Where Are Steven and Laurie?
Peru, 17 November 2008 - 17 March 2009
Steven and Laurie in Peru, 2007
Cusco, Peru, 8 February 2009
8 February 2009
Cusco, PeruLaurie says in her blog:
I am just now back from another day trip to mandorani. steve left early after not sleeping well last night and what was a challenging first family. rather than challenging "first family", i should say, challenging stove. this particular stove, while no different than the others (perhaps other than its position) lit fine but the draft was so rapid, it prevented the flames from really licking the bottom of the pots and blew through nearly sideways. so it took forever to boil the damn potatoes. which of course threw off our timing. oh well. more important than the timing was the fact tomas was also there and that we all witnessed this. this is why it's so important to see every stove in action! so in another post where steve mentioned going to choco, he described a stove that had been positioned in line with the door to aid the draft. in this case the stove was off to the right side of the door with the chimney in the corner. We talked to tomas about adding a flue. and he brought up the point about it perhaps needing to be in front of the door. later he also talked about repositioning the stove. regardless, it was clear there was a problem. it used way too much wood for just a pot of potatoes not to mention way too much time. our gracious homeownerŽ, jose luis (there in place of his mother) understood the problem and is expecting tomas tomorrow to come and correct it.
teaching went fine but yet again, the difficulty in testing all family members came up. not everyone is home all the time. and what with just 14 families participating it is looking unlikely we will acquire enough clinically significant data. i (on the more positive note ) said, "well, if so and so tests this volume this time and is improved the next, what's wrong with that?" Steve's comment (on the more negative side, but true) was "we will not qualify for grants if we don't show more numbers." today it had been our intention to catch up and do bernadina's kids and tomas' sons also. what we failed to remember is buses are not as dependable on sundays, not to mention the unexpected time duration at jose luis' and the fact when i got to bernadina's, no one was home and then on return to tomas's house, his kids had to go to cusco! yagain, oh well. what is a girl to do?? my only thought at this point is to set up one day where we go just to do that and announce it prior, maybe our last sunday here?
second home was that of simon. he is a member of the local government but proudly is bucking their system and wanted a stove anyway. what a house! (steve really missed it!) about the cleanest i have ever seen in these parts! a living area in the middle with the kitchen on one end and a bedroom for the kids on the other. and in the kitchen everything was hung up in neat little rows on the wall and a seating area sat opposite the stove. sweet! so this stove fired right up with the potatoes boiling in less than 20 minutes. the teaching was a breeze! All of his sons were home, less one that lives in lima. his wife however was not home. (so we did get more testing done here!) what i thought was sweet was to see him discuss in quechua with his three sons, (20, 17, 14) the posters we have of the dirty household vs the cleaner, more organized one. it was striking to see him discuss this with his near adult sons. the potatoes did their fifteen minute cook time and we illustrated the retention cooker. he proudly said his boys helped their mom and would show her how to use it.
one other note. Lucita came by the house of jose luis earlier today. apparently she was one of the original 20 families and somehow was later claimed to be one of the five who did not want a stove by victor. well as it turns out she wants her stove and if i understood correctly she had paid for it and victor had not given her money back. so of all things she insisted i not go to retrieve her money. she gave me an additional 30 soles and will have tomas retrieve the money she originally paid to victor. so we are up to 14 families now in mandorani!
otherwise, there was not much time for detective work re: this andres mystery. timotea did allude to the fact another problem is that andres is pretty tight with juana and victor. i still wonder what pave may have to do with this. the truly unfortunate thing is that his wife needs the stove. and if he actually builds it, fine, its just that he paid, signed the contract agreeing to tomas to build it, to the visits and for receipt of the retention cooker. we need some one-on-one time with him. after our visits tomas, timotea and i batted this around a bit over a delicious cuy dinner coming to the conclusion everyone can make their choice.
one very nice thing he shared with me is how much each family has noticed and liked that we are coming to each house. this appears to be making the impression that we indeed care about each stove working well and giving each family the attention needed to use it correctly, along with the retention cooker.
so i will add a few pictures and call it good. as i look at them i did not take any of the problem stove to show everyone what i mean by the draft going nearly sideways. oops.
so, monday we are off to mandorani to visit one family and to pick up jorge's chimneys and rejillas. we are hopefully bringing a young friend, diego to show him our work. then there'll be another doctors appt. and a nice day off on tuesday. love to all.
Forward to "Three Families Left," 14 February 2009
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Last updated: 15 February 2009
