By Mononjoy Mandal from Satkhira
The use of oven in rural life is immense. It has been seen that people in different areas of Bangladesh use different types of ovens. However, conventional ovens consume more fuel and take longer time for cooking. Using conventional oven makes the kitchen full with black smoke, and grime and the pots are also get dirty. Using this conventional oven negatively impacts on the health of women who are involved in cooking and it also relatively contributes in the high emission of carbon. However, the decreased vegetation, trees and depletion of biodiversity has become evident everywhere in Bangladesh. The rural women generally use wood, hay, straw, dead branches of trees, creepers, leaves and grass as fuel. But due to the loss vegetation including climate induced disasters all these materials are not abundantly found in the nature. This leads the rural women to invent different types of ovens which consume less fuel and take less time for cooking including emitting less smokes. It has been seen that the women in the coast of Bangladesh are using some fuel-efficient eco-friendly ovens.
Moina Rani (62) of Talbaria village in Atulia union of Shyamnagar area is a skilled woman in making environment friendly ovens. She has been making these ovens and providing technical support for making the ovens from the last 20 years which benefited the rural women in the coast. Many women received training from her and now are able to make environment friendly oven. Alpona Rani is among them who is supporting other women to make this oven with the objective to expand the use of this oven in different areas of the coast.
BARCIK has been facilitating a project in Satkhira to support the climate change affected people. Through this project BARCIK implements some activities to develop the capacity, increase the resilient and improve the livelihood status of the climate affected 1600 poor families in 8 unions of two upazila (Shymanagar and Asashuni) Satkhira district. Nonetheless, through this project BARCIK also took initiative to train the rural women on making environment friendly ovens. Jharna Rani facilitated the training on making this oven. She trained the rural women and discussed about the importance and benefit on using this environment friendly oven. Jhanna Rani Mistry said, “One can use straw, wood, grass, torch, wood powder, bran, leaves and old leaves in this oven. This oven has three mouths which enables the users using three pots/vessels simultaneously. On the one hand, this oven consumes less fuel and takes less time for cooking and even this oven comparatively produces less smoke.’
Jamuna Rani of Burigoalini village, a woman who has made a oven in her own kitchen after receiving training from Jhonna Rani, said, “Earlier I used to use a normal oven, now I use her invented oven.” With this environment friendly oven I can cook in less time, it does not emit any flame and smokes. This oven also consumes less fuel comparatively and the smoke goes out through the pipe, so there is no dirt in the room and vessels.
This clay made oven can be made very easily and this leads the women in the rural areas getting interested in it. Due to this growing interest among the woman the use of this environment friendly oven is increasing day by day in the coast. Many families in Shyamnagar have benefited from using this oven after being trained by Jhonna Rani. BARCIK is presently providing this training to the women of 1600 families. After receiving this training, 464 families are environment friendly and energy efficient oven.
It is to be mentioned that the use of these oven reduces the health risks of rural women and saves fuel. On the other hand, increasing the use of environment friendly oven contributes to the protection of the environment by reducing carbon emissions.
Translated by Silvanus Lamin
