| Partners in Senegal Embrace the HotPotTM by Marie-Ange Binagwaho
In November 2006 I traveled to Senegal to meet our partners and to review
the progress of our pilot launch preparations. I visited five villages north
of Dakar where, over the last six months, our local partner and coordinator
Mr. Toure (known locally as Mr. Soleil: Mr. Sun) has been conducting
demonstrations and training. In each village a woman has been recruited to
demonstrate the HotPot. These women, our village coordinators, will be the
primary support for the 120 women who will participate in the pilot project
from January to June 2007.
In each village the village coordinators greeted me with meals cooked in the
HotPot, ranging from the national dish of rice, fish and vegetables to
cakes. Since mid-November the village coordinators have been using the
HotPot at least once a day and showing their neighbors the varied dishes
which can be cooked with the HotPot. Every meal brought a flock of villagers
to admire the HotPot and taste the food (I am not even sure how much the
coordinators' families got to eat!). Every once in a while a skeptic would
peer under the table or the roof where the Hotpot was set to make sure that
there was no fire doing the cooking! The coordinators use these daily
gatherings to explain how the HotPot works and how they have benefited from
it.
The women I met expressed a keen interest in the HotPot. They found it
attractive and liked its portability, and they were very interested in the
benefits experienced by the coordinators. In one village the coordinator
explained how she had taken the HotPot to the field her husband was
preparing. She set up the HotPot and worked alongside her husband while
their lunch was cooking. This not only helped them get the field ready
sooner but also saved her a great deal of time; usually she would have to
cook at the homestead and then bring the meal to her husband. Another
coordinator spoke about the money she was saving by using the Hotpot every
day. On a daily basis she used a quarter less cooking oil for their main
meal. She also estimated that she used a third less gas and wood. Although
she clearly understood that there would be periods such as the rainy season
when she would not be able to use the Hotpot, she was also adamant that
using it even only once a day during the dry season was certainly worth the
savings.
Twenty women from each village have been selected to participate in the
6-month pilot. At the end of January these women will each have a HotPot and
will record their experiences using it. During my visit there was a clamor
to have the HoPots sooner than that! All felt that two weeks of
demonstrations was more than enough and wanted to get started right away.
That level of enthusiasm makes us all very optimistic about the outcome of
the pilot project.
Marie-Ange Binagwaho |
