tortillas and stoves

a plancha already cooking with tortillas...

If it’s not your custom to eat tortilla three times a day, it’s easy to max out. Now, nothing wrong with tortillas but I have had to get creative so as to keep eating them and not insult Rebecca, our host. So now I leave a few on the plancha to toast up to an almost tortilla-chip crunchiness and Rebecca, noticing how I’ve done this, always leaves a few to get over-done for me. And then, heaven of all heavens, she decided to one-up me and deep fry some day-olds in a decidedly trans-fat-rich mixture of margarine and oil, sprinkled with an artificially-colored, super-salty soup powder. Like I said, heaven. Couldn’t stop myself from downing probably triple my normal intake!

But there is probably not a Guatemalan alive who shares my trouble. Tortillas are this country’s lifeblood. I am surprised that any Guatemalans survive in the US without their daily infusion. In Panyebar, fresh, hand-made corn tortillas are eaten at every meal.

corn fields or "milpas" in between plantings

Almost every family has a little bit of land somewhere where they grow corn. Whoever harvests it brings the fresh corn cobs to town in big bags on his back or maybe by horse where it is dumped on a patio to dry in the sun. It is then separated by quality and stored someplace dry, like in the room next to ours since this really is supposed to be a kind of storeroom. When needed, the bags of dried corn are hauled back out to the patio and someone beats them with a stick to knock the kernels off the cob, doing the last bits by hand. The kernels go back into the bags and back into the storeroom where big bowlfuls are dug out about every other day to grind into tortilla masa.

The big diesel corn grinder motor belongs to Rebecca’s family and gets started every morning about 4:30 a.m. when the first woman knocks on her door to ask her to start it up. The deep loud “whoop whoop whoop” of the motor finds its way through all the neighboring houses including ours, providing a nice backdrop for those final hours of sleep (adding to the roosters and dogs that really get going near dawn!). Adding water as the machine grinds turns the corn into a workable dough that the women carry back to their houses and use to make their tortillas. So, the tortillas are basically pure corn, nothing besides water added, and Guatemalans practically survive on them.

To cook the tortillas, one needs a really hot fire and a heavy metal plate called a plancha. Some people put their plancha on top of 3 rocks and a small stand with no ventilation. These are the most primitive. But other planchas are built into stoves that have tiled borders where the woman can put her masa and other food prep tools. Usually, since it can be pretty chilly here, families, including ours, eat around the stove. That way, you pull the tortillas right off the plancha, like eating bread fresh out of the oven.

tortillas made from blue corn...

Kent:
Last week I was visiting homes of potential recipients of the new high efficiency wood stoves we’re installing. I was surprised to see Eliseo, one of Ann’s students, at home since it was school hours. He was fighting with his sister. Had he opted to skip school that day in order to enjoy a day of pestering his sister? No, he told me that his mom had told him that he couldn’t go to school that day since he needed to collect wood for cooking.

an example of one of the most primitive stoves

I haven’t seen a house yet here in Panyebar where wood isn’t the primary source of fuel for cooking. The typical family uses a wood stove to cook tortillas three times a day. The stoves used are typically made of cinder blocks with a metal cooking surface. They’re not very efficient and they require a fair amount of wood. The typical family goes through two bundles of firewood a week. Each bundle is about two feet in diameter and takes about one half day to collect. One person-day of wood collecting per week, every week. That time dedicated to wood collecting will only increase as people have to go greater distances to find wood. Currently it’s about 2 miles each way to find wood.

The stoves we’re installing use about one half the amount of firewood that the ubiquitous cinder block stoves use – good for whoever has to collect the firewood and good for the forest. The existing stoves in most homes also leak a lot of smoke creating a smoky cooking area which is a real health problem. These new stoves vent all the smoke outside. The stoves are called “Onil” and are being manufactured and sold by Helps International here in Guatemala.

Currently we’re not charging the families for the stoves that we’re installing. They cost $100 each and we’ve got funds for 30. The idea is to get the stoves installed for a study that measures the impact on families who receive them.

The recipients of the stoves attend four half days of class to learn about the benefits of the stoves and how to install them in them in their homes. The stoves are used in the same way that people are accustomed to using use their existing stoves. Still, small differences can create a negative first impression for the recipients and result in them abandoning the new stoves and going back to their old smoky, inefficient stoves. The training has been key for the new users in using the new stoves long enough to experience the benefits and successfully adopt this new technology.

I’ve been working with a local, Victoriano. He speaks K’iche, which is the first language of most people, knows most of the people in the community, and has a real heart for forests that the community relies on. Our first class was conducted in a mixture of my Spanish and his K’iche. Future classes will be taught by him. During the week after the class concluded we went to the homes of each of the families and helped them install their new stoves. The routine that’s been established is that we start by making a prediction of how many times I’ll hit my head on the ceiling of the home where we’re doing the installation before I “learn”. As we put the stove together I periodically whack my head on the wood branches that hold up the corrugated roof. With each thump the family sounds out the number of that “lesson” in unison. They find this entertaining. The average is seven hits per installation.

When the installation is complete we build a fire in the stove to heat it up and test it. As the stove heats up we’re always served something to eat and drink as thanks. Victoriano takes advantage of this time to chat with the family both about tips on using the stove and life in general. If it’s a Spanish speaking family I get to participate. If the conversation is conducted in K’iche I fiddle with the new stove and ask what they’re talking about from time to time - just to make sure they don’t think they can talk about me and get away with it.

a newly installed stove...

We finished installing the first 10 stoves last week. This week we’ll start a class for the next ten families. We’re looking forward to visiting to the families from the first group to hear about the impact the stoves have had. Maybe Eliseo won’t have to miss any more school.