Sofia’s story: Clean cooking in Awbarre refugee camp

By Segolene Martin and Mahder Alebachew

Gaia Association

May 6, 2011 -- Sofia Redal, 53, is a Somali

woman living in the UNHCR- managed Awbarre refugee
camp in Eastern Ethiopia. She is a mother of four, and
one of her sons suffers from a disability. She does not
have any income and supports her family by exchanging
some of her monthly ration of wheat for vegetables and
other items. Sofia’s family is one of thousands living in
the UNHCR camps in the region.
The UNHCR and Ethiopian non-profit
organization Gaia Association have been working in
partnership to provide clean, reliable household energy
for cooking to families like Sofia’s for over three years.
Gaia Association distributes the CleanCook stove by
Dometic, an ethanol stove that has proved successful in
refugee settings due to its durability, cleanliness and
efficiency.
Due to a 2009 government mandate to allocate
ethanol production for the transportation sector, Gaia and
the UNHCR had a temporary break in ethanol
distribution. As an interim solution, UNHCR/Gaia
collected the CleanCook stoves from families and Sofia cooks for her family with the CleanCook
distributed kerosene stoves and fuel in the camps. Starting stove
May 2011, Gaia resumed ethanol distribution in Awbarre refugee camp. The Redal family and 900
other Awbarre families currently benefit from the UNHCR/Ga ia program for cleaner, safer
household cooking. UNHCR/Gaia is also resuming distribution in Kebribeyah and Sheder camps in
the upcoming months - thousands of more families will benefit from the program.

“The ethanol stove is the best” “It's the best,” says Sofia about her CleanCook. She tells
Gaia staff how happy she is to receive it back. Sofia used
the CleanCook daily to cook for her six-member family before the interim. It is still in excellent
condition despite three years of constant use in a rugged environment. The CleanCook stove was
voted the most popular program in the Somali camps for three years running by the refugees
themselves.

Upon her arrival in Awbarre camp four years ago, Sofia used firewood as cooking fuel. With six
other women, she would walk up to 8 kilometers every four days to collect firewood. “It would
take us the whole day to go and come back,” Sofia says. Indeed, Awbarre is situated in an
extremely arid and deforested area, making fuelwood collection difficult and laborious. It was a
risky task for these women and many others, exposing them to physical and sexual assault from
local people and landowners. Access to household energy is a basic living standard that Sofia used
to lack. Now, with the CleanCook, she can cook three meals a day for her family with one liter
hydrous ethanol distributed by Gaia and UNHCR field staff.
 The majority of Awbarre families are large, many with ten “My children can go
members or more. The CleanCook is designed to accommodate large to school.”
pots and can simmer food on low heat for long hours. Furthermore, the
CleanCook operates at a high efficiency compared to other cookstoves.
Because their breakfast is cooked quickly, Sofia's children can go earlier to school and receive
better educations.

Cooking with firewood on a traditional open fire poses serious health risks for families. The
resulting indoor air pollution has consequences varying from lower respiratory illnesses to eye
ailments. “It is harmful and dangerous, I got burned once because of it,” Sofia explains about her
experience cooking with an open fire before she had the CleanCook. She tells Gaia staff that the
smoky environment created by her open fire even forced her to cook
“Cleaner and safer” outside. In addition to firewood, some refugee families cook with
charcoal – a polluting fuel which costs rural families five times the
amount it costs in Addis. Sofia's daughter notes, “Charcoal is dangerous. Some people pass out
from the smell. In the camps, there were also some accidents because of kerosene explosions.
People got burned.”

The CleanCook ethanol stove is smoke-free and meets WHO emissions standards for carbon
particulate matter. It makes possible an environment where women can cook with their children by
their side and avoid the dangers of fuelwood collection.

Gaia Association, an affiliate of Project Gaia, Inc. is an Ethiopian non-profit, non-governmental

organization working to provide clean-burning stoves and alcohol fuels to families in Ethiopia since
2005. For more information, please visit www.projectgaia.com