federation of cuban women joins solar cooking effort

an interview with joe froese

sbj: first of all, tell us an anecdote from your trip.

jf: the trade union tour i was with was meeting with pedro ross, the general secretary of the cuban workers center (ctc). during the question and answer period i asked him about solar cookers. after the talk i invited him to a solar cooked dinner. when i told him that this cooker could cook all the food of cuba as long as the sun is shining and that it costs about $30 us, he really pricked up his ears.

he broke off his schedule and came for the dinner the next day. he brought along leonel gonzales, the president of the inventors association of cuba and the governor of a province in cuba.

my message to them was that energy control is the issue here. so much of the power in the world is in the hands of those that control the energy. that's why i have been working with solar cooking for so long. this is people's power.

i explained this to them over a two-hour period while the food was cooking. after i had made my point, what i heard back from the interpreter was, "yes! you can't blockade the sun!" from that moment on i knew that i had gotten across to them the politics of my message.

when i took the steaming food out of the cooker, there was amazement first of all among the other canadians who up to this time had only experienced the inconvenience of old joe and his giant box. once they tasted it the reaction was, "wow, you did this in two hours?" i only had my "little" oven with me, but it got up to 220� c (430� f) in 20 minutes.

sbj: how did these officials manifest their interest?

jf: i made a condition with them for my continued work. i would need to speak directly to the cuban women. so they arranged for me to give a presentation to an international conference of women inventors that happened to be taking place in havana at that time.

the women at this conference heard my message clearly, because they were all suffering from the problem of fuel shortages. part of my presentation appeared in the television coverage of the conference and i did an interview with cuban radio.

sbj: what leads came from your talk at the conference?

jf: as a result of this conference, i was taken to see a person who some people call the "queen" of cuba--vilma espin castro, who is married to fidel's brother raul. she is the director of the federation of cuban women (fmc), which has 3.5 million members and also sits in the legislative assembly. by this time i had connected up with the center for the study of renewable energy technology (ceter). an engineer from ceter, who i had trained, and leonel met with mrs. castro and the heads of various women's organizations. once i got picked up by a chauffeur of fmc, i knew that i was making the contacts i had wanted way up there in the cuban government.

when we started talking, it turned out that she knew a great deal about solar cooking. she was familiar with parabolic cookers, but she wasn't aware of box-style cookers. it had been cloudy the whole time we were having this meeting. but then the clouds parted and the sun came out. so i set up my oven and i gave her a technical orientation to the oven as we stood beside it. the question was, "does this thing work?"

they scrounged up two eggs, some cooking oil, and a black pan. i don't usually fry foods in my oven, but i thought i'd try frying the eggs. i cracked the eggs into the pan and replaced it into the oven. the eggs started frying away. i was even impressed!

when i told them that this costs about $30 us, she was really astounded. then we started talking about how we might apply this in cuba. she said there were 460 daycare centers in cuba, and she started telling me about the problems in these centers with energy. can you come to see one? i thought, yes! she said they had about 200 children in each daycare center. i told her that i'd cooked for 200 people before in a large institutional cooker i made on my farm in canada. i can do this easily.

we made an appointment for two days from then. what i saw was amazing and emotional for me. you get sort of used to it, but it's still astounding. they don't have any oil, kerosine, or gas there! they don't even have consistent natural gas pressure to reach the lower part of havana, even for the homes that are connected to the system. the shortage is so extreme that you never know if there will be gas from one day to the next. so what they've done is to organize a brigade of young bicyclists who go around everyday collecting every little piece of wood they can find, so that there will be fuel to cook with. these daycare centers could really use an alternate fuel source.

sbj: did you make any other important contacts in cuba?

jf: i stumbled into a meeting that was a part of a tour for expo cuba. i met a man there who was the director of a hospital. once he heard what i was up to, he invited me to visit his hospital. the situation there was even worse than at the daycare center. they cook for 460 patients and 500 staff. they have one old dilapidated oven to cook for all these people. so they cook all the rice and beans in the morning before the gas goes off at 10:00 am, and then for the rest of the day everyone eats cold food. luckily cuban food is perfect for the solar oven--beans, rice, chicken, and omelets.

sbj: what sort of plans did you make for the future with the cubans?

jf: i went back to meet with mrs. castro to make the final plans and to write up a project. what we both asked for was for a people-to-people type project. i told her that i'd seen the bureaucracy in her country and the bureaucracy in canada. if we're going to wait for the bureaucracy to get on board with the people, we're never going to get solar cookers to her. that's my opinion. "how do you want to deal with me," i asked. people to people, woman to woman," she said, "can you help us?" we shook hands, and she told me that we could learn from the transnational corporations, except we can let the profit go to the people. as we were talking she drew a symbol showing women and solar power. under the symbol she wrote, "the sun is free for all, and all are free under the sun."

we agreed to begin our joint venture with a small exploratory project. i will arrange to send 50 canadian- built cookers and four institutional cookers of my design for daycare centers. these will be sent disassembled. the ovens will be assembled by the women who buy each disassembled kit. i will work with the cooks at the daycare, and i'll make any design changes that may be necessary with either cooker. everything will be tested and then the fmc will manufacture solar ovens as materials become available. ceter is conducting experiments right now with the institutional cooker i built when i was there. they still have materials to build five more large ovens.

sbj: what's happening with your project in eritrea?

jf: we sent a field worker back into two of the nine villages i had visited. she reports that the women in each village are using the one cooker i left behind. they just don't have the materials to make more. she reports that the women are putting the food in the oven and then going about their day's work. when they come home the food is done; so they've integrated this into their routine.

i've also heard from the government. they're doing demonstrations and promoting solar cooking as well. they're training at the university, but they aren't really mass producing anything. it's the usual problem--no materials. no aluminum foil especially.

sbj: would it be useful for first world solar cookers to send materials along with returning eritrean refugees who are traveling back there now that the war is over?

jf: yes! if people contact me, i can tell them who to deliver the materials to.

sbj: are you planning on going back to eritrea before you go back to cuba?

jf: i hope to if the matching funds come through from the rotary club. unfortunately, because of the war, there are no rotary clubs left in eritrea that could sponsor our project in cooperation with rotary international. i haven't had a chance to return all of my phone messages since returning a few days ago, so i'm not sure of the status of the whole thing.

by the way, one of the messages on my phone machine was from canadian broadcasting corporation calling to get an update on the project. they are so interested in my story, that they replayed my last interview two weeks ago, so now my machine is even more jammed, with calls from radio listeners.

joe froese can be contacted at freedom cookers international, p.o. box 7103, saskatoon, saskatchewan, s7k 4s1, canada tel: 306/652-1442 fax: 306/665-2128

back