The Cost of Making Dinner--UPDATED

So the spring crops are wrapping up in my garden, the tall, fat onion greens laying down in submission, letting me know that the big white and red bulbs underneath are ready for picking. The "romaines of the day" are the last of the lettuces. The peas are starting to yield their vining space to the beans coming up fast behind them. And the rest of the gang are bolting, their little yellow and white flowers filling the air with pollinators that are looking for the squash flowers that are not yet here.

"You do a lot of work to put food on the table, don't you?" a neighbor asked me last week. I don't think of it as work anymore. It's just what I do. Yet that afternoon, I read a letter to the editor in the New York Times that literally stopped me in my tracks. Here is an excerpt:

Nicholas D. Kristof is right to point out that pneumonia is the leading cause of death for children around the world. When the Women’s Refugee Commission researched the adverse effects of firewood collection by refugee women and girls, we found that in addition to rape and environmental degradation, acute respiratory infections caused by burning wood indoors were a huge problem. These infections, left untreated, often lead to pneumonia and other infections.

In addition to rape and environmental degredation? In addition to rape? In addition to rape?

That just kept leaping off the page for me. A quick Google search revealed that women in refugee camps due to the Darfur genocide are regularly getting raped when trying to find increasingly scarce firewood to cook their meals. The Jewish World Watch, in conjunction with several other organizations, has discovered a way to reduce the incidence of rape, environmental degradation and respiratory illness.

Solar cookers.

These simple cardboard and aluminum foil contraptions use the power of the hot sun to cook daily meals in two to four hours, enabling the women and girls to stay in the refugee camps instead of taking their lives in their hands to find wood.

Additionally, the women are able to earn money by:

* Working in the small manufacturing center to make the cookers
* Making covers for the cookers to prolong them
* Making warming baskets to help keep the evening meal warm
* Teaching other women how to use and maintain their cookers.

They use this money to buy milk, bread and clothes for their families.

I literally didn't sleep for three nights thinking about this. Rape. Solar cooker. Renewed hope and dignity. Such a simple, simple way to change lives. Such a brilliant outside-the-box approach.

I told several people about the solar cookers and I saw eyes glazed from feeling helpless about Darfur open wide with astonishment. Turns out Jewish World Watch has provided solar cookers to every family in two refugee camps already (Iridimi, with a population of 18,846 refugees; and Touloum, with a population of 23,441 refugees--together, that is more people than the 42,000 who live in my city), and is currently working on a third. Its goal is to provide solar cooking for all 12 refugee camps in Chad.

"What does it cost?" my friend asked. Thirty bucks. For thirty bucks, a family gets:

* Two solar cookers per family
* Two pots
* Two pot holders
* A year supply of plastic bags
* Skills training.

I was at the dentist the other day and he suggested putting sealants on two of my teeth. Sealants. For an adult. Sealants that are guaranteed for only three years and that contain questionable materials.

"How much does it cost?" I asked.

"Just fifty bucks a tooth," he asked. Fifty bucks. And I don't get a cavity for the next three years, even though I've hardly had one in the last twenty. Thirty bucks and a family of girls and women don't get raped when they try to make dinner.

I interviewed Rachel Andres, the director of the Solar Cooker Project at Jewish World Watch. She lost 22 members of her family in the Holocaust. Her grandmother was the only one who survived, because she had come to the United States before World War II started. And her granddaughter went on to provide solar cookers to women and girls in Africa. Such a world.

I asked Rachel about something I read on the Solar Cooker Project website, about how the family gets one cooker for sauce and vegetables "when they are available." I asked how they get vegetables (and in the back of my mind, I could already see Farmer D on a plane heading there).

Turns out that each family has a little space for a veggie garden, but that the harsh conditions and lack of water make growing food very difficult. A new project on which Jewish World Watch is working gives each family some PVC piping and a bowl so that they can capture some of the water they use to clean their bodies (from the meager 5 liters they are allotted a day) and redirect it to their gardens.

This simple solution (yet again) is creating abundant gardens that help to feed these families. The photo above is a photo Rachel recently received of one of the gardens. My eye first went to the okra, and I thought of the okra I planted around my mailbox garden last year and how this year, when I see my okra, I will think of these women so far away. But then, look at that face. Look at that pride. Just look at it.

I didn't get the sealants. I sent in the $30, plus I ordered myself the exact same solar cooker that the refugees get, as part of a project kit that "is ideal for anyone considering an international or domestic solar cooking and solar water pasteurization project."

I have no idea where I'm going with this. I just know that there is something for me to do here, that I am being called somehow.

Oh, as for the FoodShed Planet Summer Reading Pick of the Week? I've had a change of plans.

UPDATED: May 29, 2009

My solar cooker arrived yesterday. I'm hoping to try it out today--wild rice, lentils, and onions and lamb's quarter from my garden. Here is a wonderful video that shows the women of Iridimi with these cookers.