Women’s Center: Building an Outdoor Stove

While doing the clean-up on the Women’s Center land, Sylvie and Lisa found a pile of block that had been left over from the original construction, and asked the women what they needed that could be built from block. They immediately said that they needed an outdoor stove that they could use with fire to cook their tortillas and to boil their giant pots of tamales.

Sylvie offered to help with the construction, and pay for the cement and sand for the job. I spoke with my neighbour, Edgar, who works with cement, and he offered to work with the volunteers, showing them the way the local people build a stove.

 

I went to our local building supplies store with the truck to pick up the 50 shovel-fulls of sand and a bag of cement.

And when I returned with it, Gloria Mejia (the new president of the group) was the first to grab a shovel and begin to unload.

Meanwhile, Sylvie and some of the women had carried over some block, and were levelling out the area in the outdoor kitchen where they had decided to build it.

The women then dug a trench, about one block deep, as a foundation.

And Edgar began laying the block.

Soon they had built a rectangular block box with a small opening in the front to feed the fire.