Building a better mousetrap, Paraguayan style

Families around the developing world use primitive cook stoves to prepare their meals every day. And every year, 2 million people die from illnesses related to those stoves – whether it be from smoke inhalation, or pneumonia, or similar respiratory infections. Look here for an article on the situation.

In Paraguay, and in my site, many families cook on the ground with an open air fire, which fills their kitchens with massive amounts of smoke. Another problem with this approach is it creates a heavy reliance on frying as a cooking method.

During training, Peace Corps taught us how to build better cook stoves. The classic fogon removes smoke from the cooking process, elevates and encloses the fire (so that it doesn’t throw off as much heat or pose a burn risk), and allows for baking since it has an oven.

Unfortunately, they also require three expensive pieces of metal and 250 bricks. They also tend to burn a lot of firewood. If cook stoves were cars, the typical Peace Corps Fogon would be a Cadillac Coupe Deville.

About a year ago, one of my fellow volunteers began tinkering with fogon designs, looking for ways to cut costs and increase the efficiency of the models. Cook stoves are a big topic in the development world, and he came up with a model that uses a “rocket chamber,” which focuses the heat better. You can see how these models are built from the photos.

Rocket chamber. We build a larger box around this sleeve of air and pack it full of ashes to provide insulation and produce a cleaner burn.

In the end, we eliminated 150 bricks and the oven, and brought the cost down by almost half. The model we ended up implementing also burns wood much more efficiently, and produces far less smoke.

Notice the small mouth to this model. A Paraguayan can cook with just a few pieces of wood as opposed to in older models.

The fogon in its entirety.