[Stoves] FW: Uptate from Ken Goyer

[Warren Goyer]

December 4, 2006

 

Dear friends and relatives,

                           

                                    

      I have a huge apology to make. Many of you were inadvertently left off
of my email list. This includes most of my friends in El Salvador, Turkey,
Armenia and India, as well as many others. The first of this year when I
left the country to go to Uganda I asked my brother, Warren, if he would
manage my emails for me.

I asked him to help me because of the difficulty of sending multiple emails
from dialup internet connections from third world countries. I would send
him an email and he would forward it to you from his high speed connection.
Unfortunately, my lists were in disorder and many names did not get to him.
I have just discovered this error and I have been working to straighten out
the list. I am very grateful to Warren for helping me with this daunting
email task.

      This year I have sent out a number of emails chronicling my various
stove building adventures. I have been to Uganda three times, as well as
Darfur, Turkey, and Armenia. So I have spent most of the year on the road.
In Uganda, our stove project in Lira is going very well. With ANCC we have
made about 20,000 stoves in the Lira refugee camps, so far, and now this
stove project will be supported by the International Lifeline Fund.  The
International Lifeline Fund has also successfully started a stove project,
with my help, in the refugee camps in Darfur. Their ambition is to make
100,000 stoves in Lira and 100,000 stoves in Darfur.  This frees me to start
another project in north Uganda.

      We have now taken 2,700 pictures of stoves built in Lira and financed
by the East Fresno Rotary Club. Each picture includes five elements; the
stove, the owner, her house, the number of the stove, and the flag of the
East Fresno Rotary Club. It is really interesting (to me anyway) to see
these pictures and realize that we really made all of those stoves, and the
huge difference the stove project is already making in the lives of these
people. The pictures also chronicle the lives and the living conditions in
the IDP camps.

Also, we have had a huge success with the medical fund, alleviating much
suffering and death. 

      I returned this year with Wilfred Pimentel to Turkey and Armenia to
work with our Rotary Club three way stove projects, and to train a new batch
of Peace Corps Volunteers in Armenia in the Rocket Stove, the Cookit solar
cooker, and the insulated cooking box. We had a very good experience and we
wish the best to these projects, and to a new Rotary Club stove project
starting in Eastern Turkey.

      But I am only half way through my story. The first of this year I
started a new organization called AidAfrica. It is a legally incorporated
501(c)(3), non-profit charity. Our ambition is to start a new project in
Gulu, Uganda. Gulu is the center of another one million internally displaced
people in northern Uganda. The need here is equal to the need in Lira and in
Darfur. Thousands of people suffer and die and I feel compelled to work
here. We have hired four people to help us. Rosette lives in Jinja and will
be the Administrative Secretary of AidAfrica. In addition, she has started
an orphanage which we are helping to support. Freda, Priscilla, and Martin,
our field staff, have moved to Gulu and will do many projects, as well as
provide support to volunteers. In a week, Hugh will be AidAfrica's first
volunteer to go to Uganda. Hugh has just been accepted as a medical student
into Ben-Gurion University of the Negev in Israel (in conjunction with
Columbia) and he will start med school next fall. But in the meantime, he
will start our medical project in Gulu. As well as saving babies from MAD,
Hugh is interested in curing malaria. He has done research on a plant that
comes from Asia that produces the anti-malarial drug artemisinin. This plant
is in worldwide short supply and Hugh hopes to start a nursery and to
introduce this plant into Northern Uganda. (We also plan to start a
reforestation project). After the first of the year a succession of
volunteers (including myself) will join Hugh to work with him on the medical
project as well as start a new stove project. Damon will visit for a few
weeks and make twenty industrial sized stoves for comparison testing. It
looks like we are off to an exciting year!

      I apologize again for the information that you didn't get. Much of it
can be found on the internet. Doing a Google search of ken goyer, aiduganda,
or sixbricks rocket stoves, will find most of the information about my work.
I do hope to get a new website up soon and keep things posted there. The
chronicle about Darfur is best seen at
http://stoves.bioenergylists.org/files/Making_the_SixBricks_Rocket_Stove_in_
Darfur.pdf

.  

      I have made a DVD of the 2,700 Rotary Club stove pictures. It also
contains a selection of 200 of the best stove pictures and a file of the
various things that I have written. If anyone is interested I will send you
a copy of this DVD if you will email (or otherwise send) me your address. 

      I want to say thanks to everyone that has made this project possible.
Without your support and help it would have never happened. I look forward
to our new project in Gulu and another fruitful year. 

 

Best regards,

 

      Ken Goyer