers made

So big !

So cut them in half

It smelled so nice and yes it was good although it took 2 hours +.

Happy, happy !

I had great, great time today. During the whole process, we were laughing some how. We got dirty with the mud but also we fall some people over on the snow and put as much snow as possible on the person. (well I was the 1st victim...)

Thank you everyone of this group ! Although at the end, we couldn't help shaking because of the cold at the same time we were suffering from pain on fingers and toes...

And we are going to have some drinks tomorrow night☆