Climate Change and All Our Gas

I cannot say that I am a great believer in global warming, but at the same time, I do not deny that climate change may be taking place. It happens, it has always happened and it always will. We, the human race, may be helping the climate to change, but it would probably happen without our help.

Our world, all the other worlds in the Universe, the Universe itself is governed by laws – the laws of physics, chemistry, biology and maths. We haven’t figured out all these laws yet, but they are there. They are what we call nature. They are natural laws and cannot be bent or broken.

Hmm! I am off-topic already!

So back to gas.

Methane gas is a naturally occurring substance. It is formed when organic matter rots, and it escapes to atmosphere. The problem with methane is that it is 20 times more potent as a “greenhouse” gas than carbon dioxide, but we hear little about it. We all produce it, but all we hear about are references to cows farting methane. In fact, they don’t, they burp it.

The other difference between methane and carbon dioxide it that it burns. I am sure many of you have seen vents sticking out of landfill sites with a flame at the  top, burning off the methane from deep underground.

So, we have a gas, a naturally occurring gas, being produced all around us, twenty times more “dangerous” than CO2, but we do nothing with it!

It could be collected and used. In sufficient quantities, it could be used to fuel a power station. It is, after all the main constituent of natural gas that we pump up from deep underground.

On a smaller scale, we could capture this gas and use it for cooking, by collecting our organic waste rather than just leaving it to allow it to rot and pass methane to the atmosphere.

If all the organic waste that can be seen strewn along the roads of many Kenyan towns were to be collected and treated, the town would have a very cheap source of power that could run a generator or water pumps, or it could be bottled and sold for cooking.

At a smaller community level, methane collectors can provide an excellent fuel for cooking, clean, no smoke or particulates to irritate lungs and eyes.

And when methane is burned, it produces CO2 and water. So we reduce a gas with a potency factor of 20 to a gas with a potency factor of 1.

Now that’s got to be good for the environment.

No more cutting down of trees for fuel or charcoal.

And that’s got to be good for the environment, too!

Off to Kenya – Again!

I am travelling to Kenya on 11th November for a month. It will be good to see friends in Kisii.

More importantly, I hope to get a full-size anaerobic digester built and working on this trip. I need to find out how much gas (in cubic metres) my design will produce in a day. I know that 1 cu.m is enough for cooking the daily food for a family of 5-6 people.

But I have had enquiries for commercial applications, that is, to supply gas for places such as game lodges, with several kitchens and a need for hot water. This project, which started out as a way to stop trees from being felled for firewood looks like it could turn commercial!

It would not be a bad thing to find a commercial use for digesters, but I had not given that side of it much thought. After all, I am not really a businessman. Commercial potential for a project has to be dangled before me before I can see it.

But now, I am going to have to look  at our other projects to see if there is any commercial potential in those. Somehow I doubt it, but I am now looking at things from a different angle. I am trying to take off the blinkers of a tool-using thing-maker and look at things from a business perspective.

Careers Advice Isn’t What It Used To Be

I went to a good school, a state-aided grammar-style, guild school. OK, so it was in east London, the Cray brothers were just around the corner, but all that meant to a schoolboy was that he was pretty safe on the streets. For all their brutality, the Crays did not tolerate anyone who harmed kids, or so I was told.

But that is not what this blog is about. As I said, I went to a good school – and I managed to make the very least of it, escaping with just three passes at G.C.E. ‘O’ level, English, French and Maths.

In that last term of school, we were all paraded before the Careers Advisor, who just happened to be our geography teacher.

It went something like this:

Ah, BabaMzungu. You father is in banking, is he not?

He was, Sir. he died in January.

Well, I suggest you get in touch with his colleagues and play on their sympathy to follow your father’s footsteps. There is little hope for you anywhere else.

Thank you, Sir.

Next!

That was really helpful. I was not asked if I had any aspirations, interests, ambition. It was assumed that, because I had not done well in my exams, I had none of the above. But he was wrong.

Since I was a small boy, I had always been fascinated by Africa. Initially, I wanted to be an explorer, like Livingstone (as well as being a policeman, like most little boys). My fascination with Africa is still with me.

In the event, upon leaving school, I went into an engineering apprenticeship and I found that I had an aptitude for it. I actually enjoyed college, and became a tool-using thing-maker as well as a half-decent draftsman. Mr Careers Advisor didn’t foresee that, did he?

After the apprenticeship, I fulfilled my boyhood dream – no, not becoming an explorer – I joined the police. I was helping society, serving a community. I liked this. But I didn’t like the reams of paperwork. I wanted to be out on the streets, not pushing a pen in an office. So, after six years, I left, totally disillusioned.

But, I did learn something in the police. I learned observation – and I haven’t forgotten it. Even now, 30 years later, I observe, and  then I study.

My first real opportunity to observe something different was during an extended visit to South Africa. It was during the apartheid era when Africans were herded into townships, existing, not living. And I observed. Then I noted. I brought my notes home and with the advent of the Internet, I researched. I wrote a book.

So, I have been a school drop-out, apprentice engineer, policeman, engineer (again) and IT consultant. But, all this time, I should have been a social anthropologist. It’s too late now.

Too late to be a “proper” social anthropologist, but … when I conceive, research, design and build a system to do something useful in Kenya, I have some idea of what is acceptable to the people I am designing it for, and what is not.

And another thing … I met up with three pals from school a few years back. Two of us were considered no-hopers. We have both lived and worked in several countries. We have travelled (and I am not talking about 2 weeks in Majorca, although I have done that as well), we have seen the world.

The other two got good exam results and have never lived more than 20 miles from the school we all attended.

Long Time, No Write

Not strictly true. I have three other blogs in which I have dropped the odd article, but I have to admit that I have been lacking in writing about making things with tools.

The problem is that I am presently in the UK, not Kenya. I can design things on paper here, but I cannot test them as most rely on the sun either for heat, UV or both.

So, lacking the basic free ingredient, I have been diverting my energy to other things.

Firstly, to earn an income – not easy as a free-lance in the UK just at the moment.

Secondly, to save up to get back out to Kenya so that I can wear the tool-using thing-maker hat. This is difficult because – see first point.

Thirdly, I am trying to raise the profile of KCIS and get people, companies or organisations interested in what we are doing and what we want to do, and gain some financial backing.

Fourthly, to register KCIS as a UK charity – not as easy as it used to be.

KCIS and Twiga has recently been featured on BBC Radio Berkshire. There is still a good audio slide-show on their site, and a brief write-up which links to our website. But this has had little or no effect. We have not received any offers of help and certainly no money, other than £10 given to me by a BBC employee as I left the studio.

So, what next? I have asked that the feature be repeated on a weekday programme, and I reckon we need a patron, a celebrity who would promote KCIS.

Or, we could forget KCIS and find another charity or NGO that is doing similar work in or near Kisii. To my knowledge, there is none, but then I don’t know every NGO in Kisii.

So, if anyone has any other ideas as to where we should go from the present, please contact us. We will be happy to receive any suggestions.

If you are an NGO in the Kisii region and you are interested in what we are doing, please contact us.

Or, of course, if you are a company or foundation that would like to finance us, please contact us.

How Well Would We Survive?

I have just returned from a five week stay in Kenya, not as a tourist, but living with ordinary Kenyans, as they live.

The house where I was staying has four rooms plus a wet room, a small plot of land which can be cultivated, and electricity (sometimes!).

There is no formal kitchen and the wet room was just a room with a squat toilet with a cistern, although there was no piped water.

Water has to be fetched from a borehole 300 metres away and carried up a steep hill to the  house, or, during the rainy season, it can be collected from the roof.

Cooking is over a single propane gas ring, or a charcoal burner, and food is grown. Staples like maize flour is bought, but just about everything else is grown by the family. They have laying chickens for eggs, and they buy chickens for slaughter from neighbours.

Washing clothes and dishes is carried out in the yard in bowls of water heated over the gas ring.

A shower consists of wetting the body, soaping all over then tipping the bowl of water over the whole body to get the soap (and dirt) off, unless you are lucky enough to be a small child, in which case you can sit in a bowl of water.

Travel – “My feet is my only carriage”, to quote Bob Marley, at least until you reach the road, where you can catch a matatu, motorbike taxi, or if you feel rich, a car taxi.

I lived like this for almost three weeks, and settled in quite happily. But I was living with Kenyans, so I did not have to carry out a lot of the chores such as killing and plucking a chicken for dinner.

And it got me wondering … how well would Mr & Mrs Middle-England with 2.4 kids survive if they were dropped into a typical rural Kenyan life-style?

No computer or Playstation for a lot of the time, and difficulty in charging a mobile phone due to the erratic electricity supply.

When it rains, it is all-hands-on-deck to get buckets and bowls placed strategically to collect   off the roof – one evening I collected 75 litres of water in about 20 minutes – and storing it in the 100 litre water butt.

Where I was staying, Kisii in SW Kenya, the soil is sticky, so walking when it is wet is a challenge. The mud sticks to the soles of shoes and within 100 yards you can be 1 inch taller! The ground is also extremely slippery, and Kisii is in the mountains. There is not a flat path anywhere! So butt-skiing is also a distinct possibility, as I found out at the expense of my dignity.

So how would the Middle-England family cope? You want chicken for dinner? buy a live one and dispatch it with the kitchen knife, then pluck it. Vegetables? Well, did you plant any? If so, go to the plot and harvest what there is, usually sukuma.

You want to go into town? walk to the road and wait for an overloaded matatu (they are licenced to carry 14 passenger, but they will always manage to squeeze a few more in). Or take a motorbike taxi, a 125cc two-stroke Chinese-built machine. You can usually get two passengers on one of these.

As I said, I settled in quite well, but I was living with Kenyans. But if I were alone? Yes I would survive, but it wouldn’t be pleasant.

Cheap Diesel

I am lucky enough [?] to drive  a diesel-powered car in the UK. It is not powerful, nor is it a recent model, but it gets me from where I am to where I want to be and back again in comfort.

But it drinks diesel like a fish drinks water, mainly because it is fitted with much smaller tyres than it was originally designed for.

So, last Spring, I decided to supplement pump diesel with the contents of my deep-fat fryer. This gives me about 3 litres of clean fuel every two to three weeks. After I have processed it, I mix it with diesel, depending on the ambient air temperature. In the height of the UK Summer, I got away with a 50/50 mix, but in Spring and Autumn, I drop ot back to 25% bio to 75% pump diesel, and in Winter, I use 100% pump diesel.

This is because bio emulsifies at a relatively high temperature and will clog up the works in a typical UK Winter.

However, this would not be a problem in warmer climes, such as Kenya. So when KCIS eventually gets itself organised enough to actually own a vehicle, we will be getting a diesel, and we will run it on a bio-diesel mix.

If we can find a major source of used cooking oil (just how many fast food outlets are there in Nairobi?), we may be able to produce enough to pass on our excess to the likes of KWS, Rhino Ark, the UN (but not for their petrol-guzzling Hummers) and any other organisations running fuel-hungry diesel 4×4s.

It will be a lot cheaper than pump diesel and performance is not compromised.

Clean Water – design finished – Part II

I woke up in the middle of the night with a design feature bouncing around between my ears.

Although the water purification plant was finished on paper, there was something niggling at me.

Last night, it came to me and I had the presence of mind to have a pad and pencil next to my bed – for once.

The system is now easier to build, the filters are easier to clean, and the cleaned water easier to extract.

Now, that was worth waking up for.

Clean Water – Design Finished

In my capacity as the Tool-using Thing-maker for Kenyan Community Initiative Support, I have been working on a design for a cheap, easy to build, easy to use water purification plant for use at household or small community level.

Well, the design stage is finally finished, and it will work.

The design allows for modification so that easily available materials can be used to keep the cost down.

So I’m ready to roll – just need the funding (as ever!)

Kenya Tourism

In the UK, it is the season for TV adverts for the summer vacations. I have been told I need to go walkabout in Australia, escape to New Zealand, go on cruises to the Carib and Mediterranean.

But I have seen nothing from Kenya, the country whose tourist industry was decimated after the post-election violence a year ago.

What are they waiting for? People like Dr. Livingstone to rediscover Kenya by themselves? Those days are gone.

What I would love to se is an advert showing the beautiful Indian Ocean coast, the Maasai Mara, the Aberdares, The Ark and Treetops, hot dusty towns, full of Kenyan life, good food …

It is all there, but people need to be told, or at least, reminded.

It is all very well having TV programmes like Big Cat Diary showing the wonders of Kenya, but Kenya should be shouting about how wonderful it is as a holiday destination.

Come on, the Kenya Tourist Industry. Knock a few film clips together and get it broadcast!

River Cottage, Kenya

With a potential food shortage looming in Kenya due to the recent drought, KCIS really needs to get River Cottage Kenya started so that we can grow food for the orphanage.

The orphanage at Kisii is quite well-placed, inasmuch as it is in one of the most fertile areas of kenya, but food prices are rising, following market forces – yes, even rural farmers know about supply and demand!

Furthermore, people in Kenya who have control over food distribution are stock-piling, waiting for food prices to rise higher, so as to make a quick buck.

Reading this, you would almost think I was writing about the developed world, wouldn’t you?

If we grow our own food, we can feed our children. If we have a surplus, we can actually make some money and replenish our medical fund, which we had to raid last year, during the post-election troubles.

So, if anyone reading this can help to raise funds – we don’t need a lot – please contact us on the KCIS website.