Estufas
Honduras is an exceptionally beautiful country: green covers
literally everything! The scenery comes in stark contrast to the conditions
some of our patients were living in. Bare dirt floors, flimsy wooden slats for
walls, and aluminum for roofs in some of the poorer villages were not uncommon.
Before ENLACE, most families cooked with wood burning stoves in their homes,
causing respiratory illness and leading to emergency room visits for asthma
attacks.
With ENLACE and Don Israel’s design, many of these families
now have clean-burning stoves. We had the privilege to install 2 of these
stoves which require significantly less wood, and pipe the smoke out of the
house. Requiring a simple concrete frame, a clay tube, and dirt dug from the
owner’s yard, these simple stoves have dramatically reduced the rate of
respiratory illness in the communities where they have been installed. Earnestly asking about each component of the
stove, I fell in to Don Israel’s joke when he told me the water we added at the
end was the most important part. Eager to understand the construction, I asked
why. He smiles and says ‘because it feels the best on your hands” as he
massages the water into the dirt to make hard clay. Just another day’s work!
Emily Fisher
Community Medicine and Global Health Fellow
