Can You Help?

Our Wish List

As you will have seen in our previous post, we are ready to get started with our various projects - and a few that haven't been mentioned - which will help improve the lives of the kids at Twiga, the community around Kisii and hopefully, if successful, we will be able to work with other NGOs and charities to introduce the best to a wider world.

But we need stuff. We need gardening tools, spades, forks, hoes, rakes. We could do with a vehicle. Although this is a big wish, if we could borrow something that can carry equipment and tools to the site, it would be great.

But most of all, we need money! But, not a lot.

I reckon that, if we were lent a vehicle, we could get things started on £500. If, on the other hand we have to hire a vehicle, we would need nearer £1,000.

If you can help us raise some funds, or advertise our cause and website please contact us.

Thank you.

Ready to Roll ...

We are ready to put some of our design concepts into practice - at last!

We have a small plot in Kisii with a hut on it and a river on the border, perfect for an experimental shamba.

Apart from actually growing food for the kids at the Twiga Home, we will be harvesting methane to be used for cooking and running a small generator. We will also be purifying water straight from the river, producing pure clean drinking water using a system designed to be built from scrap and cheap materials.

If we can get the raw materials, we will also be producing bio-diesel and a hydrogen production system for petrol cars (it doesn't replace petrol, but cuts consumption by up to 50%).

We are in the fund-searching phase of the operation. Anyone with ideas as to who we could approach, please let us know.

An Alternative to Wood and Charcoal?

(... or even kerosene)

Methane. It is a gas found everywhere, especially in the vicinity of cattle and other herbivores. Noting special there, then.

But it can be "manufactured" and harnessed at no cost (other than setting up), and can be used for cooking. It does not produce smoke like wood, charcoal or kerosene, so will not irritate the eyes and lungs of people using it.

Trees do not need to be cut down to produce it, so the local environment is not decimated. Trees help to keep topsoil intact. Get rid of the trees and you eventually lose topsoil.

Methane can also be used to run a petrol motor, such as a power generator. Other than the cost of the generator (6,500 shillings), this could give free electricity - not a lot, admittedly, but enough for electric lights - no more candles, hurricane lamps or batteries.

Or, maybe it could run a petrol-powered water pump at a borehole, or to pump water from a river to a community.

But what is needed to make methane?

Waste. Animal waste (droppings) and vegetable waste (husks, outer leaves of vegetables), in fact most anything that rots down. If placed in an oxygen-free container, methane will be produced.

It is easy enough to produce. It is clean to use, and it does not rely on the sun, although the collector needs reasonable warmth to work. Most places in Kenya are warm enough.

Cooking on methane is similar to cooking over wood or charcoal. It is a lot easier to make the change to methane than it is to start using other alternatives such as a solar cooker.

KCIS has now designed a methane collector that is made, for the most part, out of scrap or other used materials (naturally), so it is cheap.

We are just waiting to prove it and then pass on the technology to all.

Cheap, Clean Drinking Water

A precious commodity in Kenya, in town as well in rural areas. Drinking water has to be boiled, even if it comes out of the tap, and in the area of Nairobi where I stay, it tastes earthy.

That got the Tool-using Think-maker in me to look at a way to filter and purify water so that it was not only safe to drink, but also palatable.

Of course, according to my philosophy, anything I design has to be made from scrap or discarded materials, or at the least, readily available cheap materials, and I have finally finished!

The purification side of things uses the Sun. This is well-known, but little used technology. When water left in the sun for 6 hours, all pathogens are killed. The filtration bit is just as easy to use, and is effective in removing any foreign body larger than 100 microns, so that's eggs, grit, larvae, etc.

The final build depends upon available material, but can be easily modified to account for local local materials.

Just need a bit of funding to get this project out into the big wide World - well, Kenya, anyway.

Exchange Rate

With the UK pound in free-fall against most currencies, it is getting increasingly expensive to send money from the UK to Kenya.

I read that the Kenyan shilling is taking a bettering, but I see that it is more or less holding its own against the US$, although it is losing against the Euro.

I also see in the daily Nation that I can get a much better rate in kenya than I can in the UK. I really don't understand currency exchange.

All I want to do is pay the rent on my house, without it going up £3 every month through no fault of my own.

Our Goals for 2009

From Baba Mzungu

As regular readers of this blog already know, we have several projects just waiting to be started up, but with the food crisis gathering pace in Kenya, I have had to juggle the priorities about a bit.

We have our plot just outside Kisii, a particularly fertile corner of Kenya, which is doing nothing worthwhile at the moment. We are going to start our River Cottage project here.

Our priority at the moment must be to produce food. With luck, we will be able to produce a surplus which can be sold.

We have a band of kids who are more than willing to work, but as most are 9 to 12 years old, and the soil is never really dry as it rains all year round in Kisii, I can just imagine the state they will be in after a short while, digging and preparing the soil for planting - filthy!

So, we need a means of letting them clean off afterwards. Needless to say, there is no tap water at the plot and the river at the edge of the plot is down a 1:5 path, so carrying up enough water to wash of half a dozen muddy kids would be a big effort.

So, we need water collection off the roof of the existing hut and anywhere else we can find. Then, behind the hut we can build a simple shower with bamboo screens.

All this can be done at a minimal cost, and falls in quite nicely with another project title, Scrapheap Challenge.

There is a UK charity in Kisii who gives out gardening tools to "worthy causes". I just hope that an orphanage trying to grow its own food will be considered a worthy cause!

Food Crisis in Kenya Pt. II

Courtesy of Daily Nation 12/1/09