Mar 4 Grace hears Noah, stoves

Friday the 4th, Gail gives the full blown Noah story, including God's pondering that the whole earth destruction bit may have been a mistake. The picture from yesterday did not do Seilene justice, so here it is. (Tomorrow, a short Saturday, as school nurse (after Gail leads the children in the Noah's Ark re-enactment - you have to wait to see that), she leads the children in a body part naming drill both in Tamil and English).
But what you really want to know is how to build a stove. You can now see excerpts from the soon to be published manual: here Selvam finds out that the wall is not plumb. Since it leans in, we have to modify the technique a bit and support the chimney pipes with a stick before the concrete cures. This is new construction, so we are not tempted to fire it up. The chimney pot needs to go on as well. We return to the creche for lunch past this curious structure which I learn is the skeleton of an adobe hut ('dobe' is Tamil for 'laundry' – I didn't catch the Tamil word for 'adobe'). Selvam and I go off on his motorcycle (no helmets, no faster than 25 mph) to the next job, starting a stove from the floor up. Another new construction hut: this time we are happy – the wall leans out. The two stove elements are made by a local potter. The two combustion chambers are one piece, and the flue base cups the back opening of the second chamber and gives a little vortex up. Ann refers to these as 'smokeless' but in the technical sense, they are not quit smokeless stoves – that would require a more complex re-burning flue. They do however provide much more efficient burning and a flue at all! Most of these huts have even less venting than the nice kitchen wings we saw in Mukhap and elsewhere in Khasi Hills. These stoves are now high in demand folks see how much they improved living quality.
No work Saturday – we'll be back Monday for the chimney.