|
|
|
Turkey – Another Solar
Cooker Success Story
|
We arrived safe and sound in Adana, Turkey on May 3 in the rain and
it continued to rain with hail and thunder thrown in for sound effects
until May 15th. We were warmly welcomed with kisses on both cheeks
and taken into the family life of our host, Abdulla Paskoy. Thus began
the first hour of our memorable experiences with Turkish hospitality!
Adana is a city of 1 million, with over 100 Mosques and the sound
of the Hoca's voice can be heard all over this city calling the faithful
to pray five times a day! The population of Turkey is 65 million,
98% Moslem and less than 2% Christian. The traffic is crazy, worse
than Rome or Paris! The streets are narrow and drivers appear to ignore
the one-way signs - parking is a challenge and to find a place it
requires the use of several pairs of eyes! Pedestrians are moving
targets! |
|
A Field of Solar Cookers
|
| The need for Solar cooking in Turkey has been
established by the socio-economic events taking place today. Turkey’s
economy is on the brink of disaster. Prices for bottled gas and petrol
have doubled, the Turkish Lira fell sharply against the dollar and
continues to do so daily; unemploy- ment at 20% + climbs higher as
factories close and construction comes to a standstill. Many businesses
are desperately trying to stay afloat by cutting staff and expenses.
This the result of decades of corruption and mismanagement involving
state banks and factories by politicians using them to pass out patronage
and in turn these same people using the money to buy and support the
politicians. |
| Even as all these events have or continue to take
place, we quickly discovered that this Solar Cooker project was going
to be exciting, unique and it had all the markers needed for success
and expansion. There was multi-national interest and support from
Canada, England, and America, especially the Rotary Club of Fresno
and District 5230 and the enthusiastic, willing support of the Adana
Rotarians, their Rotoracters, and Rotary Community Corps. The Cukurova
University Center for Environmental Research, a renowned center of
expertise on global environmental studies heard about the project
and wanted to be part of it by offering to do research to study any
impact on usage patterns substituting gas for solar energy; the economic
factors affecting households and the benefit to women in improving
the everyday quality of their lives. The Seyhan-Adana Rotary Club
with the strong leadership of its in-coming President, Abdullah Paskoy,
who held a strong interest in doing this project for over 4 years
after reading a Solar Cooker article in the November 1997 Rotarian
magazine. He had done the preliminary work to make sure there was
a local supplier of the solar CooKits, pans and plastic cooking bags
and a site to initiate a pilot program to address the needs of the
rural poor. He found it in Misis, 24 miles East of Adana. There are
three groups: the farming community in and around Misis; the very
poor migrant worker families who come from SE Turkey and live in their
plastic tents and work in the fields for 6 months returning with bundles
of tree cuttings to their crumbling homes as winter approaches; and
the third group, the people who lost everything in the earthquakes
and have become squatters on municipal land, setting up makeshift
tents of tarps with dirt floors to house their families which include
2 to 4 children. The tents are small, very hot and humid inside, children
sleep crowded together on mats on the dirt floor. These last two groups
live without benefit of running water, sewage facilities (except for
the hole they dig) or electricity. All members of the family work
in the hot sun. Women dressed in long skirts, sleeved shirts and head
coverings dig onions and potatoes. To cook their simple food, they
collect tree clippings, cotton stalks and brush. If they can afford
it, they will buy a very small cylinder of bottled gas. |
| Our host promised us that the sun was coming and
that this was very unusual weather for May! While it rained we met
with our 11 future trainers who eyed us with curiosity and great interest.
We laid out plans for the project and some of the things that they
would do as volunteers to make this project successful. When all was
explained we asked them why they wanted to Solarcook. The reasons
they gave were primarily economic - prices for bottled gas had doubled
over the past two months taking a larger chunk out of their husband’s
monthly wage of around $100 and they knew the sun’s energy was
free! (They were using the sun to heat their household water with
solar panels on the flat roofs of their homes.) They also hoped to
have more time to work in their gardens to produce more food for their
families or generate income by knitting/crocheting. They were concerned
about saving their environment. Fifty years ago they had forests,
now there were none! Continue to The
Next Page |
|
